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Police Records Show Secret Service Reported
Obama’s Chef Was Missing
The tragic drowning of the Obamas’ chef on Martha’s Vineyard a month
ago drew national attention, but state and local authorities who
investigated haven’t been eager to share the details in a timely
manner.
After we made a request through the Massachusetts Public Records Law, we
received 18 pages of records
from the Edgarton, MA, Police Department that show the Secret Service
reported Obama’s Personal Chef, Tafari Campbell, missing and that the
body was found using sonar.
The records also report that Campbell’s clothing was found separate from
the body and that he was not wearing a life vest. Several other important
details were redacted regarding the July 23, 2023, drowning on Martha’s
Vineyard.
The records, released yesterday, include a July 23 CAD (computer aided
dispatch) Incident Report:
Secret Service Agent [redacted] adv swimmers unable to locate the party
at this time. Party last scene [sic] wearing all black, on a paddle board,
African American male.
Rev’vd a 911 call from the above noted RP
[reporting person] who identified as a Secret Service member. RP is req
[requesting] at least an ambulance response, unsure of the exact services
needed.
RP advd best access is from the residence,
they are deploying a rescue swimmer and a zodiac boat right now.
RP adv no lifevest was worn, they have
recovered the paddle board and clothing. Still no contact with missing
party. They still have a boat and rescue swimmers in the area.
At 8:25 p.m., the report notes that the Oak Bluffs Fire Department was
sending a dive team. At 8:36 p.m., a Coast Guard helicopter was deployed,
as was a state police helicopter.
In the reports sent by Police Chief Bruce McNamee, the names of a witness
and a Secret Service agent are removed. In his email transmitting the
reports, McNamee writes:
Per the request of the Ma State Police, the names of the witness and USSS
agent have been redacted.
The police and fire departments made their base of operations at Wilson’s
Landing, a popular boat launch. Search and dive teams from Oak Bluffs,
Tisbury and West Tisbury joined the search.
The next day, Sgt. William Bishop
writes:
Once on location [Wilson’s Landing] we established a command post. I
requested through MSP a search helicopter, and Chief Schaeffer requested a
USCG helicopter as well. Search & Dive teams from Edgartown, Oak Bluffs,
Tisbury, West Tisbury responded via mutual aid. An extensive search began
for several hours. A last known location was established, and Trooper Shaw
of MSP also assisted with operations.
I instructed Officer Guest and Officer Dacey
to commence a shoreline search effort starting from the closest house and
working outward. Both Officers checked every house with waterfront access
in the search area. Unfortunately, the search did not yield and
results.
Both air wings conducted a search until
their fuel supply forced a return to base.
At or about 11PM the dive and land search
was suspended. Edgartown and Oak Bluffs Fire planned to continue a grid
search by boat for the remainder of the night. At first light, dive team
operations will continue. During the duration of this incident the entrance
to Wilson's Landing was closed as to give responders room to
work.
The next morning the dive team search
continued, and a deceased Mr. Campbell was located using sonar. The
investigation will now be handled by Massachusetts State Police and The
Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office. No further action.
It is concerning that we had to push and push for information on this
tragic death, such as the new revelation that the Obama’s Secret Service
protection reported Mr. Campbell missing.
Judicial Watch Sues Biden Agencies over Social Media Censorship
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of
the press …”
Apparently, the Biden administration can’t find the First Amendment to
our Constitution. More likely, it can find it but chooses to ignore it.
We filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the U.S.
Department of Justice and other federal agencies for communications between
the agencies and Facebook and Twitter regarding the government’s
involvement in content moderation and censorship on the social media
platforms.
We filed a lawsuit against the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) (Judicial Watch v. U.S.
Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (No. 1:23-cv-01161)) after the FBI failed to respond
to a November 2, 2022, FOIA request for:
All records related to the use of Facebook’s Content Request
Government Reporting System by any official, employee, or contract employee
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This request includes, but is not
limited to, the following:
All entries entered into the system by any
official or employee.
