Judicial Watch Warns Utah to Provide Access to
Voter Registration Lists
We sent a
letter to Lt. Governor Deidre M. Henderson, notifying her that
Utah is currently in violation of the federal National
Voter Registration Act of 1993’s (NVRA) public
disclosure requirements. The notice letter warns of a lawsuit after 90 days
if the issues are not resolved.
We explain that the NVRA was intended both to “increase the number of
eligible citizens who register” and “to protect the integrity of the
electoral process’ and ‘ensure that accurate and current voter
registration rolls are maintained.” It requires states to maintain “for
at least 2 years” and “make available for public inspection” all
records concerning the implementation of programs conducted for ensuring
the accuracy of voter rolls.
Our review of Utah
voter registration law found it fails to ensure compliance with
federal “record maintenance and public disclosure requirements” and
limits the public’s ability to conduct reasonable election integrity
analysis. “This absence of necessary provisions in Utah’s voter
registration law directly contravenes the federal mandate under the
NVRA.”
In July 2022, we settled
a federal election integrity lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of
Elections, requiring it to grant access to its centralized statewide list
of registered voters. State officials had refused to allow the nonprofit
Illinois Conservative Union and three lawfully registered Illinois voters
to obtain a copy of the state’s voter registration list, despite their
lawful request for those records under federal law.
In short, Utah law makes it impossible – and even illegal – to use
voter registration lists to monitor for fraud and accuracy. This is at odds
with federal law and undermines election integrity.
As several federal courts have recognized, the public records provisions of
the National Voter Registration Act were intended to enhance the ability of
private groups to monitor whether states are removing ineligible voters
from their voter rolls. In April 2020, a federal court in Maryland
noted that organizations “such as Judicial Watch” have
“the resources and expertise that few individuals can marshal. By
excluding these organizations from access to voter registration lists,”
the purpose of the federal law is undermined. That court ordered Maryland
to produce complete voter registration records we requested.
In recent years, Judicial Watch has caused the removal of four
million names from the voter rolls.
USAID Won’t Reveal Aid Recipients in Gaza
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been
much in the news lately as Elon Musk uncovers its secrets. We’ve been
investigating it for a long time.
It continues to hide the identities of recipients of $27 million in grants
awarded to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” that were designated for
use in Gaza and that we have been seeking.
A status conference on our lawsuit is
scheduled for today before Judge Reggie B. Walton of U.S. District
Court of the District of Columbia.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas—a U.S.-designated terrorist organization—invaded
southwest Israel, killing over a thousand people and kidnapping
hundreds of others.
We sued
in July 2024 after the USAID failed to respond to an April 2, 2024, Freedom
Of Information Act (FOIA) request (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Agency for International Development (No.
1:24-cv-02159)) that asks for:
- All records
identifying the recipients of USAID funding under the $7,000,000 grant
allocation awarded on or about November 15, 2023, and associated with
Federal Award Identification Number
720BHA24GR00005.
- All
proposals, applications, scope of work documents, or similar records
related to any grant award or sub-award associated with Federal Award
Identification Number
720BHA24GR00005.
USAID has produced records
but refuses to disclose what organizations received the money.
USAID justifies
its secrecy as protecting trade secrets, financial information, and
privacy:
(b)(4) Program design
elements, technical approaches, detailed implementation plans, and related
financial information is business confidential information. If released,
the availability of this information to the public will cause substantial
harm to awardee’s competitive position in the private voluntary
organization community.
(b)(6) Parties to the conflict in Gaza have specifically targeted and
killed aid workers, targeted relief agency operations and targeted and
destroyed health facilities and other civilians targets. Due to highly
challenging and unpredictable operating environments for humanitarian
organizations, this exemption is required to protect the employees and
beneficiaries of the NGOs working in Gaza from harassment and violence.
Disclosure of the name of the NGO would allow third‐parties to determine
the identities of the employees and beneficiaries.
(b)(6) Personal information to include names, job titles and emails due to
safety & security concerns
On November 15, 2023, the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, a component
of the USAID, issued a $7
million grant for “multisectoral response in Gaza.” The grant was
awarded to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.” The same day a “continuation”
grant of $20 million was also issued for “multisectoral response.”
