Fani Willis Hides Communications with January 6 Committee and Jack Smith

Notorious Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis refused to release any non-public documents in response to a court order finding her in default for failing to respond to our lawsuit seeking her communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee.

Willis’ “Open Records Department” denied any records about Jack Smith existed and cited a series of legal exemptions to justify the withholding of communications with the January 6 Committee. The Willis office did release one, already public, letter to January 6 Committee Chairman Benny Thompson.

We filed our March 2024 lawsuit in the Superior Court of Fulton County, GA, after Willis and the county denied having any records responsive to an August 2023 Georgia Open Records Act request for communications with the Special Counsel’s office and/or the January 6 Committee (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)).

In our lawsuit we stated that Willis’ “representation about not having records responsive to the request is likely false.” We referred to a December 5, 2023, letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to Willis that cites a December 2021 letter from Willis to then-House January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS). In that letter Willis requested assistance from the committee and offered to travel to DC.

In May 2024, we asked the court to declare a default judgment, noting that Willis was served with the lawsuit in March 2024 and had “not filed an answer,” which “was due 30 days after service.”
The court’s default judgment states: “The Court finds Defendant [Willis, in her official capacity] is in default and has been since 11 April 2024.” Further, Willis “never moved to open default on any basis (not even during the period when she could have opened default as a matter of right), she never paid costs, and she never offered up a meritorious defense.”

The court ordered Willis “to conduct a diligent search of her records for responsive materials within five business days of the entry of this Order. Within that same five day period, Defendant is ORDERED to provide Plaintiff with copies of all responsive records that are not legally exempted or excepted from disclosure.” [Emphasis in original] Willis’ office responded with zero non-public documents:

Members of the District Attorney's staff having conducted a search as directed by the Court, the Office provides the following response to Plaintiffs requests:

Regarding “[a]ll documents and communication sent to, received from, or relating to Special Counsel Jack Smith or any employees in his office,” a diligent search indicates that no such documents or communications exist.

Regarding "[a]ll documents and communication sent to or received from the United States House January 6th Committee or any of its employees," a diligent search indicates that any such documents and communications are "legally exempted or excepted from disclosure" under O.C.G.A. §§ 50-18-72(a)(4), 50-18-72(a)(41) and 50-18-72(a)(42). Per the direction of the Superior Court's Order, the Office informs the Plaintiff that the records are exempted/excepted from disclosure because they arose from the investigation, subsequent indictment, and prosecution in case number 23SC188947; are subject to attorney-client privilege; and are confidential work product. As a result, they are records in a pending, ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution.

Judicial Watch and a state court forced Fani Willis to confirm additional documents exist about her collusion with the partisan Pelosi January 6 Committee to get Trump. But Willis, citing legal exemptions for a prosecution that’s essentially dead in the water, now wants to hide these records from the American public. We plan to push back in court against this disingenuous secrecy.

We have several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits related to the prosecutorial abuse targeting Trump:

In February 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that is targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.

(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith ] was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Jack Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here.)

In January 2024, we filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor by District Attorney Fani Willis. Wade was hired to pursue unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes.

In October 2023, we sued the DOJ for records and communications between the Office of U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney’s office regarding requests/receipt of federal funding/assistance in the investigation of former President Trump and his 18 codefendants in the Fulton County indictment of August 14, 2023. To date, the DOJ is refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records, claiming that to do so would interfere with enforcement proceedings. Judicial Watch’s litigation challenging this is continuing.

Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023 we received the engagement letter showing New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Wray’s Resignation Is a Good First Step

FBI Director Christopher Wray’s announced resignation is a good first step to cleaning house at the FBI. Under Wray’s leadership, the FBI has become an enemy of transparency, the rule of law, constitutional government, and the civil rights of tens of millions of Americans. (Judicial Watch and I witnessed firsthand the corruption of Wray’s operation when FBI agents came to my home in what was obvious retaliation for our criticism and lawsuits exposing their abuses.)

The FBI is irredeemably corrupt. From sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in order to influence the 2020 election, the raid of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and the censorship of Americans, to the targeting of traditional Catholics, this FBI has been turned into the political police for partisan leftists. Accordingly, Wray should be subject to criminal investigation.

And, as sunlight is the best disinfectant, President Trump and his FBI Director nominee Kash Patel should open wide the FBI files on its abuses of power targeting Trump and countless other American citizens.

