Judicial
Watch Lawsuit Forces Release of Nashville School Shooter “Manifesto”
Records
We just received 112
pages of documents of the “manifesto” of the March 27, 2023,
shooter at The Covenant School in Tennessee. The records were an interim
release in response to our FOIA lawsuit (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.
1:23-cv-01483)).
The records detail the shooter’s violent thoughts,
the targeting and planning of the shooting attack on the Covenant School,
and transgender-related distress. The records show she considered an attack
on a mall but did not pursue it because of the facility’s security
measures.
The Covenant School killer’s ‘manifesto’ records are
exceedingly disturbing but should have been released long ago. We
appreciate the Trump administration’s transparency. These records may
help Americans understand and perhaps better prevent and protect their
schools and
other targets from mass shooters.
Separately, we filed a lawsuit
on behalf of retired Hamilton County Sheriff James Hammond and the
Tennessee Firearms Association, Inc. (“TFA”) (Hammond
et al. v. Metropolitan Govt of Nashville et al. (No.
23-0538-III)). The lawsuit is on appeal after a
lower court upheld efforts to keep all the records
secret.
White House Revisions
to Biden Special Counsel Interview Transcript Revealed
Joe
Biden’s handlers, including his White House lawyers, bent over backwards
to prevent the American people from learning that he wasn’t up to the
job.
We’re adding to the evidence.
Judicial Watch
received 52
pages of documents from the U.S. Department of Justice showing White
House staffers suggesting edits to transcripts of President Biden’s
interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding
his handling of secret documents.
We received the documents thanks to
our FOIA lawsuit
against the Department of Justice for records of communication between the
agency and White House regarding the altered transcripts of Special Counsel
Robert Hur’s October 2023 interviews of President Biden in the criminal
investigation into Biden’s theft and disclosure of classified records (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02176)).
In
a separate lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a federal court ordered
the Department of Justice to declare whether it intends to continue denying
Judicial Watch’s request for the full audio of former
President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. The
Trump Justice Department has until May 20, 2025, to report its position on
the release of the videotape. (Judicial
Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.
1:24-cv-00700))
Also, previously in that lawsuit, we forced
the Biden administration to confess that the transcripts of the audio
recordings have been altered and are not accurate.
The new documents
provided in this case include a chart of suggested changes by Biden White
House and personal lawyers to the transcript. Also included are emails that
detail Biden lawyer Bob Bauer’s requesting access to interview exhibits
and a meeting with the special counsel to discuss the case. Justice
Department official Marc Krickbaum confirmed most White House revisions to
the transcript were accepted, including minor clarifications and changes
potentially masking Biden’s confusion, such as
correcting who said “Yeah” or altering references to Biden’s Delaware
garage and President Biden’s seeming inability to recall the name of the
Defense Secretary.
These documents provide an extraordinary insight
into a cover-up of the White House of Biden’s cognitive challenges. The
Bondi Justice Department should follow up with the full release of the
actual audio of President Biden’s disastrous interview with the special
counsel on his document theft and mishandling.
On October 12, 2023,
Bob Bauer, personal attorney to Biden and White House Counsel for President
Obama, writes
to Marc Krickbaum, then-Deputy Special Counsel, and others, including
several White House staffers:
Gentlemen:
Now that
the interviews of the President have concluded, we would like to discuss
with you the written presentations that we are preparing to aid in the
resolution of this matter, as well as the schedule for their timely
submission. To this end, we request a meeting for the purpose of hearing
from you where matters stand in the case, which would enable us to focus
our presentations on the issues it would be most helpful for us to address.
The meeting would include both personal and White House Counsel.
***
As you know, we also have an
outstanding request for copies of the exhibits you provided in your
interview of the President. We have noted that these exhibits would be
necessary in our review of the transcripts of the interviews to check for
any omissions or
inaccuracies. We believe it is fair that we have access to this material at
least for this purpose. This is one of the issues we would like to resolve
at the meeting, along with an understanding for our planning purposes of
when the interview transcript may be available for review in both audio and
video form.
In a follow-up email, he corrects himself:
“…the reference to ‘video’ can, of course, be
disregarded.”
On December 21, 2023, Krickbaum writes
to Rachel F. Cotton, Deputy Counsel to the President in the Office of the
White House Counsel, and others showing the
court reporter rejected some of the proposed edits to the Biden
transcript
Dick and Rachel,
We had the court
reporter who prepared the transcript review your suggested revisions. She
accepted most of them. This table lists your revisions and then describes
whether we did or did not make changes.
We may have to send the
transcript itself on the high side [classified] next week. I will let you
know when we do.
Thank you.
Marc
Some
proposed transcript edits detailed
in a chart produced by the Justice Department suggest that the Biden
White House changes to the transcript might be considered an effort to
cover up Biden’s mental confusion. White House
suggests:
PRESIDENT BIDEN: The date is 4-20-09. Was I
still Vice President? I was, wasn’t I? Yeah. Yeah.