USAID reported
that over $282 million was obligated to the West Bank and Gaza in
fiscal year 2023.
President Trump recently fired
Paul Martin, USAID inspector general, after he published a report that was
critical of the Trump administration’s pause on aid. It was recently
discovered that USAID provided “millions of dollars in funding to
extremist groups tied to designated terrorist organizations and their
allies, according to a report published by Middle East Forum, a U.S. think
tank.”
In July 2024, the Office of the Inspector General for USAID issued
a report titled “Assessment of USAID’s Oversight Policies to
Prevent the Diversion of Assistance to Hamas and Other Terrorist
Organizations” in which it states:
The USAID Office of
Inspector General (USAID OIG) provides independent oversight of USAID’s
programs, operations, and personnel and has previously identified
USAID-funded assistance to Gaza as being at high risk for diversion and
misuse.
***
Regarding the UN’s
processes for vetting their own staff, USAID Administrator Samantha Power
noted—following allegations that officials working for UNRWA [United
Nations Relief and Works Agency] engaged in the October 7, 2023 attacks in
Israel—“obviously the vetting is something that has to be significantly
strengthened.”
Americans have a right to know who in Gaza is getting our money from USAID.
It is shocking that Marco Rubio’s State Department is hiding this
information. Transparency on USAID’s Gaza funding could be critical to
protecting the national security of the U.S. and Israel.
We recently sued
USAID for records regarding waste, fraud and abuse tied to aid money sent
to Ukraine.
In 2018, we obtained State Department documents
showing top Soros representatives in Romania collaborating with the State
Department in a program jointly funded
by, among others, Soros’s Open
Society Foundations – Romania and USAID, called the “Open
Government Partnership.”
Additional State Department records
uncovered in 2018 showed USAID funding for George Soros’s left-wing
nonprofit organizations in Albania. The documents dealt primarily with the
activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the
director of Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in
channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls
Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents showed U.S. grant money
flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to
promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional,
pro-American groups, governments and policies.
Other records
related to the USAID’s activities in Albania showed that the Obama
administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a group backed by Soros,
which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania,
including working with the country’s socialist government to push for
highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also detailed how
the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications
from other groups for taxpayer funding.
Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Walz’s Chinese Communist
Connections
On October 29, 2024, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said a
Homeland Security whistleblower
told the committee that Minnesota governor and 2024 Democrat vice
presidential candidate Tim Walz was a “target” of the Chinese Communist
Party as “someone they can get to DC.”
The whistleblower also disclosed “that officials from U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) and
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have been involved in the
Department’s investigative and/or intelligence work connected with the
CCP, the state of Minnesota, and Governor Walz.”
To get to the bottom of this, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit
against Homeland Security for records regarding Walz’s connections to the
Chinese Communist Party (Judicial
Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security
(No. 1:25-cv-00625)).
We sued after Homeland Security failed to respond to an October 29, 2024,
FOIA request for:
All documents and communications in the DHS Microsoft Teams group chat
“NST NFT Bi-Weekly Sync” from July 1, 2024, to present, including all
accompanying, uploaded, or imbedded attachments and documents, referring or
relating to Minnesota Governor Timothy J. Walz (or the office and/or staff
of Governor Walz)
All Intelligence Information Reports and
Regional Intelligence Notes (including these documents that have been
titled or categorized differently) from November 1, 2023, to present
related to Minnesota Governor Timothy J. Walz (or the office and/or staff
of Governor Walz).
All requests for assistance or referrals to
other federal agencies regarding Minnesota Governor Timothy J.
Walz
Quite simply, there is a massive cover-up of what the Deep State knows
about Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party. Secretary
Noem should quickly release any records in response to our lawsuit.
DC Police Department Wants $1.5 Million for January 6 Bodycam
Footage
The Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department wants to charge us more
than $1,570,500 for local police bodycam footage of the January 6
protests.
In June 2024 we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the
Metropolitan Police Department denied an August 2021 FOIA request (Judicial
Watch v. District of Columbia (No. 2024-CAB-003453)).
