More Censorship Exposed!



[INSIDE JW]

DC Removing 103,000 Ineligible Names from Voter Rolls in Response to
Judicial Watch

[[link removed]]
We’ve achieved another significant victory in our fight to clean
up the nation’s voter rolls – this time in our nation’s capital.

We sent notice letters
[[link removed]]
to election officials in the District of Columbia, California, and
Illinois, notifying them of evident violations of the National Voter
Registration Act
[[link removed])
of 1993, based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their
registration rolls.

The letters point out that these jurisdictions publicly reported
removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key
provision of the NVRA. The letters threaten federal lawsuits unless
the violations are corrected in a timely fashion.

In response to our inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that
they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated
names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and
designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”

The NVRA requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a
reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the
names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence. The
law requires registrations to be canceled when voters fail to respond
to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the next two
general federal elections. In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed that
such removals are mandatory (_Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Inst_
[[link removed]].,
[[link removed]]
138 S.
Ct. 1833, 1841-42 (2018)).

Federal law directs the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to submit
a report to Congress every second year assessing how states are
complying with the NVRA. Federal regulations require states to provide
data to the EAC for use in this report. On June 29, 2023, the EAC
posted data from the most recent surveys it sent to the states and the
District of Columbia for the reporting period from November 2020
through November 2022.

Based on the data contained in this report, we contacted a number of
states and Washington, DC, to inquire about their compliance with
federal law and to request public records. After processing the
responses to these communications, Judicial Watch sent notice of
violation letters to Washington, DC, California, and Illinois,
detailing their non-compliance with the NVRA.

The notice letter
[[link removed]]
to the District of Columbia, sent on behalf of Judicial Watch and the
District of Columbia Republican Party, reports:

> DC reported removing _zero _voter registrations in the last
> _two-year_ reporting period for failing to respond to an address
> confirmation notice and failing to vote for two consecutive general
> federal elections.

* DC flatly admitted in correspondence with Judicial
Watch that it was failing to remove registrations as required by the
NVRA, citing data conversion, staffing, and other issues.
* DC’s total registration rate—its total number of
registrations divided by the most recent census estimates of its
citizen voting-age population—is greater than 131%.

The notice letter
[[link removed]]
to California, sent on behalf of Judicial Watch and the Libertarian
Party of California, states:

* California’s survey responses to the EAC show that 27
California counties reported removing five or fewer—and, in most of
those counties, zero—voter registrations in the last two-year period
for failing to respond to an address confirmation notice and failing
to vote in two consecutive general federal elections.
* Another 19 California counties simply did not report
any data about such removals.
* Twenty-one California counties had more voter
registrations than citizens over the age of 18, based on the most
recent census estimates.

In all, 46 California counties reported removing only a handful, or
no registrations under the NVRA’s change of address rules, or else
failed to report any data at all. These 46 counties contain more than
14 million registered voters.

The notice letter
[[link removed]]
to Illinois, sent on behalf of Judicial Watch, Illinois resident and
voter Carol J. Davis and Illinois Family Action, states:

* In Illinois’ responses to the EAC’s survey, 23
Illinois counties reported removing fewer than 15—and, in almost
half of those counties, zero—voter registrations from November 2020
to November 2022 for failing to respond to an address confirmation
notice and failing to vote in two consecutive general federal
elections.
* Thirty-four Illinois jurisdictions simply did not
report any data about such removals.
* Fifteen Illinois jurisdictions have more voter
registrations than citizens of voting age.

In total, 57 Illinois counties either reported removing 15 or fewer
registrations or failed to report any data at all under the NVRA’s
change of address removal procedures. These 57 counties contain over
five million registered voters.

Last month, the District of Columbia admitted in correspondence
[[link removed]]
to us that it removed 65,544 inactive voters, will soon remove an
additional 37,962 inactive voters, and that it has designated another
73,522 inactive names for potential removal.