In the meantime, Judicial Watch will continue to investigate and sue the FBI for the truth in its role in the worst government corruption in American history.

In my new book Rights and Freedoms in Peril I detail a long chain of abuses officials and politicians have made against the American people and call readers to battle for “the soul and survival of America.”

We are perhaps the nation’s leading Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigant against the FBI on its corruption issues. For example:

• In October 2024,we sued the Justice Department for messages among top leaders of the FBI referencing social media posts of Special Agent Jeffrey Veltri, head of the Miami Field Office, which is investigating the September 15 assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

• In May 2024, we uncovered a recording of a phone message left by an FBI special agent for someone at the Secret Service in the context of the raid on President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

• In April 2024, Justice Department records showed that  the FBI opened a criminal investigation of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt after her killing and listed four “potential violations of federal law,” including felony rioting and civil disorder.

• In January 2023 we sued the DOJ for records of communications between the FBI and social media sites regarding foreign influence in elections, as well as the Hunter Biden laptop story.

• In November 2023, along with  CatholicVote Civic Action, we received FBI records showing top officials rushing to craft a public response to the leaked FBI intelligence memo that revealed its targeting of Catholics who adhere to traditional beliefs on church issues. In December 2023, heavily redacted records from the FBI showed that the agency’s Office of General Counsel reviewed the controversial targeting of the Catholics by the Richmond field office of the FBI.

• In August 2022, the Department of Justice released a highly redacted affidavit in response to our court request to unseal the warrant materials used in the unprecedented raid on the home of President Trump.

Judicial Watch Sues Biden Admin for Info about Tulsi Gabbard Being Placed on Terrorist Watch List

On August 4, 2024, it was reported that “several Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers have come forward with information showing that former U.S. Representative and Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is currently enrolled in the Quiet Skies program.”

On August 23, 2024, the House Oversight Committee wrote to David P. Pekoske, the administrator for the Transportation Security Administration, that Gabbard was added “to the Quiet Skies program on July 23, 2024 – one day after she criticized the Biden administration in an interview.”

Gabbard, who on November 13, 2024, was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the next director of national intelligence, subsequently confirmed the reports, asserting in a video she posted on X that she had learned that three air marshals were assigned to watch her every time she “traveled in the airport and on the flight.” Gabbard added, “TSA deployed explosive canine detection teams and a TSA explosion specialist.”

We want to dig deeper and filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records on Gabbard being targeted for surveillance under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) “Quiet Skies” terrorist watch program (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:24-cv-03427)).

The Transportation Security Administration is a component of the Department of Homeland Security. As noted in a December 11 court order, we seek  to expedite the lawsuit.

We sued after Homeland Security failed to respond to three August 5, 2024, FOIA requests for records of Homeland Security Department and Transportation Security Administration officials regarding both Gabbard and its “Quiet Skies” program.

According to the DHS website, “Quiet Skies” is a “tool that allows the Federal Air Marshal Service to more efficiently deploy law enforcement resources to focus on travelers who may present an elevated risk to aviation security.”

The Biden administration’s decision to place Tulsi Gabbard on a terrorist watchlist is abusive on its face. Given her pending nomination to director of national intelligence, this issue should quickly be cleared up, and those responsible be held accountable.

We recently reported that the Transportation Security Administration, a federal agency created after 9/11 to protect the nation’s transportation system, has no idea how aviation security was impacted when “it plucked Federal Air Marshal Service agents from their critical duties to help with the Mexican border crisis. Air Marshals operate under the Transportation Security Administration, and in the last few years the agency has forced the highly trained aviation security specialists to assist Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with the onslaught of illegal immigrants entering the country under Biden’s disastrous open border policies.”

Between the Biden administration misusing air marshals to help make sandwiches for illegal aliens or to harass Tulsi Gabbard, one must wonder what real dangers and mission critical issues are being missed!

First Amendment Court Battle for Teacher Fired for Criticizing BLM!

Judicial Watch appeared in court this week for oral argument in a lawsuit we filed on behalf of Palatine, Illinois, high school teacher Jeanne Hedgepeth, who was fired after posting comments on Facebook criticizing the riots, violence, and lootings in Chicago after the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd.

The hearing was in the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Judicial Watch is being assisted by attorney Christine Svenson of Palatine, Illinois.

