Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records About Removal of Alleged Anti-Trump FBI Official From Mueller Team
Obama State Department Cut Deal with Hillary to Keep Call Log, Schedules Secret Judicial Watch Sues California and Los Angeles Over Dirty Voter Registration Rolls Judicial Watch Asks Supreme Court to Restrain FCC Ability to Impose Government Control Over the Internet Through “Net Neutrality”
The FBI and Justice Department are engulfed in a rule of law crisis because of new revelations of evident bias among FBI officials and key DOJ prosecutors. Recently, we exposed how Andrew Weissmann, a top Mueller special counsel deputy has anti-Trump bias. And this week, we’re in the forefront of a related scandal about an anti-Trump bias infecting the top echelons of the FBI.
Just yesterday, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI for records about the removal and reassignment of Peter Strzok, a former deputy to the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, from the special counsel’s investigative team led by former FBI director Robert Mueller. Strzok also was the FBI’s chief of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illicit email server, interviewing Hillary Clinton himself on July 2, 2016. We filed the suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after the FBI failed to respond to an August 17, 2017, FOIA request (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Federal Bureau of Investigation (No. 1:17-cv-02682)). Judicial Watch seeks:
Strzok reportedly oversaw the FBI’s interviews of former National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn; changed former FBI Director James Comey’s language about Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding her illicit email server from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless;” played a lead role in the FBI’s interview of Clinton and is suspected of being responsible for using the unverified dossier to obtain a FISA warrant in order to spy on President Trump’s campaign. It is disturbing the FBI has stonewalled our request about Mr. Strzok’s demotion for four months. One can only conclude the FBI and Justice Department, including Mr. Mueller’s operation, wanted to hide the truth about how Strzok’s and Page’s political biases and misconduct have compromised both the Clinton email and Russia collusion investigations. Agent Strzok’s texts about Hillary Clinton and President Trump are responsive to another Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit but have not yet been produced by the FBI. We worked the airwaves hard this week to educate Americans on the anti-Trump rule of law crisis. You can view our important Fox hits here and here. We also have been highlighting our battles on OANN here and here. Obama State Department Cut Deal with Hillary to Keep Call Log, Schedules Secret
It has been clear all along that Hillary Clinton was doing things at the State Department that she doesn’t want anyone to know about. Judicial Watch already exposed her email scandal, but the secrecy went beyond emails.
Judicial Watch just released Obama State Department documents showing former Secretary Hillary Clinton and her then-Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were “personal” materials and “unclassified, non-record materials,” including files of Clinton’s calls and schedules, which were not to be made public. Outrageously, the documents show the Obama State Department records would not be “released to the general public under FOIA.” Curiously, the new records also show that Huma Abedin was allowed to take five boxes of “physical files” out of the State Department that include records described as “Muslim Engagement Documents.” (We recently found how Abedin’s controversial Islamist activis We found the info about the secret Clinton-State Department deal thanks to our two-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for: Any and all DS-1904 (Authorization for the Removal of Personal Papers and Non-Record Materials) forms completed by, or on behalf of, any of the following individuals:
The documents include a list of official and personal calls and schedules that Clinton removed, which carry a special notation that the documents were not to be made public records. The notation is on an addendum to a DS-1904 signed by Clarence N. Finney Jr., then-director of the Office of Correspondence and Records, who was the reviewing officer:
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(JW has a pending request for the deposition of Finney in separate litigation concerning Clinton emails and the Benghazi terrorist attack.)
The originals of some Clinton documents were retained, such as the call logs and schedules. For other records, including material that predates Clinton’s tenure, there is no indication that a copy was made. The most significant of these are her personal correspondence and gift binders, which could reflect Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative ties. Through our previous investigations we made public numerous examples of Clinton’s schedule being broadcast via email through her unsecure, non-government server (for example, see here, here, hereand here). The records also contain a list of materials removed by Clinton accumulated by Robert Russo, Clinton’s then-special assistant, including PDFs of Clinton’s “correspondence in response to gifts … thank you and acknowledgements,” as well as other records. The documents indicate that Clinton removed a physical file of “the log of the Secretary’s gifts with pictures of gifts.” The receipt of gifts by federal employees in the Executive Branch is regulated:
We already know the Obama State Department let Hillary Clinton steal and then delete her government emails, which included classified information. But these new records show that was only part of the scandal. They show that the Obama State Department had a deal with Hillary Clinton to hide her call logs and schedules, which would be contrary to FOIA and other laws. When are the American people going to get an honest investigation of the Clinton crimes?
Judicial Watch Sues California and Los Angeles Over Dirty Voter Registration RollsJudicial Watch is the nation’s leader in the legal effort to ensure the integrity of our elections. To that end, we took a big step forward with the filing of a federal lawsuit against Los Angeles County and the State of California over their failure to clean their voter rolls and to produce election-related records as required by the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) (Judicial Watch, Inc.et al. v. Dean C. Logan, et al. (No. 2:17-cv-08948)). We filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California’s Western Division on behalf of Judicial Watch, Election Integrity Project California Inc., and Wolfgang Kupka, Rhue Guyant, Jerry Griffin, and Delores M. Mars, who are lawfully registered voters in Los Angeles County. We argue that the State of California and a number of its counties, including the county of Los Angeles, have registration rates exceeding 100%:
We point out that this is due in part to the high numbers of inactive registrations that are still carried on California’s voter rolls:
Although these inactive registrations should be removed after a statutory waiting period consisting of two general federal elections, California officials are simply refusing to do so.