California provided some public records and promised a further,
substantive response. Illinois provided some public records and
promises a further, substantive response. Ultimately, however, if
Judicial Watch is not satisfied with the jurisdictions’ responses to
its notice letters, Judicial Watch plans to sue under the National
Voter Registration Act to ensure the jurisdictions take certain
reasonable steps to clean up their voter rolls as the law requires.

Dirty voter rolls increase the potential for voter fraud. As
Washington, DC’s, quick cleanup of tens of thousands of names in
response to us shows, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of
names on the voter rolls that should be removed by California and
Illinois. Indeed, our litigation resulted in the removal of four
million names from voter rolls in various states recently.”

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As
part of our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced voting
rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and
cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky,
among other achievements
[[link removed]].
Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads our election
law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil
Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting
rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements
in dozens of states.

In July 2023 we filed
[[link removed]]
an
_amicus curiae_ (friend of the court) brief
[[link removed]],
supporting the decision
[[link removed]]
of
the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down
Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s
voter registration list (_Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna
Bellows_
[[link removed]]
(No.
23-1361). According to a national study
[[link removed]]
conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration
rate was 101% of eligible voters.

In July 2023 we also settled
[[link removed]]
a
federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois
Conservative Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State
Board of Elections, and its director, which grants access to the
current centralized statewide list of registered voters for the state
for the past 15 elections.

In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled
[[link removed]]
with us and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258
ineligible registrations in response to communications from us. The
settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive
public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll
clean-up efforts for the next five years.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed
[[link removed]]
to settle a Judicial Watch NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed
to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement
requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter
roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed
[[link removed]]
the
removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year,
under the terms of a settlement agreement
[[link removed]]
in a federal lawsuit
[[link removed]]
we filed in 2017.

We settled
[[link removed]]
a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the
city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and
promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter
registration lists.

Kentucky
[[link removed]]
also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it
entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, we settled
[[link removed]]
a
voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its
counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive
registrations from its voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor
[[link removed]]
of our challenge to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme”
congressional districts gerrymander.
You can expect more federal lawsuits over the next few months as we
increase our legal pressure to protect our elections!

JUDICIAL WATCH QUESTIONS CANDIDATES AT THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL
DEBATE

I was pleased to represent you at the Republican presidential debate
aired on _NewsNation_
[[link removed]]
and Rumble on Wednesday, December 6, from the University of Alabama.

I presented two powerful questions through prerecorded video. Former
Amb. Nikki Haley, Gov Ron DeSantis, Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy, and former
Gov. Chris Christie participated in the debate.

Moderators were_ _Elizabeth Vargas
[[link removed]],
the Peabody
award-winning anchor of _NewsNation’s _“Elizabeth Vargas Reports
[[link removed]
Megyn Kelly
[[link removed]],
host of “The Megyn Kelly Show”_ _on
SiriusXM and Eliana Johnson
[[link removed]],
editor-in-chief of
_The Washington Free Beacon_.

You can watch my portion of the debate here
[[link removed]].
My first question was directed to
Christie, the second to DeSantis.

Here is a transcript.

> FITTON:
>
> President Trump and many of his supporters claim federal law
> enforcement agencies have abused his civil rights for the last eight
> years by, among other things, spying on him and now prosecuting him
> while having treated Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden with kid gloves.
>
> A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans think more highly of the
> U.S. Postal Service than they do the FBI or Justice Department.
>
> What would you do as president to restore the faith of the American
> people in these agencies?

