JUDICIAL WATCH WEEKLY UPDATE 07/07/2018

Judicial Watch Sues for Documents on Mueller’s Abusive Raid on Trump’s Lawyers In April, Special Counsel Mueller and the DOJ crossed yet another bridge too far, when Mueller recommended, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein approved, a raid on President Trump’s then-personal attorney’s home and office. At the time of the raid, I tweeted: “The raid is just one more reason to shut the Mueller operation down – it’s constitutionally suspect, ethically compromised, & frankly has no reason for being – given the fact that there’s no evidence of @RealDonaldTrump-Russia collusion.” Judicial Watch began an investigation that has resulted in another JW “Mueller oversight project” lawsuit. We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Justice Department for all records related to the April 9 raid on the office, home and hotel room of Michael Cohen, then-personal attorney to President Donald Trump (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-01466)). The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department lawlessly failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests. On April 12, 2018, we sought from the Office of the Attorney General:   Any and all records of correspondence and communications between the Office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the Office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller concerning, regarding, or relating to the April 9, 2018 raids on the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen.” Also on April 12, 2018, we sent a second FOIA request for the following from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys:   The Search and Seizure Warrant executed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen on April 9, 2018.  The application for the above-referenced warrant and any affidavits submitted in support of the application  All records about the recusal of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman from the Michael Cohen investigation.  On May 2, 2018, we submitted a third FOIA request for the following from the Department of Justice:   All records of communications between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York about Michael Cohen and/or the executed search warrants of Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room.  All records of communications between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York about Michael Cohen and/or the executed search warrants of Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room.  On April 9, 2018, the FBI raided the home, office and hotel room of President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Prosecutors obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from Special Counsel Mueller’s office conveyed through Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Lawyers for Michael Cohen reportedly completed a review of the over four million seized files from the raids and “found that 12,061 are privileged and shouldn’t be viewed by government lawyers.” On its face, the raid on then-President Trump’s lawyer seemed abusive and out of line. And so it is not surprising that the Mueller Special Counsel and the Justice Department would ignore FOIA law and refuse to respond to our basic requests for information about this extraordinary raid. We’ll keep you updated. The Majority of Immigrants ICE Arrests are Convicted Criminals  The contrived hysteria over the treatment of children has metastasized among the open borders Left into demands, peppered with lawlessness and violence, to eliminate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Here’s an inconvenient truth: ICE protects us from criminals, as our Corruption Chronicles blog points out. As a growing number of Democrats and their allies call for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it’s important to remember that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants arrested by the agency have criminal convictions. In 2017 immigrants with criminal convictions accounted for 74% of all arrests made by ICE, according to government data used by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in a study published earlier this year. Sixteen percent of those arrested by ICE had pending criminal charges and only 11 % had no known criminal convictions or charges, the Pew analysis found. Nearly 60,000 illegal aliens deported by ICE last year were convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol and another 57,438 for possessing or selling dangerous drugs such as opioids. More than 52,000 ICE arrestees were convicted of immigration offenses, including false claim to American citizenship and tens of thousands had pending criminal charges for assault, driving under the influence and a variety of other crimes. Some had pending charges for more violent crimes like sexual assault, kidnapping and homicide. Los Angeles, an illegal alien sanctuary city, topped the list with nearly nine out of 10 ICE arrests consisting of immigrants with criminal convictions. Newark, New Jersey had the lowest number with 60% criminal arrests but every region had one thing in common: “In all ICE areas, considerable majorities of arrests were for those with prior convictions,” the Pew study says. The figures make the calls to abolish ICE, the 20,000-employee Homeland Security agency, preposterous. The growing movement includes elected officials—some presidential contenders—at the federal, state and local level as well as those running for office. Among them are senators Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Kamala Harris (California) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York). Warren and Harris are reportedly making White House runs in 2020. Other federal lawmakers calling for the dismantling of ICE include Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and Massachusetts Congressman Mike Capuano. In a piece published by a mainstream media outlet, a law professor running for New York Attorney General writes that ICE is a “tool of cruelty and lawlessness and dehumanization.” The agency was born in xenophobia and fear, the lawyer asserts, and it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: “Terrorize immigrant communities, bring a police state inside our borders and treat people as less than human.”   Not surprisingly, the mainstream media appears to support the abolish ICE movement and has demonstrated it with biased reporting as well as the promotion of radical leftist ideas such as those published by the New York Attorney General candidate. A mainstream national newspaper writes that the nation doesn’t need ICE and refers to it as an “agency that harms Latino and immigrant communities.” A northern California newspaper blames the Trump administration’s “hardline immigration policies” for transforming the idea of abolishing ICE from a pipe dream for liberal activists to a legitimate political issue. The article refers to abolish ICE as a movement that has seen a “remarkable rise from fringe issue to Democratic rallying cry.” A multitude of media outlets around the country have followed suit, shamelessly displaying their pom-poms for the insane abolish ICE movement. The reality is that ICE needs to be strengthened because the agency is overwhelmed, officers can’t keep up with monstrous workloads and repeatedly lose track of hardcore criminals inside the United States. As a result hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens with criminal records are getting released by local authorities in the U.S., according to a federal audit released last year by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General. A surge in illegal immigrants under the Obama administration pushed matters into crisis mode with deportation officers so overworked that they often lose track of dangerous illegal aliens with serious criminal histories, the probe found. This includes individuals who represent critical national security threats. One ICE agent cited in the report said this: “You might work 18 hours a day, but you still won’t get caught up.” Inspectors visited four key field offices and determined that the management deficiencies and unresolved obstacles make it difficult for the feds to deport aliens expeditiously. “ICE is almost certainly not deporting all the aliens who could be deported and will likely not be able to keep up with growing numbers of deportable aliens,” the DHS watchdog found.   The attack on ICE is another front to eliminate borders by the radical Left and its political allies. No government agency should be immune from closing, but if the goal of closing an agency is to destroy the rule of law and our sovereignty then we should proceed with extreme caution. Trust Judicial Watch to both hold the government accountable and tell you the truth about those who want to upend our laws against illegal immigration. Until next week … Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton