| Larry Klayman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Larry Elliot Klayman July 20, 1951 |
| Occupation | Attorney Activist |
| Political party | Republican |
| Religion | Judaism |
Larry Elliot Klayman (born July 20, 1951) is an American attorney and activist. He is known as the founder and former Chairman of Judicial Watch, a public interest and non-profit law firm, which attained notoriety through the initiation of 18 civil lawsuits against the Clinton Administration, and later an unsuccessful lawsuit against Vice-President Dick Cheney in order to obtain information about the White House's energy task force.[1][2][3]
In September 2003, Klayman left the organization to run for the United States Senate from Florida. He lost in the Republican primary. In 2006 Klayman sued Judicial Watch and its president Tom Fitton charging financial and other mismanagement issues which damaged Judicial Watch, the donors and Klayman.
After his run for the U.S. Senate, Klayman formed the organization Freedom Watch to "protect civil liberties [and] rights of all persons, whatever their ethnicity, race, religion, sex or otherwise." [4]
During the Ronald Reagan administration, Klayman was a prosecutor in the Justice Department and was on the trial team that succeeded in breaking up the telephone monopoly of AT&T.
Klayman has authored the books Fatal Neglect and Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment, and writes a weekly column for the conservative news website WorldNetDaily.
On the NBC series The West Wing, John Diehl played a character patterned after Klayman called "Harry Klaypool." [5]
In April 2011, Klayman filed a lawsuit against Facebook, accusing the social media website of "negligence" for not responding quickly enough to calls to take down an anti-Israel "Third Intifada" page and demanding $1 billion in damages. Facebook representatives responded that the suit was "without merit".[6]
As of July 1, 2011, Klayman's Pennsylvania law license was in "Administrative Suspension" status (usually indicative of a failure to pay bar fees and/or a failure to keep up with Continuing Legal Education requirements).[7]
Klayman recently came under heavy scrutiny and criticism from readers of his World Net Daily column after calling President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traitors for not attacking Iran and advocating the use of nuclear weapons on Tehran, even though much of the criticism comes from people who are also critical of the Obama administration's foreign policies.[8]