> CHRISTIE:
>
> Well, first off, I'm the only person on this stage who's actually
> done a job in the Department of Justice.
>
> I was the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey and the 5th largest office in
> this country appointed by President Bush on September 10th, 2001.
>
> And it was an extraordinary time in this country to be on the front
> lines of fighting the greatest attack against our country since
> Pearl Harbor.
>
> And I’m proud of the seven years I spent in the Justice
> Department.
>
> And one of the reasons I am is because I had an Attorney General
> when I came in, named John Ashcroft. And John Ashcroft stood up and
> told each and every one of us, our job was to do one thing, to make
> sure justice was done every day, regardless of partisanship,
> regardless of gender or race or any other consideration.
>
> And that's what we did for seven years, and at a time when our
> country was at its greatest moment of danger. In the last 40 years,
> we did exactly that. There was not another domestic terrorist attack
> on this soil.
>
> So what I would do as president, having had that experience, and the
> only one who's had that experience, is to pick an attorney general
> who will absolutely do the same thing that John Ashcroft did. To
> pick U.S. attorneys who will only care about making sure that
> justice is done without regard to any other consideration but the
> facts that are presented and whether someone is guilty beyond a
> reasonable doubt and the government can prove it.
>
> We have had attorneys general like Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch and
> Jeff Sessions and now our current attorney general who have not met
> that standard.
>
> And the only way you restore people's faith in the justice system is
> to put someone like that in charge of the Justice Department and
> then as president to get the hell out of the way on anything that
> involves criminal investigations. If a president's involved in
> trying to do something and put their thumb on the scales Donald
> Trump says he will do, that makes people much less likely to believe
> our justice system can be fair.

> FITTON:
>
> Many Republicans are concerned about the legitimacy of elections.
>
> A federal judge just ruled that Pennsylvania must count on dated
> mail in ballots.
>
> And unlike Alabama, many states still don't require any
> identification to vote.
>
> What should states do now to increase election integrity and voter
> confidence for the 2024 election?

> DESANTIS:
>
> Well, Tom, thanks for the question. Thanks for you guys doing
> Judicial Watch. It's really, really important. There's a lot of
> corruption in this government. You guys are doing a great job.
>
> What you should do for election integrity is do what we did in
> Florida 20 years ago.
>
> Florida and elections were a joke. Everybody would laugh at it.
>
> I came in, I removed a couple supervisors from South Florida. We
> require voter ID. Universal No Zuckerbucks, no mass mail balloting
> and no ballot harvesting.
>
> We even have an agency that prosecutes people for violating election
> laws. The result of that, in both 2020 and 2022, we counted millions
> and millions of votes on election night, produced the results. It
> was transparent and everybody was happy.
>
> That is not happening throughout this country. But let me tell you
> this, as the nominee, I think it's important. Not every state where
> we need it to be.
>
> There is ballot harvesting in places like Nevada, All these places I
> am not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back.
>
> I'm going to have organizations in all the swing states.
>
> If they're harvesting, we're harvesting. If there's Zuckerbucks,
> we're Zuckerbucks. We are going to exploit whatever the rules are. I
> favor changing the rules to be like Florida and some of the other
> states that have done a good job. But until then, we have to do
> that.
>
> And then just on the Justice Department and FBI I mean, I remember
> being, you know, in Iraq, working with the FBI on the ground and
> being, and then I was a special assistant.
>
> I used to have such a high regard for these agencies. What they did
> to Donald Trump with the Russia collusion was one of the biggest
> abuses of power in the history of our country.
>
> These agencies need to be cleaned out. With me, you'll have a new
> FBI director on day one. We're going to clear out the DOJ, the IRS,
> all these places. Buckle your seatbelts. There's going to be a new
> sheriff in town.
>
> My Judicial Watch questions educated countless Americans and smashed
> the media monopoly on candidate questions at presidential debates.
> Let’s hope it is the beginning of a new discussion about these
> important issues in the months ahead!

JUDICIAL WATCH TAXPAYER LAWSUIT OVER RACIALLY DISCRIMINATORY
MINNEAPOLIS TEACHERS’ CONTRACT TO PROCEED

In another major victory for Judicial Watch, the Minnesota Court of
Appeals reversed a trial court’s ruling and is allowing our historic
lawsuit filed on behalf of a Minneapolis taxpayer over a teachers’
contract that provides discriminatory job protections to certain
racial minorities to proceed (_Clapp v. Cox et al._
[[link removed]
_(No. 27-CV-22-12454)).

