Deep State Stonewall on China Report

[INSIDE JW]

JUSTICE DEPT. ADMITS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OF USADF IN JUDICIAL
WATCH FOIA CASE

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After years of whistleblowing by Judicial Watch clients Jasmine Battle
and Mateo Dunne, the U.S. Department of Justice publicly announced an
ongoing criminal investigation
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of the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF
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The news came in a status conference
hearing in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

In August last year we sued
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the
U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF
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after it failed to respond to a July 2025 FOIA request for records of
its expenditures and deposits related to allegations of waste, fraud,
and abuse committed by senior officials, contractors, and grantees.

We also wanted records regarding its retaliation against
whistleblowers and its attempt to block Department of Government
Efficiency (DOGE) audits (_Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. African
Development Foundation_
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_(No.
1:25-cv-02623)).

An independent agency
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the foundation was created in 1980 to provide development assistance
to underserved and marginalized populations in conflict and
post-conflict areas in Africa.

The Justice Department said at the hearing in the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia that it would immediately begin producing
documents related to those allegations with some redactions.

Mateo Dunne became general counsel of the foundation in October 2021
following a distinguished legal career in both private practice and
public service. Jasmine Battle, an accomplished administrative
professional, became executive assistant to the agency’s president
and CEO in March 2022. Together, they raised internal alarms regarding
misconduct and ultimately became whistleblowers after facing
resistance and retaliation.

Battle and Dunne pursued every lawful avenue to expose corruption at
USADF, including providing information to the U.S. Senate. Their
disclosures resulted in a formal letter from Senator James E. Risch,
Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requesting
an investigation into the agency.

As Senator Risch wrote
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in
November 2023:

> According to whistleblower complaints received by the Senate Foreign
> Relations Committee (SFRC)—complaints that I understand have also
> been shared with the [Office of Inspector General]—current
> President and CEO Travis Adkins, former President and CEO C.D. Glin,
> Managing Director for Finance and Administration Mathieu Zahui,
> Chief Program Officer and former Acting President and CEO Elisabeth
> Feleke, and Chairman of the Board of Directors Jack Leslie are aware
> of, and may be complicit in, corrupt and potentially unlawful
> practices …

The whistleblower allegations that Senator Risch brought to light
included misuse of official funds, conflict of interest and
inappropriate partnerships, discriminatory employment practices, and
retaliation against employees who dared to raise questions about this
misconduct.

For years, Battle and Dunne cooperated with law enforcement, including
the Department of Justice, resulting in the public announcement of an
ongoing criminal investigation. For speaking out against a corrupt
agency, they have been retaliated against, mistreated, and maligned.
The systems that were created to protect them as whistleblowers, like
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of
Inspector General, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, have thus far failed them. This
news of Justice Department involvement is vindication for the years
they’ve spent exposing government corruption.



MARYLAND DEMOCRATS STILL TRYING TO GERRYMANDER CONGRESSIONAL
DISTRICTS

You almost have to admire Maryland Democrats for their foolhardy
persistence.

Our analysis of a Democrat-proposed 2026 congressional redistricting
plan
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for Maryland shows that it is in key respects identical to the
unconstitutional gerrymander struck down in a prior Judicial Watch
lawsuit
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is even more partisan and less compact than the invalidated 2021 map.

The proposed 2026 plan re-creates the same distorted configuration
rejected by Judge Lynne A. Battaglia for Maryland’s First
Congressional District, which shares 97 percent of the geographic area
of the unconstitutional 2021 district. As before, the district again
crosses the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to link disparate regions—an
arrangement the court previously found unlawful.

Our analysis also found that the proposed 2026 plan is less compact
than both prior maps under all three compactness measures relied upon
by Battaglia in invalidating the 2021 plan—directly violating the
Maryland Constitution’s compactness requirement
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Additionally, the proposed redraw substantially increases county and
municipal splits compared to the 2022 remedial map—another factor
Battaglia cited in concluding the 2021 plan was an unconstitutional
partisan gerrymander.

Using the widely accepted efficiency gap
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metric, we determined that the proposed 2026 map is more partisan than
both the 2021 map struck down as unconstitutional and the current 2022
remedial map now in effect.