We are asking for:
All audio/video recordings captured on body-worn cameras from MPD
officers during their response to protest activities in and around the
Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021; and
All body worn camera video captured by
Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone when responding
to protests at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.
The DC Metro Police initially rejected our request because, it claimed, the
videos were, at the time, “part of an ongoing investigation and criminal
proceeding.”
But since President Trump's pardons of January 6 defendants, the DC
government will make public the videos (supposedly containing over one
thousand hours of footage) if we agree to pay over $1.5 million.
There never has been a legitimate reason to withhold the January 6 police
bodycam videos. If they wanted the videos out for political reasons,
they’d be public, but instead the DC government wants more than $1.5
million in order for the public to view its January 6 videos.
On January 20, President Trump issued pardons
and a directive to the attorney general to “pursue dismissal
with prejudice to the government of pending indictments against individuals
for their conduct related to the events at or near the U.S. Capitol on
January 6.”
We have extensively investigated the events of January 6.
A hearing
was recently held in the Fani Willis documents scandal regarding her search
for records of communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House
January 6 Committee. Thanks
to this lawsuit Willis finally admitted
to having records showing communications with the January 6 Committee but
refused to release all but one document in response to the
court order that found her in default. She cited a series of
legal exemptions to justify the withholding of communications with the
January 6 Committee. The only document she did release is one already
public letter to January 6 Committee Chairman Benny Thompson (D-MS).
A trial
date is currently set for July 20, 2026, in the $30 million
wrongful death lawsuit we filed on behalf of the estate and the family of
Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol on January 6,
2021, by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
In April 2024, we received
records from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in a FOIA
lawsuit, showing that the FBI opened a criminal investigation of Babbitt
after her killing and listed four “potential violations of federal
law,” including felony rioting and civil disorder.
In January 2024, we filed a FOIA lawsuit
on behalf of Aaron Babbitt and the Ashli Babbitt Estate against the U.S.
Department of Justice for all FBI files on Ashli Babbitt.
In July 2024, we sued
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for all records related to any shots
fired inside the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and records of
requests for CIA support including bomb technicians and bomb-detecting dogs
placed on standby or used in response to the massive protests in and around
Washington, DC.
In September 2023, we received records
from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, a component of the
Department of Justice, in a FOIA lawsuit that detailed the extensive
apparatus the Biden Justice Department set up to investigate and prosecute
January 6 protestors.
A previous
review of records from that lawsuit highlighted the prosecution
declination memorandum documenting the decision not to prosecute
U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd for the shooting death of Babbitt.
In October 2023, we received
the court-ordered declaration
of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for
the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of
the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings
of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at
the U.S. Capitol.
In January 2023, documents
from the Department of the Air Force, Joint Base Andrews, MD, showed U.S.
Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at
Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli
Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In November 2021, we released
multiple audio,
visual
and photo
records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the
shooting death of Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building.
The records included a cell
phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police
interview of the shooter, Byrd.
Biden Administration Considered Using Federal Lands for Abortions,
Funded Protection against ‘Grave Health Threats’ from Climate
Change
The values of the Biden administration were not those of most American
people.
We received 115
pages in a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) showing the Biden
administration, following the Dobbs decision, which overturned
Roe v. Wade, considered declaring a “public health emergency”
and using federal lands to provide abortion services.
The records also show that millions of taxpayer dollars were used to
establish an office to protect against “grave health threats” allegedly
caused by climate change, and for facilitating then-Assistant Secretary
Rachel Levine’s extreme focus on LGBT and “gender-affirming” health
care.
On June 30, 2024, media
reports indicated Levine rejected the suggestion of the World
Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) that an age limit
of 14 be placed on those seeking gender-altering medical procedures.
We filed the lawsuit
in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after Health and
Human Services failed to respond to a July 2024, FOIA request for the
records of Levine and other officials regarding the removal of the minimum
age for the treatment of children in the World Professional Association for
Transgender Health’s (WPATH) 2022 standards of care (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(No. 1:24-cv-02588)).
The records include a “Briefing
Memo for Assistant Secretary Admiral Levine,” which contains
talking points prepared by staff for Levine’s July 19, 2022, meeting with
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) to “provide an update on OASH’s [Office of the
Assistant Secretary for Health] work in shared areas of interest,”
including:
A section of the briefing memo titled “Public
Health Emergency” asks if an official public health emergency
will be declared, and a prepared answer includes: “The Biden-Harris
Administration is never going to stop fighting to protect access to
abortion care.”