Hennepin County District Court had dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that
our taxpayer client lacked standing and that her claims were not ripe.
We appealed and, on December 4, the Minnesota Court of Appeals
overturned the lower court’s decision, ruling that our client does
have standing as a taxpayer who helps fund Minneapolis Public Schools
through property taxes and her claims are ripe because the lawsuit
alleges an actual future controversy using public funds.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit
[[link removed]]
in August of 2022 against the superintendent of the Minneapolis Public
Schools, the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), and the Minneapolis
Board of Education for violating the Equal Protection Guarantee of the
Minnesota Constitution.

The controversial contract was agreed to in March 2022 to end a 14-day
teacher strike. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers ratified the
contract shortly after the agreement was reached. The Minneapolis
Board of Education ratified it in May of this year.
Our lawsuit states:

> Among other things, the contract provides preferences, protections,
> and privileges for MPS teachers of certain races and ethnicities
> under a section entitled “ARTICLE 15. PROTECTIONS FOR EDUCATORS OF
> COLOR.” There is no similar provision covering educators who are
> not “of color.”
>
> Under the contract, teachers of color are exempt from Defendant
> MPS’s seniority-based layoffs and reassignments, which means, when
> layoffs or reassignments occur, the next senior teacher who is not
> “of color” would be laid off or reassigned. In addition, the
> contract mandates that Defendants reinstate teachers of color over
> more senior teachers who are not “of color.”
>
> Upon information and belief, prior to the contract, teachers were
> laid off or reassigned in order of seniority, with the least senior
> teachers laid off or reassigned first, without regard to race or
> ethnicity. Similarly, teachers were reinstated in order of
> seniority, with the more senior teachers reinstated first, without
> regard to race or ethnicity.

***

> Article 15’s preferences, protections, and privileges for certain
> public-school teachers on the basis of race and ethnicity violates
> Minnesota’s Equal Protection Guarantee, which states that “no
> member of this state shall be disenfranchised or deprived of any of
> the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by
> the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.” Minn. Const.
> art. 1, § 2. The Equal Protection Guarantee is analyzed under the
> same principles and mandate as the Equal Protection Clause of the
> U.S. Constitution.
In its December 4 ruling, the Minnesota Court of Appeals states:

> [The] complaint states that, before the adoption of Article 15,
> “teachers were laid off or reassigned in order of seniority . . .
> , without regard to race or ethnicity.” Teachers were also
> “reinstated in order of seniority, with the more senior teachers
> reinstated first, without regard to race or ethnicity.” But the
> complaint alleges that Article 15 of the March 2022 agreement
> altered this practice, such that “teachers of color are exempt
> from [the] seniority-based layoffs and reassignments, which means,
> when layoffs or reassignments occur, the next senior teacher who is
> not ‘of color’ would be laid off or reassigned.” Article 15
> states:
>
> Starting with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing a
> teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among
> licensed teachers in the site, the [school district] shall excess
> the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an
> underrepresented population, for the reasons provided in Article
> 15.1.2.i.

***

> Reinstatement must be in the inverse order of placement on lay off.
> The [school district] shall prioritize the recall of a teacher who
> is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers
> in the [school district], per the definition provided in Article
> 15.1.2.i. To do this, the [school district] shall deprioritize the
> more senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented
> population, in order to recall a teacher who is a member of an
> underrepresented population among licensed teachers, for the reasons
> provided in Article 15.1.2.i.

> Article 15.1.2.i provides that the anticipated outcome of the policy
> is to:
>
> remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination by the [school
> district]. Past discrimination by the [school district]
> disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers
> in the [school district], as compared to the relevant labor market
> and the community, and resulted in a lack of diversity of teachers.
> Language which refers to this Article will no longer be in effect
> once the teachers in the [school district] reflect the diversity of
> the labor market and the community served by the [school district].

> The complaint alleges that MPS will lay off or reassign
> approximately 220 teachers between 2022 and 2027.
>
> According to [the] complaint, Article 15 violates equal protection
> under the state constitution because it “provides preferences,
> protections, and privileges for MPS teachers of certain races and
> ethnicities” for layoffs and recalls. The complaint further
> asserts that Article 15 requires MPS to spend public money to
> implement this allegedly unlawful practice.
The lawsuit will go back to Hennepin County District Court for
further proceedings.