Hedgepeth had worked for 20 years in the suburban Chicago school district and was tenured.

She made the posts on her private Facebook page while vacationing after the end of the school year, just as some of the most severe violence was occurring. In her posts, Hedgepeth recommended studying Thomas Sowell, whom she described as a “treasure” and a “truth seeker,” and praised political commentator and activist Candice Owens and talk show host Larry Elder.

She alleges that the firing violated her First Amendment rights. The initial lawsuit asks for damages from the school district, Township High School District 211, and district board members and officials who participated directly in the firing (Hedgepeth v. Britton et al. (No. 1:21-cv-03890)).

The lawsuit explains:

In late May and early June 2020, Hedgepeth was vacationing in Florida after the end of the 2019-20 school year when violent street protests, rioting, looting, and shootings erupted in Chicago and many other U.S. cities in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 by Minneapolis police officers. In Chicago alone, 82 persons were shot, 19 fatally, over the May 30-31, 2020 weekend. On May 31, 2020, which the Chicago Sun Times described as the most violent day Chicago had seen in 60 years, Mayor Lori Lightfoot asked Governor J.B. Pritzker to deploy the Illinois National Guard in the city.

That same day, May 31, 2020, Hedgepeth posted the following photos of herself on the beach in Florida along with the comment, “I don’t want to go home tomorrow. Now that the civil war has begun I want to move.”

An individual responded, “Follow your gut! Move!!!!!!!!!”  Hedgepeth answered, “I need a gun and training.” The individual replied, “me too!”

Another individual posted a meme that same day suggesting that the riots could be stopped with a septic tank truck and a pressure cannon. Hedgepeth reposted the meme, obviously in jest, adding, “You think this would work?”

On or about June 1, 2020, Hedgepeth posted the following comment on Facebook in the course of an exchange of posts begun the previous day with a third individual:

I am about facts, truth seeking and love. I will speak on any topic I choose because I live in a free country. I find the term “white privilege” as racist as the “N” word. You have not walked in my shoes either so do not make assumptions about me and my so called privilege. You think America is racist? Then you have been hoodwinked by the white liberal establishment and race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Travel the world and go see that every nation has racism and some more than others but few make efforts such as we do to mitigate or eliminate it. I have lived and seen. The people I am informed by about the black experience in America are actually some of the smartest people in America.  And it so happens they are black. I highly recommend studying Thomas Sowell, who is now retired and in his 80’s. A treasure. A truth seeker. [D]oes REAL research and analysis. Candice Owens is one of the smartest and most courageous women in America and Larry Elders speaks the truth with a great sense of humor and FACTS not feelings. They are who I listen to when it comes to facts about the black experience in America.  Don’t you think there is a deeper problem than racism when 50% of murders in America are committed by 13% of the population? Do you think there might be a subtle genocide of black babies when most planned parenthoods are put in poor neighborhoods and that 30% of abortions are black babies. [B]lack women only make up 7% of the U.S. population. The greatest power you have is what you believe about yourself. [W]hat have Democrats, mainstream media and intellectuals in ivory towers been telling the black community to believe about themselves for forty years? Wake up and stop believing them, then things will change.

All of Hedgepeth’s posts were on her personal Facebook page. None of Hedgepeth’s posts identified her as a teacher or a District 211 employee, nor did Hedgepeth post them in her capacity as a teacher or a District 211 employee. None of the persons with whom Hedgepeth exchanged Facebook posts were current District 211 or Palatine High School teachers, staff, or students.

Upon returning from her vacation in early June 2020, Hedgepeth learned that the school district was investigating her for her Facebook posts. She was fired by the school board six weeks later, on July 16, 2020, by a vote of 5-2. In her defense, Hedgepeth noted that the posts were on her private Facebook page and were made “out of school.” She also expressly invoked her First Amendment rights.

A lower court dismissed the lawsuit. Judicial Watch’s appeal for Hedgepeth asserts the lower court allowed her First Amendment rights to be subject to “heckler’s veto.”

Public school teachers don’t lose their First Amendment rights for promoting conservative viewpoints. Jeanne Hedgepeth had every right to express herself freely and openly on her private Facebook page, outside of school, about matters of undeniable public concern. Firing her for opposing lawlessness, criticizing Democrats, and questioning the tenets of Critical Racial Theory violated the First Amendment.

Until next week,