Leftists’ Plans for Election Violence

[INSIDE JW]

State Dept Officials Were Skeptical about Christopher Steele Reports

[[link removed]]
We have now received 48 pages
[[link removed]]
of emails among top Obama State Department officials and a U.S.
Ambassador expressing skepticism about Steele reports by Steele’s
London-based private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence.

Steele was the author of the Clinton-funded, anti-Trump dossier. One
assistant secretary of state says some of Steele’s reports sound
“extreme” and others “do not ring true,” while the U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine calls some Steele reports “flaky.”

We obtained the heavily-redacted emails in our FOIA lawsuit
[[link removed]]
filed on April 25, 2018, on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation
against State after it failed to respond to three separate FOIA
requests (_Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State _
[[link removed].
1:18-cv- 00968)). The lawsuit seeks:

* All records of communications between State Department officials,
including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria
Nuland, on the one hand, and British National Christopher Steele
and/or employees or contractors of Steele’s company, Orbis Business
Intelligence, on the other hand.
* All records and/or memoranda provided by Christopher Steele and/or
his firm Orbis Business Intelligence or by others acting on
Steele’s/Orbis’s behalf to State Department officials.
* Any and all records in the custody of the State Department related
to the provision of documents to British national Christopher Steele
and/or his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, or the receipt of
documents from Steele or his firm. Time period is January 20, 2009
through the present.
* All records created in 2016 by Jonathan M. Winer relating to
research compiled by Christopher Steele.

In a mostly redacted, July 1, 2014, email
[[link removed]]
exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and
Winer concerning “Two Pieces from Orbis on Russia-Ukraine,” Winer
tells Nuland at one point, “Chris is a good friend and I do trust
him. I find them fascinating snapshots too. [Redacted] I told him we
don’t leak, that would be other parts of the USG and not to
worry.”

In a July 22, 2014, email
[[link removed]],
Winer tells Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs
Paul Jones and Nuland, “I’ve told Chris Steele at Orbis I think
the material is great, and I will continue to retransmit as he sends
them to me.”

In a September 4, 2014, email
[[link removed]],
Jones tells Winer and Nuland of Steele’s reports, “Credible,
useful – tx as always!”

In a December 29, 2014, email
[[link removed]]
to Ambassador Pyatt, under the subject line “O [Orbis] Report: Coal
Scandal and Ukrainian Politics,” Nuland says, “This is one of
those industry intel reports. Rings a bit extreme to me. You guys?

Winer sends an almost completely redacted email
[[link removed]]
on February 12, 2015 to his assistant Miller instructing her to
forward “high side to three usual persons” (Nuland, Jones and
himself) an “O” [Orbis] report “concerning company said to be
secretly owned by Putin, Putin’s Mistress and Friends.”

In a declassified but heavily redacted, March 23, 2015, email
[[link removed]]
from Nuland to Jones, Winer and his special assistant Nina Miller,
under the subject line: “RE: O Report, March 13 – Growing
Political Instability In Kiev and Yulia’s Return to Power?” Nuland
remarks, “Some of this rings true, some not. [Redacted]”

In an otherwise redacted November 9, 2015, email to Nuland, under the
subject line “Three Recent O [Orbis] Reports on Ukraine Security and
Politics,” United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt says,
“So I would put this in the same category as their other flaky
reports.”

In a February 2018 op-ed
[[link removed]]
in _The Washington Post_ Winer admitted to working with Steele on the
dossier. Winer told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he
“destroyed all the correspondence
[[link removed]
he had with Steele, apparently at Steele’s request.

“The sad truth is due to the over-redactions by a government intent
on hiding the truth from its own people, it's not really easy to make
out what’s fully going on from this newest batch of documents. It is
becoming clearer that there were unprecedented levels of collusion
between Obama administration officials and outside partisans in an
effort to harm Trump, even though some government officials recognized
that Christopher Steele's intel was questionable at best,” said
Daily Caller News Foundation President Neil Patel. “Our lawsuit with
Judicial Watch will keep going until we get all the truth out to the
American people.”

Christopher Steele had a willing partner with the Obama State
Department – despite top officials having little confidence in his
work. These documents demonstrate that the Obama administration had
multiple warning signs that Steele was unreliable—yet they used his
garbage Dossier to target and spy on President Trump.

Here’s some background.

In September 2019, we released 146 pages
[[link removed]]
of documents revealing that Steele had an extensive and close working
relationship dating back to May of 2014 with high-ranking Obama State
Department officials including Winer and Nuland. Judicial Watch also
uncovered documents
[[link removed]]
showing that less than a month before the presidential inauguration
Winer had a 10-minute phone call with Alexey Vladimirovich Skosyrev,
the “political chief” at the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC.