The lawsuit asks the court to enter a judgment declaring all actions
taken to implement the racial and ethnic preference provisions of
Article 15 of the contract to be illegal. The lawsuit also asks that
the court declare illegal the use of any taxpayer dollars to implement
these provisions of the contract and that MPS be prohibited from
taking any actions to implement these racial and ethnic provisions.

This is a big victory for taxpayers who are outraged that
Minneapolis’ school system would engage in blatant racial
discrimination in employing teachers. We will move with all due speed
to gather evidence in discovery. This lawsuit aims to shut down this
extreme leftist attack on the bedrock constitutional principle that no
one can be denied equal treatment under the law on account of race.

We are being assisted in the lawsuit by Daniel N. Rosen of Rosen LLC
in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The City of Asheville, NC, in January 2022 settled
[[link removed]]
our federal
civil rights lawsuit after agreeing to remove all racially
discriminatory provisions in a city-funded scholarship program.
Additionally, the city also agreed to remove racially discriminatory
eligibility provisions in a related program that provides grants to
educators.

In May 2022, we won a court battle
[[link removed]]
against California’s gender quota law for corporate boards. The
verdict came after a 28-day trial. The verdict followed a similar
ruling
[[link removed]]
in our favor in April finding California’s diversity mandate for
corporate boards unconstitutional.

MORE EVIDENCE OF GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP DURING 2020 ELECTION

We received 44 pages
[[link removed]]
of records in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit from the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that show a close
collaboration between DHS’s Cybersecurity and Information Security
Agency (CISA) and the leftist Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to
engage in “real-time narrative tracking” on all major social media
platforms in the days leading up to the 2020 election.

The records discuss “takedowns” of social media posts and the
avoidance of creating public records subject to FOIA.

These records show the lengths to which a ‘Homeland Security’ Deep
State agency went in its effort to censor and suppress Americans
during and after the 2020 election. That it took a federal lawsuit to
extract these disturbing records should raise additional worries about
what else this Biden administration is up to.

The records also show that the EIP, which was initially called the
Election Misinformation Partnership in the days leading up to the
November 3, 2020, election, tasked staffers with monitoring online
election content 24 hours a day with a priority being “disinfo that
is going viral.”

We obtained the records thanks to our FOIA lawsuit
[[link removed]]
after DHS
failed to respond to our October 5, 2022, request (_Judicial Watch v.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security_
[[link removed]
_(No. 1:22-cv-03560)). We are asking for:

* All records of communication between the CISA and the EIP. This
includes all “tickets” or notifications to the Partnership
regarding election-related disinformation on any social media
platform.
* All records regarding the July 9, 2020, meeting between DHS
officials and representatives of the EIP.

* All records of communication between the CISA and the University of
Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and/or Stanford
University’s Internet Observatory regarding any of the following:

* The Election Integrity Partnership
* The 2020 U.S. election
* Online misinformation and disinformation
* Any social media platform

The Election Integrity Partnership
[[link removed]]
was created
[[link removed]]
in July 2020, just before the presidential election. According
[[link removed]]
to _Just the News_:

> The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford
> Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center
> for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic
> Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a
> concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like
> Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and
> State’s Global Engagement Center to file “tickets” requesting
> that online story links and social media posts be censored or
> flagged by Big Tech.
>
> Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common
> Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal
> agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A
> Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure
> Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.
The newly obtained records
[[link removed]]
include an undated PowerPoint presentation titled “Election
Misinformation Partnership.”

Several pages
[[link removed]]
in the presentation discuss “takedowns,” including:

> Example Flow 5: _Sourced from Platform _[formatting in original]
>
> Days after 11/03, Facebook notifies EMP of an impending takedown of
> a group of pages exhibiting coordinated inauthentic behavior. Since
> the election, these pages have consistently pushed a narrative
> encouraging Americans in key states to call for invalidation of
> election results. Facebook will take these pages down in one hour,
> and is already briefing relevant state and local election officials.