Mr.
Bauer: Yeah.
President Biden: Yeah.
On this entry,
the White House attaches a note: “Audio indicates that ‘Yeah’ was
said twice in succession by President Biden. Mr. Bauer did not say
‘Yeah.’
The court reporter records:
PRESIDENT
BIDEN: The date is 4-20-09. Was I still Vice President? I was, wasn’t I?
Yeah. Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
PRESIDENT BIDEN:
Yeah.
Other changes also seem significant. One seems
to refer to Biden’s garage at his Delaware home, where secret
documents were found.
The White House proposed this
change:
were delivered my the garage
The
court reporter records:
were delivered to the – my
garage.
At another point, Bien might have been confused
about the name of the Secretary of Defense. The White House proposedthis
change:
Secretary of Defense?
Gates
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Gates.
A
White House entry on that notes states: According to the audio, President
Biden says “Gates” prior to the unidentified male speaker.
The
court reporter records:
Secretary of Defense?
Gates?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Gates.
The White
House responds:
The court reporter inserted a question
mark that is unsupported by the audio recording. It is clear that the
President said “Gates” as a statement rather
than a question. We ask that the question mark be replaced with a period
…
Regarding that last entry and another, on January 3,
2024, Amish [probably Amish Shah, Senior Associate Counsel in the White
house Counsel’s Office], emails
Krickbaum:
Thank you for sending. We have reviewed and
are fine with almost all of the court reporter’s responses. However, we
ask the SCO to reconsider the attached two corrections on Day 2. Both
corrections are supported by the audio recording of the
interview.
On January 22, 2024, Krickbaum
replies:
We
will send a revised transcript of the President’s interview on yellow
[higher security], and attached is a revised list of edits. For the two
revisions you suggested in your last email, the court reporter adopted the
second and adopted a slightly modified version of the
first.
On February 28, 2024, an Executive Officer in the
Special Counsel’s Office emails
Free State Reporting:
Good evening. Would you be able to
come back (hopefully, the last time) on Friday, 3/1 or Monday, 3/4 (the
sooner, the better? There are more edits to the President’s transcript.
I’ll have an exact number tomorrow. I’m getting the computer back so it
will be blank when you arrive so it will need your software on it again. It
got wiped when I thought everything was finished. I’ll meet you out front
with a new parking pass. My apologies for the
inconvenience.
It’s not clear what these last-minute
changes were.
We have several
ongoing FOIA lawsuits about Biden’s document scandals and the related
unprecedented partisan prosecutorial and judicial abuses of former
President Donald J. Trump. I will have updates for you as events
warrant!
Did Democrat Arizona
AG Announce Trump ‘Investigation’ to Sway Election?
Here
is yet another example of “lawfare” abuse targeting Donald
Trump.
Our open records lawsuit reveals that Arizona Attorney General
Kris Mayes seems to have used her office for political purposes in
threatening a prosecution of President Trump on the eve of the 2024
presidential election (Judicial
Watch Inc. v. Kris Mayes et al (No. CV 2025 00675)). Only one
document was found (and kept secret) relating to a criminal investigation,
while dozens of media-related documents
were revealed.
In an October 31,
2024, interview
with Tucker Carlson at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, Trump
said of Liz Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a
rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how
she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice
building saying, ‘Oh, gee, well let’s send 10,000 troops right into the
mouth of the enemy.’ “
On November 1, 2024, Mayes, a
Democrat, said
during the taping of the Channel 12 “Sunday Square-Off” news show: “I
have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that
statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under
Arizona’s laws.” She conducted multiple media interviews within days of
the election.
Mayes’ office provided comments
to CBS, NBC, CNN, AZ Family, Forbes, Fox, News Nation, Sky View Networks,
Law and Crime News Network, Newsweek, and Reuters in what appears to be an
attempt to paint Donald Trump as a criminal shortly before the
election.
The records show the threatened “investigation” of
President Trump was merely an oral request from the Arizona General Mayes
to a top staffer to evaluate the Liz Cheney statement. The only
record of the investigation that exists is a 3-page memo from the Attorney
General’s criminal division chief back to Mayes, which the Court
reviewed in camera and
determined was protected attorney work product and therefore can be
withheld. Presumably (and probably from media sources) the memo
declined to open a more substantial investigation or initiate a
prosecution.
The lack of records further supports our theory that the
investigation—purportedly launched on the Friday before the 2024
presidential election and dropped shortly thereafter—was a sham to try to
influence the outcome of the election in an important swing
state.
Mayes ended the “investigation” on November 13, 2024,
telling the Arizona Republic that Trump’s comment “very likely may have
been an effort to intimidate Cheney” but the investigation showed there
was “no reasonable likelihood that we could obtain a conviction for
Trump’s statements. We think it’s equally likely a reasonable person
could conclude Trump was discussing war, and Liz Cheney not wanting to go
to war.”