We ascertained that the boundaries of Congressional Districts 2, 3,
and 7 in Baltimore City closely track racial demographics, raising
serious concerns about impermissible race-based districting.

Maryland is currently operating under a congressional map adopted in
2022, following our successful lawsuit
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on behalf of 12 registered Maryland voters. That suit challenged the
state’s 2021 redistricting plan as an unconstitutional partisan
gerrymander that diluted voters’ rights.

The current redistricting effort
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began in August after Governor Wes Moore suggested revisiting the
state’s map amid national redistricting disputes. Republicans have
warned that the proposal is designed to eliminate Maryland’s lone
Republican member of Congress, Rep. Andy Harris—by resurrecting the
same district configuration already ruled unconstitutional.

This is a rerun of an unlawful gerrymander that a court already threw
out. Maryland Democrats appear determined to entrench partisan power
at the expense of constitutional limits and voters’ rights. We are
watching these developments closely.

We are a national leader in election integrity and voting rights
litigation, with a record of successful lawsuits
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enforcing
constitutional redistricting standards and cleaning voter rolls
nationwide.

Our election law efforts are led by Senior Attorney Robert Popper, who
previously served in the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s
Civil Rights Division, where he managed voting rights investigations
and litigation across dozens of states.

In January 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 7–2 in
favor of granting standing
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in
a historic case we filed on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two
presidential electors. The case challenges an Illinois law allowing
the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.

In November 2025, the Supreme Court granted review
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in a landmark election integrity case we brought on behalf of the
Libertarian Party of Mississippi. The case seeks to uphold a ruling by
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which struck down a
Mississippi law unconstitutionally allowing election officials to
count mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day.

Federal courts in Oregon
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California and Illinois
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have
ruled that Judicial Watch’s lawsuits against those states to force
them to clean their voter rolls may proceed.

We announced
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in May 2025 that our work led to the removal of more than five million
ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide.

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES ODNI FOR RECORDS ON CHINA CORRUPTION REPORT

In March 2025, after more than a year of delays and repeated pressure
from lawmakers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
(ODNI) finally released a congressionally mandated unclassified report
on the wealth and corrupt activities of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
leadership.

To try to understand what was going on, we filed a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
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against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for
records of its preparation of the report (_Judicial Watch Inc. v.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence_
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(No. 1:26-cv-00199)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after
the Director of National Intelligence failed to respond to a March 7,
2025, FOIA request for:

* All records relied upon during ODNI’s preparation of its report
regarding the wealth and corrupt activities of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). For purposes of clarification, the report was mandated by
Sec. 6501 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2023 (P.L. 117-263).
* All communications between ODNI personnel involved in the
preparation of the report and any official or employee of the
Department of State regarding the report, or its submission to
Congress.
* All communications between ODNI personnel involved in the
preparation of the report and the Executive Office of the President
regarding the report, or its submission to Congress.

The 2022 legislation
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mandating the report gave a deadline of December 2023.

In June 2024, China was reported to have lobbied
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strongly against the report’s release. The report was not delivered
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until March 2025 – after Donald Trump had become president and a new
director of national intelligence was in place.

The seven-page report
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titled “Wealth and Corrupt Activities of the Leadership of the
Chinese Communist Party,” states:

> Corruption is an endemic feature of and challenge for China, enabled
> by a political system with power highly centralized in the hands of
> the CCP, a CCP-centric concept of the rule of law, a lack of
> independent checks on public officials, and limited transparency.

***

> Corruption within China is primarily due to structural features that
> centralize power, eschew independent checks or
> accountability—especially at the provincial level—and produce
> perverse incentives for political advancement and financial
> enrichment.

There is heavy resistance to transparency when it comes to what the
Deep State knows about the Chinese Communist Party. The long delay of
this intelligence report on China’s corruption and systemic graft
reflects poorly on the Biden-era intelligence community.

We have reported extensively on China’s influence in the United
States.

In November 2025, we sued
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the U.S.
Department of Education for records on the University of Michigan’s
connections to China, including related communications with the U.S.
Department of Justice.