***

> Notes: Given that information is platform-verified, and Facebook has
> a direct relationship with local election officials, EMP's
> involvement can be smaller with the initial dump. EMP should follow
> up with election officials and the platform in case either
> stakeholder wants for further research.
The presentation discusses the avoidance of creating public records
[[link removed]]
subject to FOIA:

> Best way to collaborate
> What's the best way to collaborate?

* CISA can't create their own Slack channels, but can
participate in others'.

* Listservs are bad (public records requirements).

* Jira is fine.
* CISA has privacy concerns: can't monitor people's
individual accounts; ensure CISA doesn't participate in discussions or
notes concerning U.S. persons.

* Setup:

* SIO will have dedicated Slack, something like Jira or
Salesforce (will ask for donation), separate from Stanford and
destroyed once over.
* We'll intake info by email, but direct people to
private forms SIO and CISA have distributed.
* Info from there will go into queue -> be triaged,
assigned SLA.

A slide in the presentation titled “Stanford Internet Observatory
Calendar” details its monitoring plan
[[link removed]
“November: Full Time, Election: 24/7 monitoring in shifts.
Heightened monitoring during voting times. Emphasis on voter
suppression tactics. Election November 3, 2020. December: Full Time,
Post-Election: Full time monitoring continues, but not 24/7. Emphasis
on narratives around election legitimacy (EX: mail in ballot
theories). Release brief post-mortem.”

A portion of the presentation labeled “Summarized notes
[[link removed]
states:

> Overview: CISA has limited capabilities to identify, track disinfo
> narratives + attempts to undermine confidence in elections

* SIO does = good partnership

* Major goal: prevent a crisis of confidence in 2020
elections

* E.g., where Russia doesn't change any votes (or changes
just a few), but claims they changed many more and hysteria is blown
out of proportion

> Scope: Keep scope narrow: focus on election-related disinfo that has
> the potential to impact the public's voting patterns
>
> Partnerships and Relationships SIO [Stanford Internet Observatory]
> would be the coordinators, working w/ Graphika
[[link removed]
>
[[link removed]]],
DFRLab [Digital Forensic Research Lab
>
[[link removed]]],
> and [redacted’s] team at UW [University of Washington
>
[[link removed]]].

* Mutual trust is key: don't want to need NDAs, legal red
tape.

* Need to build out workflow management system:
JIRA/Slack/other communications channels, shared processes and
definitions, etc.

* [Redacted] envisions Tier 1 and Tier 2 partners:

* Tier 1 is intake (of tips, disinfo reports, etc.):
consisting of people either digging for narratives, or processing info
received from other partners.

* Think students, election officials, etc. who are looking for
disinfo.
* Workflow: check that info against protocols, do some initial data
aggregation, triage it into the workflow management system.

* Tier 2 is the 4 orgs [redacted] I team at Stanford, Graphika, etc.

* Workflow: take stuff off the workflow management queue, process
it.
* Need to sketch that out.
* SLA for different times of the calendar based on the level of
severity obtained by triage.
* E.g., a report from the general public will have less priority
than a report from an on-the-ground election official; a report for
disinfo that is not popular will have less priority than disinfo that
is going viral.
* General public = more turnaround time, but election officials =
less turnaround time: need to get back to them fast.

* SIO has good relationship w/ platforms who already care.

* See the Secondary Infektion (Russian disinfo op) report.

* Think through all the platforms that might have been useful there
(e.g., communicating with Twitter at stage x would have stopped the
spread).

* Meanwhile, CISA has strong relationships w/ election officials.

* CISA is happy to introduce SIO to them, do outreach.
* Just keep CISA in the info-sharing pipeline.

***

> CISA’s concern starts 45 days out operationally, when
> military/overseas voters start mailing.

* Start hunting, messaging at beginning of September.

* Lower SLA (higher turnaround time/less priority), but
start looking for search terms and taking tips.