We filed our lawsuit in the Superior
Court for the State of Arizona, Maricopa County, this past January after
Mayes’ office failed to comply with a November 12, 2024, Arizona Public
Records Act request for records regarding Mayes’ office and/or the
criminal division chief analyzing Trump’s statement as qualifying as a
death threat; the determination whether the statement was analyzed to be a
violation of Arizona and/or federal law; the costs to carry out the
investigation; and any documents in which Mayes addresses the limits of
free speech as addressed in the First Amendment.
(Additionally, we
asked for records regarding the dismissal
of criminal charges against Arizona citizen Rebekah Massie, who was
arrested during an August 20, 2024, Surprise City Council meeting after she
criticized a proposed pay increase for the city attorney.
Maricopa
County Judge Gerald Williams dismissed with prejudice the trespassing
charge against Massie, writing: “No branch of any federal, state, or
local government in this country should ever attempt to control the content
of political speech. In this case, the government did so in a manner that
was objectively
outrageous.”)
Public Pre-K-8 “Inclusivity”
Books Push Gender Transitioning, Drag Queens
Public schools
in Maryland, right next door to the nation’s capital, are definitely
promoting left-wing extremist and anti-American ideas to children as young
as pre-kindergarten. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has
the details.
Leftwing
activism has run amok in two Maryland public school districts with
“inclusivity” books for elementary students that champion gender
transitioning, drag queens and children’s pronoun preferences and a high
school student suspended for
questioning why all his classrooms do not have an American flag as state
law requires. The taxpayer-funded districts are situated about an hour
apart but practice the same woke ideology that has gripped academic
institutions throughout the United States, a leftist conditioning that
President Trump has vowed to abolish. An executive
order issued in late January states that federal funding and support
will be eliminated for indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on
gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology and that parental rights
will be protected. “Young
men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body
and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be
blamed,” Trump’s order reads. “These practices not only erode
critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which
undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family
unity.”
The order’s language is especially relevant to the first
case, which involves Maryland’s largest school district,Montgomery
County Public Schools (MCPS), with about 160,000 students in 210
campuses located a short distance from Washington D.C. In 2022 the
Montgomery County Board of Education announced that
students in pre-K through eighth grade would use over 20 new
“inclusivity” books that promote gay pride parades, gender
transitioning and pronoun preferences for kids. One book directs three and
four-year-olds to search for images from a list of words that includes
intersex flag, drag queen and underwear as well as the name of a celebrated
LGBTQ sex worker turned activist. Other books promote gender transitioning
for children, stating that it does not have to make sense and that doctors
only guess when identifying a newborn’s gender. When education officials
announced the district would use the pride storybooks, it assured concerned
parents they would be notified so they could opt out their children. A year
later the policy changed, so parents would no longer be warned.
A
group of Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian
parents sued,
and a federal district court and a court of appeals ruled against them so
they petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed earlier this year to
hear their case. A Washington D.C. nonprofit dedicated to protecting the
free expression of all faiths represents the concerned parents and will
argue before the nation’s highest court on April 22. Upholding parental
rights meant that children would not be subjected to age-inappropriate
instruction against their parents’ wishes, but the policy change denies
parents the right to decide when their elementary-aged children are exposed
to books promoting transgender and queer ideology, attorneys for the
group say. “The Board cannot refuse parents who want to opt their
children out of instruction that violates their religious beliefs on
sensitive matters,” the nonprofit representing the parents further points
out, adding that it is “unlawfully coming between parents and their kids
and targeting them because of their religious beliefs about gender and
sexuality.” That violates both Maryland law and the school board’s own
policies as well as the U.S. Constitution, the religious freedom charity
asserts.
In the other case, a high school student about an hour away
in Baltimore County was suspended for seven days over his patriotism. The
18-year-old, Parker Jensen, who has enlisted in the military, is a senior
at Towson High School and got punished for questioning why all the
classrooms in his campus do not have an American flag even though Maryland
law says every classroom must have one. When school administrators failed
to provide an
explanation, Jensen drove to the Baltimore County Board of Education
headquarters to ask about the flag violation and district officials called
the police on him, according to a local news
report. The high school senior was subsequently suspended for seven
days. This month Jensen filed a lawsuit against Baltimore County Public
Schools claiming that the district violated his Constitutional rights when
it suspended him for
inquiring about missing American flags in public school classrooms. “He
was summarily suspended without any due process whatsoever, which every
student in Baltimore County and Maryland has the right to and they stripped
him of that within five seconds,” said Jensen’s attorney, who assures
the student’s Constitutional rights were
violated.
Happy
Easter!
“Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but
it won’t stay there.” ~ Clarence W. Hall
In this season,
Christians around the world are celebrating the resurrection of Christ.
There are no more powerful symbols of hope than the cross and the empty
tomb. From me and mine, I wish you and yours all the joy of Easter! For
those celebrating Passover, I wish you a Happy Passover, as
well!
Until next week,