In July 2019, we released 84 pages
[[link removed]]
of documents revealing an email exchange between Nuland and Winer,
discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter” in
New York in September 2016.

In June 2019 we released 41 pages
[[link removed]]
of documents from the State Department revealing that Winer played a
key role in facilitating Steele’s access to other top government
officials and prominent international business executives. Winer was
even approached by a movie producer about making a movie about the
Russiagate targeting of President Trump.
Well, it does read like a spy novel.

THE LEFT’S PLAN FOR ELECTION VIOLENCE

Don’t think the Leftist violence in our streets is random. With the
weakest presidential candidate in history, the Democrats are relying
on a backup plan. We’ve looked into this extensively, as Micah
Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, describes
[[link removed]]
in his _Investigative Bulletin_.

With Donald Trump out of the hospital, the presidential race takes a
final turn into the home stretch. Judicial Watch has been highlighting
one largely overlooked aspect of the race: the Left’s plan to
violently challenge election results. The plan was detailed in a
document from a magically appearing new group, the Transition
Integrity Project. They released an ostensibly bi-partisan report
[[link removed]],
“Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election.”

I wrote
[[link removed]]
about the TIP report in August. In September, our investigative team
followed up with a detailed deep dive, “The Militant Left’s Plan
to Disrupt the 2020 Presidential Election.
[[link removed]
It is disturbing reading.

The main takeaway from the Judicial Watch special report? This is not
simply the thinking of a group of nutty left-wing academics and
activists, but a document straight from the center of the Democratic
Party.

The figure at the heart of the Transition Integrity Project is John
Podesta, the senior strategist for the Democratic Party. Podesta was a
top aide to presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, founder of the
influential liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, and
chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. For the
electoral “war games” mapped out in the TIP report, Podesta played
Joe Biden.

TIP “is a collection of professional Democratic operatives and
Republican ‘Never Trumpers,’” the Judicial Watch report notes.
“Organizers and leaders include Georgetown law professor Rosa
Brooks, Nils Gilman of the ‘independent’ Berggruen Institute in
California,” and Podesta. Anti-Trump Republicans in the group
include Michael Steele, David Frum, and Bill Kristol.

Judicial Watch’s disturbing conclusion? The publication of the TIP
report “is an information warfare strategy employed for
revolutionary political purposes.” It’s a sophisticated action
plan that includes cultivating an anti-Trump electoral consensus in
the media; planning for “a street fight, not a legal battle;”
leveling a vast array of criminal accusations against the president
and his team; co-opting an already sympathetic federal bureaucracy
into the anti-Trump effort; and pressuring the military, law
enforcement, and state-level civil servants.

The TIP call to violence is subtle at times but the smell of gunpowder
is unmistakable. The Judicial Watch report cites numerous outrageous
scenarios advanced by TIP: the president will commit elections crimes;
he will rob the federal till; encourage chaos and violence; use the
military to advance his electoral aims; initiate a crisis for his own
benefit; refuse to leave the White House. Trump is “ruthless,” but
Biden is “constrained.”

The media is already getting the message. To halt Trump corruption,
one New York Times columnist wrote
[[link removed]],
people “may have to put their bodies on the line in a way that few
living Americans have experienced.”

Read the full Judicial Watch special report here
[[link removed]].

AFTER CHINESE STEAL BILLIONS IN RESEARCH, WE FINALLY BAN THEM

China has for years sought to steal U.S. research, and the cost has
been staggering. The Trump Administration has now taken action against
this wholesale espionage, as our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog reports
[[link removed]].


The U.S. government has finally issued an official policy on the
inadmissibility of foreigners affiliated with Communist or
totalitarian parties. The critical new rule appears to be the Trump
administration’s response to an epidemic of Communists, mainly from
China, that have stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded
scientific research while working in the United States with Uncle
Sam’s permission. This month U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that administers the
nation’s lawful immigration system, published details of the
Communist ban in an updated USCIS Policy Manual
[[link removed]].
Many Americans may wonder why
it took so long.