* The days leading up to/right after Election Day will be
much more intense.
* It'll be an effective SOC, maybe a physical one, but in
a much larger space.

A July 10, 2020, email
[[link removed]]
sent from a redacted sender to CISA officials Allison Snell, Brian
Scully, Matthew Masterson, Geoffrey Hale, and several other persons
whose names are redacted, states:

> July will be big to get things going on both the CISA and SIO front,
> so we will be sure to keep open lines of communication. Thank you
> again for everyone's help in getting this going, looking forward to
> getting to work here!
>
> Action Items:
>
> CISA (@ who I will be reaching out to).

* El-ISAC
[[link removed]]
connection: introduction to (redacted) heading social media reporting
(@Masterson, Matthew)
* CFI plug-in: discussions how to best integrate reporting into
CISA/CFI's ops center and send tips back to SIO (@Scully, Brian).
* Legal: get an initial proposal for OCC (@ Snel, Allison).”

The presentation includes a slide regarding the Stanford Internet
Observatory
[[link removed]]
(SIO):

> The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) is a cross-disciplinary
> program of research, teaching, and policy engagement for the study
> and abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on
> social media.
>
> Key capabilities:

* Experienced disinformation research team of analytical and
technical talent.
* Real-time narrative tracking capabilities for all major platforms
(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, potential for TikTok).
* Additional API or historical access to ‘fringe’ platforms
(Gab, Parler, 4Chan).
* Established and collaborative node within the third-party
misinformation research ecosystem.”

The presentation gives an example
[[link removed]]
of a scenario the CISA-EIP collaborators could be faced with:

> Example Flow 3: _Stickier_ [formatting in original]
>
> #BidenStoleMichigan is trending on Twitter on election day. Groups
> of seemingly-local accounts tweet @MISecofState to demand the
> Michigan election results be declared invalid, citing a fresh Epoch
> Times article alleging shady connections between Michigan's SoS,
> Bill Gates, and Joe Biden. Their tweets are relatively few, but see
> high engagement shortly after posting and spread around
> right-leaning Twitter. Researchers trace the origin of the article
> to posts on 4chan and Parler encouraging Michiganders to confront
> @MlSecOfState on Twitter over the story and calling for the Michigan
> results to be declared invalid.

***

> Notes: This scenario has a geographical component, but seems
> targeted to ideological groups online. While particular election
> officials are targeted, the political nature of the content makes
> counter-messaging difficult. A government-only response would be
> even stickier however.
In a June 26, 2023 report
[[link removed]],
the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the
Weaponization of the Federal Government writes about CISA:

> Founded in 2018, CISA was originally intended to be an ancillary
> agency designed to protect “critical infrastructure” and guard
> against cybersecurity threats. In the years since its creation,
> however, CISA metastasized into the nerve center of the federal
> government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on
> social media. By 2020, CISA routinely reported social media posts
> that allegedly spread “disinformation” to social media
> platforms. By 2021, CISA had a formal “Mis-, Dis-, and
> Malinformation” (MDM) team. In 2022 and 2023, in response to
> growing public and private criticism of CISA’s unconstitutional
> behavior, CISA attempted to camouflage its activities, duplicitously
> claiming it serves a purely “informational” role.
Separately, in August 2023, we filed two FOIA lawsuits
[[link removed]]
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.

In June 2023, we sued
[[link removed]]
DHS for
all records of communications tied to the Election Integrity
Partnership. Based on representations from the EIP (see here
[[link removed]]
and here
[[link removed]]),
the federal
government, social media companies, the EIP, the Center for Internet
Security
[[link removed]]
(a non-profit
organization funded partly by DHS and the Defense Department
[[link removed]])
and numerous other leftist groups communicated privately via the Jira
[[link removed]]
software platform developed by Atlassian.

In February 2023, we sued
[[link removed]]
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
[[link removed]]
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
[[link removed]]
the
Secretary of State of the State of California for having YouTube
censor a Judicial Watch election integrity video.