All records depicting the number of FBI
employees with access to the system and their positions with the
Bureau.
All policies, regulations, guidelines, or
similar records related to the use of the system.
All related records of communication between
any official or employee of the FBI and any officer, employee, or
representative of Meta, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.)
All related records of communication between
any official or employee of the FBI and any official or employee of any
other branch, department, agency, or office of the Federal
government.
The lawsuit includes November 2, 2022, FOIA requests from us to the DOJ
National Security Division, and DHS component Cybersecurity and Information
Security Agency.
The lawsuit cites an October 31, 2022, report by The
Intercept that details DHS involvement in an “expansive
effort” to “influence tech platforms.”
“Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S.
government has used its power to try to shape online discourse,” the
report says.
The Intercept report states: “There is also a formalized process
for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram
and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook
portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to
use.”
We also filed a lawsuit against the DOJ, DHS, and Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (ODNI) after the FBI failed to respond to a December
14, 2022, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S.
Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01163)) for:
All records regarding any meeting between any official or employee of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation and any of the following Twitter
employees between June 1, 2020 and the present:
Yoel Roth
Vijaya Gadde
Jim Baker
The request includes, but is not limited to, all related agenda, notes,
summaries, reports, transcripts, and similar records created in preparation
for, during, or pursuant to the meeting.
All records of communication between any
official or employee f the Federal Bureau of Investigation and any of the
following Twitter employees between June 1, 2020 and the present:
Yoel Roth
Vijaya Gadde
Jim Baker
All records of communication between any official or employee of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and any official or employee of any other
branch, department, agency, or office of the U.S. government regarding the
meetings or communications described in parts one and two of this
request between June 1, 2020 and the present.
We also sent December 14, 2022, FOIA requests to DHS and ODNI.
Roth, Gadde, and Baker were prominent in internal discussions at Twitter
about censoring the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story, journalist
Matt Taibbi revealed on December 2, 2022 in the first release of the “Twitter Files.”
The Biden administration’s ongoing censorship schemes are a clear and
present danger to the First Amendment. It is no surprise these Biden
agencies would hide documents that could further expose their
lawlessness.
We have been quite busy litigating First Amendment issues.
In June 2023, we sued DHS for all
records of communications tied to the Election Integrity Partnership. Based
on representations from the EIP (see here and here),
the federal government, social media companies, the EIP, the Center for
Internet Security (a non-profit organization funded partly by DHS and the
Defense Department) and numerous other leftist groups communicated
privately via the Jira software
platform developed by Atlassian.
In February 2023, we sued the U.S.
Department Homeland Security (DHS) for records showing cooperation between
the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and social media
platforms to censor and suppress free speech.
In January 2023 we sued the DOJ for records of communications between
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and social media sites regarding
foreign influence in elections, as well as the Hunter Biden laptop
story.
In September 2022, we sued the Secretary of State of the State of
California for having YouTube censor a Judicial Watch election integrity
video.
In May 2022, YouTube censored our video about Biden corruption and election
integrity issues in the 2020 election. The video,
titled “Impeach? Biden Corruption Threatens National Security,” was
falsely determined to be “election misinformation” and removed by
YouTube, and Judicial Watch’s YouTube account was suspended for a week.
The video featured an interview of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Judicial Watch continues to post its
video content on its Rumble channel (https://rumble.com/vz7aof-fitton-impeach-biden-corruption-threatens-national-security.html).
In July 2021, we uncovered records from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), which revealed that Facebook coordinated
closely with the CDC to control the COVID narrative and
“misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in free advertising given
to the CDC by social media companies.
In May 2021, we revealed documents showing that Iowa state
officials pressured social media companies Twitter and Facebook to censor
posts about the 2020 election.
And in April 2021, we published documents revealing how California
state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google
(YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election.
This mass censorship is a clear and present danger to the First Amendment,
so you can be sure Judicial Watch will keep on pushing hard to protect your
rights.