“Membership in or affiliation with the Communist Party or any other
totalitarian party is inconsistent and incompatible with the
Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America,
which includes pledging to support and defend the Constitution and
laws of the United States,” according to a USCIS statement
[[link removed]]
announcing the new measure. The agency continues to explain that,
“in general, unless otherwise exempt,” immigrants with domestic or
foreign Communist or totalitarian affiliations are inadmissible to the
U.S. Indeed, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952
authorizes the exclusion of immigrants
[[link removed]]
on the basis of membership in or affiliation with the Communist or any
other totalitarian party. The problem is that the government has
failed to enforce the policy for decades. A rule in the books will
help officers adjudicate the “inadmissibility ground consistent with
federal law,” according to USCIS, which adds that it will also
provide “guidance” in the “context of adjustment of status
applications.”

The new chapter
[[link removed]]
of the
USCIS manual says the admissibility ground applies to past or present
membership or affiliations with Communist parties. Officers are
directed to determine whether the organization is Communist or
totalitarian. Next, they are to determine whether the alien’s
connection to the organization rises to the level of membership in or
affiliation with such organization. After that, federal officers must
decide if the membership or affiliation was “meaningful.”
Regulations define the Communist party as: The Communist Party of the
United States; the Communist Political Association and the Communist
Party of any foreign state or political or geographical subdivision as
well as other branches, affiliates and subdivisions. Totalitarian
parties are defined as organizations that advocate the establishment
in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship or
totalitarianism. This refers to systems of government characterized by
a single political party and organized on a dictatorial basis. When
considering whether an alien is a threat to the security of the United
States, USCIS says it considers factors such as espionage, terrorism,
subversion, and risks to intellectual property.

The latter appears to be the force behind this new policy. The U.S.
government has long permitted Communists working in the U.S. to steal
billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded research. Many of them work at
public universities throughout the country or at government agencies
such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science
Foundation (NSF) or national laboratories affiliated with the
Department of Energy (DOE). For decades many of the institutions have
been deeply impacted by Chinese infiltrators stealing highly valuable
intellectual property. A U.S. Senate investigation determined that,
not only has American-funded research long been stolen by China, the
work is helping the Communist nation meet its goal of becoming a world
leader in science and technology. China uses hundreds of
government-funded talent recruitment plans to incentivize individuals
engaged in research and development in the U.S, transmit information
in exchange for salaries, research funding, lab space and other perks.
The Communists then use the American research for their own economic
and military gain.

Thankfully, the Trump administration appears to be addressing the
problem. Earlier this year, the NIH fired dozens
[[link removed]]
of scientists over their secret financial ties to Communist China. It
is not clear how long they went undetected or how much taxpayer-funded
research they stole, but at the time some 54 scientists got booted for
failing to disclose a troubling financial arrangement with a foreign
government. In the overwhelming majority of cases—93%—the cash
came from China, according to an ongoing NIH investigation
[[link removed]]
that started two years ago. Also, in most of the probes the targets
were Asian men in their 50s. The bulk of the ousted researchers
received generous grants from the NIH, which has an eye-popping $41.7
billion
[[link removed]]
annual budget. Every year the NIH invests tens of billions of dollars
[[link removed]]
in medical research
by giving around 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers at
more than 2,500 universities, medical schools and other institutions
throughout the country. Only 10% of the agency’s budget supports
projects conducted by scientists in its own lab in Bethesda Maryland.

Chinese infiltrators have been stealing valuable research from the
U.S. government for decades. In fact, more than 20 years ago Judicial
Watch helped expose a Chinese Communist scientist (Wen Ho Lee), who
stole nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos National
[[link removed]]
Laboratory in New Mexico,
among the world’s largest science institutions and the nation’s
key nuclear weapons research facility. The Bill Clinton Justice
Department refused to prosecute Lee because then Attorney General
Janet Reno claimed the accusations against him were racist. Judicial
Watch represented the whistleblower
[[link removed]],
Notra Trulock, responsible for launching an investigation into Lee’s
actions. Trulock was the DOE’s intelligence operations chief and
Clinton administration officials defamed him by accusing him of being
a racist to cover up Lee’s repeated and embarrassing security
violations.

JUDICIAL WATCH IS SUING TO COLORADO TO CLEAN UP ITS VOTER ROLLS

Too many jurisdictions are lax and sloppy with their voter rolls –
and in violation of federal law. This week we’ve filed suit in
Colorado.
We sued on behalf of Judicial Watch and three residents of Colorado
against Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State, and the State of
Colorado for failing to clean the state’s voter rolls as required by
the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA
[[link removed]])
(_Judicial Watch et al. v. Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State
and State of Colorado_
[[link removed]]
(No. 1:20-cv-02992)).