In May 2022, YouTube censored a Judicial Watch video about Biden
corruption and election integrity issues in the 2020 election. The
video
[[link removed]],
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. Judicial Watch continues to post its video
[[link removed]]
content on its Rumble channel
([link removed]).

In July 2021, we uncovered
[[link removed]]
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
[[link removed]]
documents
showing that Iowa state officials pressured social media companies
Twitter and Facebook to censor posts about the 2020 election.

In April 2021, we published
[[link removed]]
documents
revealing how California state officials pressured social media
companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about
the 2020 election.

More is coming on this important topic, so stay tuned!

FBI DIRECTOR CONCERNED ABOUT TERRORISTS’ ABILITY TO EXPLOIT
SOUTHWEST BORDER

The Biden administration was forced to admit the obvious national
security threat caused by Joe Biden’s border crisis. Our _Corruption
Chronicles_ blog reports
[[link removed]


> Foreign terrorist organizations can exploit the southwest border as
> the United States faces the highest risk of an attack following the
> Hamas onslaught in Israel, according to Federal Bureau of
> Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray. The FBI chief
> revealed that terrorist threats to the nation have skyrocketed since
> October during testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary
> Committee. In his prepared statement Wray failed to include the dire
> security threats created by the Biden administration’s disastrous
> open border policies. The crucial information only surfaced and
> became part of the official record because a Republican lawmaker
> grilled Wray about it.
>
> The hearing, called “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of
> Investigation
>
[[link removed]
> touched on the agency’s mission to tackle grave threats and ensure
> the safety and security of communities throughout the nation.
> Wray’s prepared statement
>
[[link removed]]
>
[[link removed]
> what the FBI is doing to address the threats while adhering to the
> highest of standards. “As we saw in early October with the
> devastating attack in Israel, terrorist actors are still very intent
> on using violence and brutality to spread their ideologies,” Wray
> told the committee. “Protecting the American people from terrorism
> remains the FBI’s number one priority. The threat from terrorism
> is as persistent and complex as ever. We are in an environment where
> the threats from international terrorism, domestic terrorism, and
> state-sponsored terrorism are all simultaneously elevated.” The
> FBI director identified “lone actors or small cells of individuals
> who typically radicalize to violence online” as the greatest
> terrorism threat to the homeland.
>
> He mentioned the FBI’s concern about the Taliban takeover of
> Afghanistan and the intent of groups such as ISIS and al-Qa’ida to
> carry out or inspire large-scale attacks in the U.S. Wray also spoke
> about cybercriminal syndicates that compromise our networks and
> foreign intelligence threats such as China, Russia and Iran, which
> are more aggressive and capable than ever. Violent crimes and gang
> activities—including robbery, human trafficking, drug and gun
> trafficking, fraud, extortion and prostitution rings—also made the
> list as did Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) characterized by
> families that exert influence over criminal activities in
> neighborhoods, cities or states. The FBI chief also delved into
> crimes against children, revealing that every year thousands of kids
> are kidnapped, violently attacked, sexually abused or trafficked. He
> closed by asking Congress to reauthorize a section of the Foreign
> Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created after 9/11 that allows
> the U.S. government to collect the communications of foreigners
> outside the country without a warrant. Wray thanked the committee
> and took questions.
>
> If not for the question-and-answer portion of the hearing the FBI
> director would have completely omitted the illegal immigration
> crisis along the southwest border as a security threat to the
> country. The information surfaced during an exchange
>
[[link removed]]
> with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a ranking member of the
> Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham said: “One of my concerns is
> after [the withdrawal from] Afghanistan, we put international
> terrorism on steroids. Are you concerned that international
> terrorism threats to the homeland are rising as the [southern]
> border continues to be broken?” Wray responded: “I am concerned
> that we are in… a heightened threat environment from foreign
> terrorist organizations for a whole host of reasons and obviously
> their ability to exploit any port of entry, including our southwest
> border… We have seen an increase in so-called KSTs, ‘known or
> suspected terrorists’, attempting to cross over the last five
> years.” Wray added that the “threat level has gone to a whole
> other level since October 7.”

Until next week,






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