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Conservative Group Sponsors Snapchat Filter to Throw Shade at Hillary Clinton

Memes for all.

For one day only, Snapchat users in Washington, DC, can send snaps featuring a visual overlay that reads, "WARNING: This message will self destruct—just like Hillary Clinton's emails."

The filter is sponsored by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal foundation, and reports of its appearance have been coming in from journalists covering an ongoing hearing in Washington between Clinton and the Benghazi Committee. The committee is investigating the events surrounding the 2012 attacks on US government outposts in Benghazi, Libya.

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The hearing has focused on emails recovered from a private Clinton server, which were not indexed by the State Department until she handed them over.

"The message fits in nicely with the SnapChat [sic] platform and reflects our concern that Mrs. Clinton is playing 'catch me if you can' with her government emails, information," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement emailed to me by a representative.

Appears Judicial Watch has paid for a special @Snapchat geofilter for the #Benghazi Cmte @HillaryClinton hearing: pic.twitter.com/aQXli1ANNA
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorpNBC) October 22, 2015

After it was revealed that Clinton had used a personal email address for State Department business, she agreed to turn in 55,000 pages of emails, but maintained that emails of a personal nature were destroyed. In June, however, the Benghazi Committee produced 15 emails containing intelligence reports which were, in whole or in part, not found in the reams of messages Clinton turned in.

Clinton later made a Snapchat-themed joke about the controversy, saying, "I love [Snapchat]—those messages disappear all by themselves." Geofilters are visual overlays that Snapchat users in specific locations can use on their snaps. Snapchat must approve every filter, per the guidelines posted on their website, and this year Snapchat monetized the service by allowing companies and organizations to pay to sponsor filters.

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A Snapchat representative confirmed that the filter was paid for Judicial Watch, and that it can only be used today.

This isn't the first time a conservative group has sponsored an "advocacy filter," as the Judicial Watch representative described it. In August, a group called Secure America Now sponsored a filter that read, "This is how I feel about the bad Iran deal."

The Benghazi Committee hearing is expected to last up to 10 hours, and will cap off a months-long investigation by a committee that has been accused of slow progress and Republican partisanship. Judicial Watch has itself aggressively pursued the Benghazi controversy—and Clinton specifically—through Freedom of Information Act requests.

But hey, conservatives need to meme, too.