We explain that, even though a registration is officially designated as “inactive,” it may still be voted on election day and is still on the official voter registration list. The inactive registrations of voters who have moved to a different state “are particularly vulnerable to fraudulent abuse by a third party” because the voter who has moved “is unlikely to monitor the use of or communications concerning an old registration.” Inactive registrations “are also inherently vulnerable to abuse by voters who plan to fraudulently double-vote in two different jurisdictions on the same election day.” We sent a written request for public records on November 16, 2017, and another on November 29, 2017, seeking information about “the number of inactive registrations on the voter rolls in Los Angeles County,” but we were told each time that there were no responsive records. Last summer, we sent a broader request for voter roll records that Los Angeles County and the State of California are required by the NVRA to keep and to make publicly available. Nothing was produced in response to this request. We point out that it is impossible to believe that there were no responsive records:
Federal law is clear. Section 8(a)(4) of the NVRA requires states to implement a program to remove ineligible registrants; and to turn over relevant records and information. We argue:
Our lawsuit asks the court to enjoin Los Angeles County and the state of California from further violating the NRVA and to compel them to “develop and implement a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove from Los Angeles County’s rolls the registrations of ineligible registrants.” We also want to inspect and copy the requested voter roll records.
We sent a notice-of-violation letter in August 2017 threatening to sue California and certain of its counties over their violations of the NVRA. California was one of 12 states to receive such letters from Judicial Watch. Bottom line is that California may have the dirtiest election rolls in the country. Federal law requires states to take reasonable steps to clean up their voting rolls. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. This lawsuit aims to ensure that citizens of California can have more confidence that their elections are fair and honest. Judicial Watch Senior Attorney and Director of its Election Integrity Project Robert Popper recently provided testimony to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity concerning the NVRA. Popper was formerly Deputy Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. We sent notice-of-violation letters threatening to sue 11 other states having counties in which the number of registered voters exceeds the number of voting-age citizens, as calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011-2015 American Community Survey: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee. Judicial Watch informed the states that should they fail to take action to correct violations of Section 8 of the NVRA, it would file suit. We previously filed successful lawsuits under the NVRA against Ohio and Indiana that resulted in those states taking several actions to clean up their voting rolls. We are currently suing Kentucky over its failure to remove ineligible voters as required by the NVRA, and we are suing the State of Maryland and Montgomery County over their failure to release voting-related records. We are being assisted by Charles H. Bell Jr., of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP; and H. Christopher Coates of Law Office of H. Christopher Coates. Judicial Watch Asks Supreme Court to Restrain FCC Ability to Impose Government Control Over the Internet Through “Net Neutrality” President Obama and his minions spent eight years illicitly drawing as much power as they could to Washington D.C., and we’re doing our part to rectify that. We have joined the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in submitting an amici curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the court to hear the appeal of the 2015 case regarding an Obama-era FCC decision that reclassified broadband Internet as a public utility so that it could impose its restrictive net neutrality rules (United States Telecom Association, et al. v. Federal Communications Commission and United States of America (No. 15-1063)). We argue that the circuit court’s decision “undermined the constitutional separation of powers” by allowing the FCC to directly intervene in the broadband Internet economy. Our amici brief also argues that the lower court’s ruling will expose the FCC to undue influence from politicians and lobbyists now and in the future:
Additionally, we and AEF argue that the D.C. Circuit’s decision “is blessing Congress’ evasion of its constitutional responsibility to make laws. This will lead the executive branch to continue to usurp this authority with bolder and more inventive interpretations of decades-old statutes until eventually all real lawmaking power will lie in the executive and the judiciary.”
In May 2017, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FCC seeking records of the Obama White House’s influence in the FCC’s decision to reclassify broadband Internet as a public utility so that it could impose its restrictive net neutrality regulatory rules (Judicial Watch v. Federal Communications Commission (No. 1:17-cv-00933)). On May 18, 2017, the FCC voted to propose a new review of the Obama-era net neutrality regulations passed in 2015 on Internet service, which greatly increased the FCC’s management of Internet content delivery and operations. In July, we and AEF submitted comments to the FCC:
Judicial Watch/AEF also highlighted the political motivation behind the Obama FCC “power grab” that produced this “politically corrupted decision” to regulate the Internet:
The Judicial Watch/AEF comments were quoted twice in the FCC’s recent order:
The Obama FCC’s attempted takeover of the Internet under the fake guise of “net neutrality,” which was blessed by the D.C. Court of Appeals, must be stopped and not allowed to serve as a precedent for further expansion of unconstitutional actions by the federal bureaucracy.
The Trump-controlled FCC just voted this week to undo Obama’s Internet takeover. But this court battle could determine whether a future administration could come back with another government power grab of our Internet freedoms.
Until next week …
 Tom Fitton President |
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