Biden Agency Abruptly Replaces Federal Air Marshal Director—Fourth
Time in as Many Years
The Biden administration is incompetent at securing our safety in many
ways. One is its mishandling of the security air marshal program, as our
Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
The Biden administration has abruptly—and quietly—replaced the
scandal-plagued director of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), marking
the fourth time in around as many years that the agency gets a new leader.
Such frequent turnover at the top illustrates the instability that has
prevailed at FAMS, which operates under the beleaguered Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), created after 9/11 to prevent another
terrorist attack. Both function under the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) and have been rocked by controversy and mismanagement that has left
the nation vulnerable from a security standpoint, according to multiple DHS
sources interviewed by Judicial Watch.
The latest FAMS director to get ousted,
Tirrell Stevenson, has been quietly replaced on an “acting” basis by
Brian C. Belcher, according to an agency memo dispersed to staff a few days
ago. Publicly, the move is being handled by simply eliminating
Stevenson’s biography and photo on the TSA Leadership and
Organization
page and replacing it with
Belcher’s with no further explanation. FAMS sources provided Judicial
Watch with the memo informing staff that as of August 14 Belcher, a FAMS
deputy executive assistant, “assumed the duties of Acting Executive
Assistant Administrator (EAA)/Director for LE/FAMS.” The move was sudden,
according to FAMS sources. In his short tenure—a little over a year—as
FAMS director, Stevenson was reportedly embroiled in widespread wrongdoing,
waste, fraud and abuse and many inside the agency have called on Congress
to intervene. Stevenson’s transgressions include misusing government
resources by deploying FAMS to the southern border, greatly compromising
the security of the nation’s aviation system. Stevenson also removed air
marshals from missions to send them to military bases for Afghan
refugees.
Judicial Watch has reported extensively on
the lapses, including the controversial deployments of his uniquely skilled
law enforcement officers to the Mexican border to perform duties unrelated to transportation,
such as welfare checks, hospital watch and chauffeuring illegal immigrants.
Keep in mind that air marshals are highly trained aviation security
specialists charged with protecting commercial passenger flights by
deterring and countering the risk of terrorist activity. The Air Marshal
National Council, which represents thousands of FAMS nationwide, has
accused Stevenson and TSA Administrator David Pekoske of violating federal
law and overstepping their authority for assigning the air marshals to
assist the U.S. Border Patrol with the migrant crisis. Air marshals
interviewed by Judicial Watch expressed outrage that they were being pulled
from their critical inflight security duties to assist with the mayhem
created by the Biden administration’s failed immigration
policies.
Shortly after the Mexican border
deployments, which sent 150-200 FAM monthly to the region, high-level DHS
sources disclosed that Al Qaeda was planning attacks in the U.S. involving
planes. An intelligence alert obtained by Judicial Watch warned that “Al-Qaeda says
upcoming attacks on US, possibly involving planes, will use new techniques
and tactics.” Hours after learning about the Al Qaeda threat, the Air
Marshal National Council fired off a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas as well as Pekoske and Stevenson reminding them that deploying
FAMS to the southern border to perform humanitarian work is reckless and
putting the nation at extreme risk. “We are once again requesting you
immediately stop these dangerous and unnecessary deployments and let our
FAMS do what the American taxpayers pay them to do, protect and defend our
transportation system,” the letter read.
Removing yet another seemingly inept
director is not going to improve the embedded problems at FAMS, many inside
the agency maintain. The solution lies with Congress, says the Air Marshal
National Council, which is pushing legislation it claims will help reform
the agency in desperate need of new leadership. The measure is known as the
Federal Air Marshal Service Reform and Reorganization Act and it would make
FAMS a specialty unit within DHS’s premier law enforcement agency,
Homeland Security Investigations (HIS). Getting rid of Stevenson may be a
step in the right direction, but it will not be enough to turn this
critical agency around, according to Homeland Security sources interviewed
by Judicial Watch. “Director Stevenson is one of several prior Air
Marshal Directors to be involved in scandals,” said Air Marshal National
Council President David Londo. “It’s time for Congress to enact the
Federal Air Marshal Reform and Reorganization Act.”
