Below are the transcript and video of Tom Fitton’s Annie Taylor Award Acceptance Speech at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend, which was held Nov. 10th-13th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. [The Annie Taylor Award for Courage from the David Horowitz Freedom Center is awarded annually to people who have demonstrated unusual courage in adverse conditions and great danger.]
Tom Fitton from DHFC on Vimeo.
Thank you, Mike. That was very generous, and, you know, it’s just not me at Judicial Watch. I get to come up, go on TV, and talk about all the great work our lawyers and investigators and our fundraisers and our administrators and our media people are doing. It’s a team effort. We can’t do it without the support of our families at home. General, if you think I’m scary you should meet my wife, Kelly.
We can’t do it without the support of home, and I knew something was up with Trump when my 10-year-old daughter wanted to go dressed as Trump to Halloween at school, and she did. And what was nice about that – obviously she had the costume together and everything. She has blond hair. Not as blond as your boss. But she added the idea of bringing the Constitution along. That was part of her costume. She wanted to have the Constitution with her, and that’s why we fight, and we’re so happy to be able to do it. If I could just disagree with President Trump, or President-Elect Trump: We don’t need to make America great again because we are great. We need politicians who recognize that greatness in public office, because Judicial Watch’s work is a precious, precious thing we’ve been able to do. We wouldn’t be allowed to do it in any other darn country in the world, any other country in the world. We have this ability to go after our government, be on equal footing with them in the court, and win, and that’s not allowed anywhere else, believe you me.
We did all this great work on the emails and got these emails out that Mrs. Clinton didn’t want you to see. People ask, “What was she hiding?“ She was hiding all of them. She didn’t want you to see that she told her daughter, an hour after she told America that it was a video, that it was Al Qaida behind Benghazi. That’s what she didn’t want you to see. She didn’t want you to see the pay-for-play that was going on at the Foundation, and our work changed history. We were not involved directly in the campaign. We can’t do that. We’re a 501©3. But we don’t think politics should intrude upon the rule of law, and just because she’s running for President doesn’t make her immune to the rule of law. And Judicial Watch got all this information out there, and the FBI and the Justice Department didn’t want to do anything. Congress really didn’t want to do anything, but the American people did something. They sure did something, and they made their decision. They convened the grand jury for us, at least electorally, on Election Day, and now there’s going to be a terrible choice for the president to make: whether to prosecute the person he ran against. And I hope and I expect he resists the siren song of the establishment to move on.
Let me say this, though. It’s not just about Hillary Clinton. The email scandal, the pay-for-play scandals, it’s not a Clinton scandal. It’s an Obama scandal. It’s a State Department scandal. It’s a Justice Department scandal. It’s an FBI scandal. It’s a shady corporation scandal. It’s foreign potentate scandal. You name it, the whole corrupt system that is at issue with the Clinton email and the Clinton Foundation issue. So, it is about the most-important thing the incoming president can do. So that’s something he needs to do, and if we have to press him to do that, that’s fine, and I appreciate – the General is too kind in his highlighting my work here, and that’s why I’m going to feel terrible when we have to sue the Trump administration to get documents, because we will. We’ll be there to support you if you do the right thing, but we’ll sue you if you do the wrong thing. Because Donald Trump, despite the attacks in the media, will have plenty of people tell him how great he is, but we need honest brokers out there, independent of party, who are just going to call it like we see it.
I’ll just close briefly with a comment from President Reagan. I was working on our Veteran’s Day message to our supporters this week, and I went to the Department of Veterans Affairs website to see what everyone had spoken of who was important about it. And of course it was a terrible. They had maybe two of the three speeches from the last 55 years there, but they had Reagan’s 1985 speech, and he talked about the importance of peace. Obviously we pray for peace, but we also want to fight for the truth, and the president highlighted, “We endanger the peace, and confuse all issues, when we obscure the truth, when we refuse to name an act for what it is, when we refuse the see the obvious and seek safety in the Almighty. Peace is only maintained and won by those who have clear eyes and brave minds.“ Now, I tell you, I feel like I’m among those who have clear eyes and brave minds, and talk about a man who has exemplified that is David Horowitz. So we’re here for you, we’re always going to be here for you, the rule of law is important, it needs to be vindicated, and if the politicians don’t do it, we will. Thank you for this kind, kind recognition.
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