In July 2025, we received records
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from the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security about Gov. Tim Walz’s
connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A DHS and FBI
counter-intelligence investigation into Walz’s CCP connections
determined that “China [was] happy” with Walz being selected as
Kamala Harris’s running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential
ticket. Walz’s connections to the CCP were extensive and a concern
to the intelligence community, according to the documents produced.

In July 2024, we sued
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the
U.S. Department of Treasury for records of communication between the
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding the purchase of U.S.
farmland by foreign entities, including China and other foreign
powers.

Our investigations and FOIA lawsuits uncovered much is publicly known
about Covid-19’s connections
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with China, including
FBI records
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released in April 2024 referencing an April 2020 email exchange with
several officials in the bureau’s Newark Field Office referring to
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in
China as including “gain-of-function research” which “would
leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation.”



JUDICIAL WATCH URGES JUSTICE DEPT. TO INVESTIGATE FLORIDA COUNTY FOR
WOKE QUOTA SCHEME

The Board of County Commissioners in Hillsborough County, Florida,
created a Diversity Advisory Council – and they decided to staff it
on the basis of race, sexual preference, gender identity, and
disability.

We have submitted a formal request
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to the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for an
investigation of this scheme. This woke racism and sexism is a
textbook violation of the Constitution. Government bodies exist to
serve all citizens equally—not to segregate Americans into woke
identity groups. The Trump Justice Department should take action.

In the letter sent to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon,
we assert that Hillsborough County’s Diversity Advisory Council
violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

> Judicial Watch requests the Office of Civil Rights investigate
> Hillsborough County, Florida’s Board of County Commissioners
> (BOCC) for its use of race, sexual preference, gender identity, and
> disability to appoint members to its Diversity Advisory Council.
> This practice violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
> Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

> The [Commissioners] created the Diversity Advisory Council as a
> governmental body structured around explicit identity-based
> classifications.

The Diversity Advisory Council is explicitly structured around
identity classifications, requiring representation from specific
racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and disability groups. Council
members are appointed in fixed numbers by identity category, with
vacancies filled group-by-group rather than through a race-neutral or
merit-based process.

In addition to arguing that the appointment process violates racial
and sex discrimination law, we argue that the Diversity Advisory
Council’s structure rests on impermissible stereotyping rejected by
the Supreme Court, assuming individuals’ viewpoints are defined by
their sex or gender identity:

> [T]he criteria sort applicants into preferred identity groups
> without any meaningful connection to the substance of the advice
> sought. Such arbitrary distinctions, untethered to any legitimate
> government objective… therefore violate the equal protection
> clause.

We previously submitted public records requests in June and December
2025 for documents related to the Commissioners’ use of these
unconstitutional eligibility criteria and now urge the Justice
Department “to open a formal investigation into Hillsborough
County’s Board of County Commissioners and take appropriate remedial
actions.”

We frequently go to court to argue against unconstitutional diversity
practices.

In May 2025, we uncovered records
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from the U.S.
Military Academy West Point, revealing that speakers at the March 2024
“Founders Day
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event were instructed to “AVOID saying ‘removed,’
‘replaced,’ ‘deleted’ [when referring to the new mission
statement] – just refer to the ‘updated mission statement and
reinforce that the motto remains unchanged.” [Emphasis in original]
The records also tied Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts to
the mission statement controversy.

In January 2025, the City of San Francisco, CA, in a 7-3 vote by the
Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco,
authorized a settlement agreement
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in a
taxpayer lawsuit we brought against the City, agreeing to discontinue
its discriminatory guaranteed-income program funded by taxpayer money
in favor of transgender individuals with a preference for biological
black and Latino men who identify as women. The agreement commits the
city to pay $3,250 in attorney fees and costs and not to create a new
guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria.

In November 2024, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
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the U.S. Department of War for information regarding the rebranding of
West Point’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) office to
“Office of Engagement and Retention.”

In July 2023, we exposed
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from the U.S. Air Force Academy, a component of the War Department,
which included instructional materials and emails that addressed
topics such as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black
Lives Matter.

In March 2023, records
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the War Department showed the Air Force Academy had made race and
gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.

Until next week,



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