Soros-Funded Initiative at Public University Trains Social Justice
Reporters
Billionaire and leftist George Soros continues to have significant
influence through his significant charitable and political giving. Our
Corruption Chronicles blog connects the dots on how
he is influencing the next generation of journalists:
As if the mainstream media were not leftist enough, a nationally ranked
public university has launched a race-focused journalism center that trains
future reporters to abandon objectivity for social justice in news
coverage. It is called the Solidarity Journalism
Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin and leftwing
billionaire George Soros is among those funding it. The new enterprise is
part of the school’s Center for Media Engagement and it aims to help
journalists, journalism educators, and journalism students improve coverage
of marginalized communities. “Solidarity in journalism means that
journalists stand for basic human dignity and against suffering, and is
practiced through newsworthiness judgments, sourcing, and framing that
center the lived experiences of people subjected to unjust conditions,”
according to the university’s Center for Media
Engagement website.
The professor who founded the Solidarity
Journalism Initiative, Anita Varma, does not even pretend that the media
should be objective like some well-known news outlets falsely claim to be.
She asserts that “solidarity eclipses objectivity as journalism’s dominant
ideal” and her goal is to educate the
next generation of reporters in this ultra-leftist concept by, among other
things, training them to frame articles in solidarity towards those
considered to be marginalized. “Solidarity for social justice moves
journalism in a better direction,” according to Varma, who claims
objectivity as an aspirational ideal encourages journalists to avoid
addressing what matters. “In journalism, solidarity takes the form of
including the perspectives of communities who have long been shut out of
representations of injustices affecting their own lives,” the center’s
founder says. “Most importantly, solidarity in journalistic practice
connects the dots to reveal the ways that social injustice binds people
from being able to simply choose to improve their conditions.”
Future reporters at the public
university’s journalism center are taught that a story is “newsworthy
if it involves a community whose basic humanity is being disrespected or
denied.” This includes communities experiencing exclusion, systemic
violence or disenfranchisement. As an example, the journalism center writes
in its Solidarity Reporting Guide that if a group lacks basic safety, shelter,
healthcare or food, there is likely a solidarity story to report. Future
reporters at UT Austin will also learn to refrain from using systemically
offensive terms such as “inmate” or “convict” which are
significantly different from referring to a person who is incarcerated.
“Reporting in solidarity means paying attention to how people
self-identify, the significance of the labels your story uses, and the
norms in the community you’re covering,” according to the reporting
guide. “Explaining word choices can be a useful and important sidebar in
many solidarity stories.”
The curriculum promotes a specific formula involving the
criteria to meet newsworthy decisions in solidarity. They include
intragroup solidarity, which is defined as communities taking care of
themselves and therefore portraying power in the community affected by
social injustice, challenging dominant narratives; moral solidarity in
which inhumane conditions that marginalized people cannot change or remedy
on their own; civic solidarity in which people are taking action to address
injustice that affects their neighbors; political solidarity where people
are calling for dismantling structures that uphold social injustice, such
as capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. “Solidarity
stories are rare compared to stories about politicians or celebrities,
which may be intriguing for editors who are looking for distinctive
angles,” according to the document outlining the criteria.
This is the type of leftwing initiative that
typically gets money from Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF). Judicial
Watch has reported extensively on Soros’ multi-billion-dollar radical
globalist agenda which domestically promotes an open border with Mexico,
fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist black separationist
organizations, financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups
involved in the Ferguson Missouri riots, weakening the integrity of the
nation’s electoral systems, opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and
eroding 2nd Amendment protections. A few years ago Judicial Watch published
an investigative report on
the financial and staffing nexus between the deeply OSF and the U.S.
government.
Until next week,
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