The following question is: “What did the President mean when he said he
directed his team to look into whether he has the authority to declare a
public health emergency? You haven't actually done that yet? Is it still
under consideration? And you said everything is on the table - what about
federal lands?”
The prepared answer is:
The team has been evaluating every option – including a public health
emergency. When we looked at declaring a public health emergency, we
learned a couple things. One is that it doesn’t free very many resources.
For example, what’s in the public health emergency fund, there’s very
little money – tens of thousands of dollars in it….
In a section titled “Federal Lands” a question is posed: “What is the
Administration thinking in regards to using federal lands to provide
abortion access?” The answer includes: “As I have continued to say,
we’re exploring many options. However, we at HHS [Health and Human
Services] are not experts on public lands.”
A section
in the briefing memo dedicated to OCCHE [Office of Climate
Change and Health Equity] states that its mission “is to protect the U.S.
population from the grave health threats posed by climate change.”
Talking points address the office’s accomplishments in its first 10
months and discuss a multi-agency $206 million budget allocation for fiscal
year 2022:
Internationally: By making commitments to community and health
system resilience and decarbonization in our health systems, we not only
have provided global leadership in climate change and health but also
signaled domestically the direction the US health system is heading in
these areas.
Intergovernmental: Launched the Biden Administration’s Interagency Working Group on
Extreme Heat, which coordinates that national response to extreme heat.
Extreme heat kills more Americans than any other weather-related
disaster.
***
Launched a federal health systems learning network on decarbonization
and resilience [including the Veteran’s Administration, Department of
Defense, and Indian Health Service].
Within HHS [Health and Human Services]: Has mobilized every HHS OpDiv
[Operating Division] to create climate health and equity strategies that
they are beginning to implement.
***
One of OCCHE’s [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity] key
priorities is health sector decarbonization and resilience.
***
The Office is also committed to a suite of activities to build climate
literacy within the health sector workforce. This includes ongoing
collaboration with climate change and health physician fellowships at the
Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
***
On May 31st, an Office of Environmental Justice was
established under OCCHE [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity] to
better protect the health of disadvantaged communities and vulnerable
populations on the frontlines of pollution and other environmental health
issues.
***
The Fiscal Year 2022 budget also included $6 million in evaluation
funding to create the OCCHE [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity]
and $100 million each to NIH [National Institutes of Health] and CDC
[Centers for Disease Control] to invest in climate and health research and
adaptation.”
The records contain an
agenda for Levine’s June 26-29, 2022, trip to Florida,
including:
- A
“Trans and non-binary youth event” in
Orlando.
-
An appearance and photo-op at the Pulse nightclub memorial site in
Orlando.
- A
meeting at Borinquen Health Care Center in Miami to advocate for children
under age 5 to receive the Covid vaccine.
- A
meeting with Miami’s “Heat Officer” Jane Gilbert, who the agenda
describes as “the first position like it in the world” (to coordinate
heat protection efforts for vulnerable communities (https://www.miamidade.gov/global/economy/environment/chief-heat-officer.page)
- A
gender affirming care trans health roundtable.
- A
meeting and lunch with officers of the “Take VA Pride Event” in Miami
(an event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) specifically
designed to celebrate and support LGBTQ+
veterans).
A briefing
memo for Levine’s June 29, 2022, appearance at a “Trans
Health Roundtable” held at The Miami Foundation states:
HHS [Health and Human Services] is committed to using every tool in our
toolbox to ensure health equity for all. This includes actions like NIH
[National Institutes for Health] increasing funding on gender-affirming
procedures to further develop the evidence base for improved standards of
care. SAMSHA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] is
advancing research addressing the harms of conversion therapy. HHS
expanding access to gender-affirming care as an essential health
benefit.
Admiral Levine and the Biden administration were obsessed with promoting
the transgender extremist mutilation of children. The Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE) and, quite frankly, law enforcement, should do
a thorough scan of what Levine was up to.
Until next week,
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