In the suit we argue:

* A 2019 study showed that 40 of Colorado’s 64 counties had voter
registration rates exceeding 100% of the eligible citizen voting-age
population. The share of Colorado counties with registration rates
exceeding 100% was the highest in the nation.
* A study from last month confirmed that as many as 39 Colorado
counties had registration rates exceeding 100% at any one time during
the relevant reporting period.
* Data Colorado itself provided to the federal Election Assistance
Commission (EAC) showed that Colorado was lagging in the processing
and removal of certain classes of ineligible registrations belonging
to those who had moved out of state.
* In eight Colorado counties, more than one in six registrations
belonged to an inactive voter.

We note that registration rates over 100%, poor processing of
out-of-date registrations, and high levels of inactive registrations
“indicate an ongoing, systemic problem with Colorado’s voter list
maintenance efforts.” Colorado’s “failure to comply with their
… voter list maintenance obligations” injures lawfully registered
voters by “undermining their confidence in the integrity of the
electoral process, discouraging their participation in the democratic
process, and instilling in them the fear that their legitimate votes
will be nullified or diluted.”

We have asked the court to declare that Colorado and its Secretary of
State are violating the NVRA and to order them to “develop and
implement a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove
the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls in
Colorado …”

It is a direct threat to free and fair elections that with record
numbers of mail-in ballots this cycle, over half of Colorado counties
have more people registered to vote than are eligible to register.
With its inaction, Colorado has failed its citizens and opened itself
up to potentially be the victim of massive voter fraud.

Earlier this year, we sued Pennsylvania
[[link removed]]
and
North Carolina
[[link removed]]
for failing to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters
from their rolls as required by federal law. The lawsuits allege that
the two states have nearly 2 million extra names on voter registration
rolls.

In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a voter-roll cleanup program that
resulted from a Judicial Watch settlement of a federal lawsuit with
Ohio
[[link removed]].
California settled
[[link removed]]
a NVRA lawsuit with Judicial Watch and last year began the process of
removing up to 1.6 million inactive names from Los Angeles County’s
voter rolls. Kentucky
[[link removed]]
also began a cleanup of hundreds of thousands of old registrations
last year after it entered into a consent decree to end another
Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In September 2020, we sue Illinois
[[link removed]]
for refusing to disclose voter roll data in violation of Federal law.


Our 2019 study found 378 counties nationwide that had more voter
registrations than citizens old enough to vote, i.e., counties where
registration rates exceed 100%. These 378 counties combined had about
2.5 million registrations over the 100%-registered mark.

STOPPING CALIFORNIA’S DIVERSITY QUOTAS FOR CORPORATE BOARDS

We have filed a lawsuit
[[link removed]]
in the Superior Court of the State of California County of Los Angeles
on behalf of three California taxpayers to prevent California from
enforcing Assembly Bill 979 (AB 979), which Governor Gavin Newsom
signed into law on September 30, 2020.

The bill requires that boards of directors of California-based,
publicly held domestic or foreign corporations to satisfy racial,
ethnicity, sexual preference and transgender status quotas by the end
of the 2021 calendar year. A Senate Floor Analysis says the bill draws
distinctions based on race and ethnicity, and therefore, it is
“suspect,” and that “the existence of general societal
discrimination will not ordinarily satisfy courts.” We sued a few
hours after Governor Newsom signed the new quota law.

AB 979 requires publicly held corporations to have a minimum of one
director from an “underrepresented community” on its board by the
end of the 2021 calendar year and up to three
“underrepresented-community” board members by the end of the 2022
calendar year, depending on the size of the board. The bill defines
[[link removed]]
“director from an underrepresented community” to mean “an
individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic,
Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or
Alaska Native, or who self-identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or
transgender.”

We filed the lawsuit (_Robin Crest, et al. v. Alex Padilla, in his
official capacity as Secretary of State of the State of California _
[[link removed]))
the same day Governor Newsom signed the bill in order to prevent the
Secretary of State’s office from expending taxpayer funds and
taxpayer-financed resources to implement the law and/or ensure
compliance with AB 979’s racial, ethnic, sexual preference and
transgender-based quotas. According
[[link removed]]
to the Assembly Appropriations Committee AB 979 “will result in
ongoing costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to gather
demographic information and compile a report on this data on its
internet website.”

In our complaint we argue
[[link removed]


* Any expenditure of taxpayer funds or taxpayer-financed resources
on AB 979 is illegal under the California Constitution. The
legislation’s requirement that certain corporations appoint a
specific number of directors based upon race, ethnicity, sexual
preference, and transgender status is immediately suspect and
presumptively invalid and triggers strict scrutiny review by the
court.
* Because it classifies directors by virtue of their race,
ethnicity, sexual preference, or transgender status, AB 979 can only
be justified by a compelling governmental interest, and its use of
race and ethnicity must be narrowly tailored to serve that compelling
interest.
* As California cannot make these difficult showings, AB 979 is
unconstitutional and any expenditure of taxpayer funds or
taxpayer-financed resources in furtherance of, ensuring compliance
with, or otherwise effectuating the racial, ethnicity, sexual
preference, and transgender quotas required by AB 979 is
illegal.


The Floor Analysis produced by the California Senate during
deliberation on the bill identified
[[link removed]]
“potential constitutional issues posed by” AB 979. It described AB
979 as “requiring certain corporations to appoint a certain number
of directors who self-identify as Black, African American, Hispanic,
Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or
Alaskan Native” and noted that, under the California Constitution,
“a statute that draws a distinction based upon race or ethnicity in
this fashion – whether remedial or punitive in intent – is suspect
and only passes constitutional muster if it can meet the strict
scrutiny test: that the statute is narrowly drawn to meet a compelling
government interest.” The analysis also stated, “the existence
of general societal discrimination will not ordinarily satisfy the
courts.”

Judicial Watch asks
[[link removed]]
the court to halt the quota law:

A judgment declaring any and all expenditures of taxpayer funds and
taxpayer-financed resources in furtherance of, ensuring compliance
with, or otherwise effectuating the racial, ethnicity, sexual
preference, and transgender quotas required by AB 979 to be illegal;
and

An injunction permanently prohibiting Defendant from expending or
causing the expenditure of taxpayer funds and taxpayer-financed
resources in furtherance of, ensuring compliance with, or otherwise
effectuating the racial, ethnicity, sexual preference, and transgender
quotas required by AB 979.
In a related case, we are prosecuting a taxpayer lawsuit
[[link removed]]
that challenges California’s gender quotas (Crest et al. v. Padilla,
(No.19ST-CV-27561)). In June, in a major development, the court held
that our clients have standing to sue under state law and our
attorneys are now in discovery, which could involve deposition
testimony of various California officials.

California’s government has a penchant for quotas that are brazenly
unconstitutional. Gender quotas and now new quotas for numerous other
groups for corporate boards are slaps in the face to the core American
value of equal protection under the law. While California skirts
bankruptcy and burns up due to fiscal abandon, its leftist political
leadership would waste tax dollars to implement illegal and divisive
quotas.

JUDICIAL WATCH CONTESTED VIRGINIA OFFICIALS’ SECRET MEETING ON BLM
RIOT

We were in the Prince William Circuit Court in Manassas, VA, this week
regarding the state’s open meetings law, which was violated by a
meeting held by the Democrat members of the Prince William County
Board of Supervisors in May. The meeting discussed the police response
to BLM riots.

In July 2020, we asked the court
[[link removed]]
to mandate the Prince William County Board of supervisors to comply
with Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act/ open meeting law (_Gloss
et al. v Wheeler et al._
[[link removed]]
(No. 20-7521)). The lawsuit is being brought together with three
Prince William County residents and their Virginia counsel, McSweeny,
Cynkar and Kachouroff, PLLC.

The Prince William Circuit Court is considering whether the Democrat
members of the board violated law by holding a meeting in secret,
without notice to any Republican supervisor or advance notice to the
public as required by law.

On Saturday night May 30, various protests and rioting occurred in
Prince William County, resulting in numerous injuries to police
officers and extensive property damage. Police officers reportedly
used tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.
The next day, a meeting of the police department’s Citizen Advisory
Board was held. All five Democrat supervisors attended the meeting,
but the board’s three Republican members were not notified of the
meeting and did not attend. The individual who chairs the Citizen’s
Advisory Board is the husband of one of the Democrat supervisors.

As explained in the lawsuit
[[link removed]],
the Democrat supervisors violated Virginia’s Freedom of Information
Act/open meeting law by holding a meeting in secret, without notice to
any Republican supervisor nor advance notice to the public as required
by law. Virginia law prohibits any gathering of two or more members of
the same public body if public business is transacted or discussed.
While no votes were cast during the meeting, the Democrat members
posed questions and provided directives to the police leadership to
curtail the use of crowd control measures in future disturbances. As
set forth in the lawsuit, this constituted a discussion of public
business in violation of Virginia Code section 2.2.-3707(A).

Always at the center of the American story, Virginia has become part
of the testing ground for the key principles of our Republic. And
Judicial Watch is taking action.

Until next week …





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