Judicial Watch Confronts Election Crisis

[INSIDE JW]

IMPEACHMENT STAR WITNESS WAS AWARE OF BURISMA CORRUPTION

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Turns out that one of the Democrats’ star witnesses in their sham
impeachment of President Trump – former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch – seemed to have been shading the
truth. Are you at all surprised?

We just received 210 pages
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of records from the State Department showing that Yovanovitch had
specifically warned in 2017 about corruption allegations against
Burisma Holdings. However, during her November 2019 testimony in the
impeachment proceedings, Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she knew
little about Burisma.

We obtained the records in response to our FOIA lawsuit
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filed in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S.
Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (_Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department
of State_
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(No. 1:20-cv-00229)).

On October 4, 2017, Michael Polt, a former ambassador to Estonia and
Serbia and who until October 2020 was Senior Director at the McCain
Institute, emailed
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Yovanovitch regarding the McCain Institute’s plan to conduct
leadership development training for Ukrainian prosecutors that would
be funded by Burisma. The idea was suggested to Polt by Sally Painter,
Burisma’s lobbyist at Blue Star Strategies, and a Burisma executive.
In the email, Polt notes that he was introduced to Painter by U.S.
special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker. Volker was also a Trump
impeachment witness.

Polt emails Yovanovitch on October 4, 2017:
Dear Masha: Greetings from the home front and all the best for your
complex assignment in Kiev! I wonder if I could pick your brain on a
leadership development we have been asked to run for Ukrainian public
prosecutors here at the McCain Institute. Kurt cannot get involved
with this, due to his other role as Special Envoy. Sally Painter of
Blue Star Strategies, whom Kurt introduced to me and then stepped
aside, together with Vadym Poharskyi of the Burisma Group have asked
us whether we could provide a two-week Leadership Development and
Professional Capacity Building program for Ukrainian public
prosecutors proposed to us by the Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor. Burisma
would fun this. We are prepared to do this, as we have done for
similar groups from the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] and
from Pakistan. I would greatly appreciate your view if you know
Burisma and/or Vadym or others.

Yovanovitch, in her response, warned Polt about Burisma, writing:

Mike: Sorry not to have responded more quickly. I will get back to you
with a fuller response, but I would urge caution in dealing with the
Burisma Group. It is widely believed that the owner was the
beneficiary of the corrupt justice system here and I think –to the
extent that anyone is aware that Burisma is funding the training
–there would be raised eyebrows in Kyiv over the irony of Burisma
training prosecutors and to what end.

I’d also note that the PGO [Prosecutor General’s Office] is one of
the entities here that remains resolutely unreformed. After a year and
a half of trying, we pulled out and reprogrammed our resources into
other areas in the justice sector that were ready for change. Wish I
had better news and will get back to you with more details.

In a November 7, 2017, email to Yovanovitch, Polt indicates that he is
taking her “sage advice” and “not moving forward” with
Burisma’s funding of the training.

During her November 15, 2019, testimony
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before the House Intelligence Committee in the impeachment
proceedings, Yovanovitch said she didn’t have much knowledge about
Burisma, and noted that she only learned of its connection to the
Biden family through “press reports” she read while preparing for
her Senate confirmation hearing.

The new production of records from the State Department also includes
several emails regarding the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv’s response to John
Solomon’s reporting for _The Hill_. The emails are almost entirely
redacted, as are the names of the officials involved. In one email
regarding this effort, an unidentified official cites a report by the
George Soros-funded Anti-Corruption Action Center defending itself
against the reporting as a “useful reference point.”

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closely monitored
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media and social media reaction to many conservatives and journalists
in potential violation of federal law.

Marie Yovanovitch knew much more about Burisma than what she revealed
in her testimony at the sham impeachment hearings. We will continue
our efforts to unearth the shady details in the Burisma-Biden scandal
that is not going to go away.

We have been busy uncovering other details of this scandal.

In October we received records
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from the State Department that included a briefing checklist of a
February 22, 2019, meeting in Kyiv between Yovanovitch and Painter.
The briefing checklist noted that Painter also planned to meet with
Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) Officer Martin Claessens “regarding
the Burisma Group energy company.”

At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President
Joe Biden, was serving on the board of directors for Burisma Holdings,
a Ukrainian energy firm, despite having no previous experience in the
energy industry. Biden served on the board of Burisma until his term
expired in April 2019.

In September 2020 we made public
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records that show George Kent, the Obama administration’s deputy
assistant secretary of state in charge of Ukraine policy, which was
copied to Yovanovitch, highlighting Russia-linked media “trolling”
Joe Biden over “his son’s business.”

In a related case we uncovered records showing the U.S. embassy in
Ukraine monitoring
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in potential violation of law, Donald Trump, Jr., Rudy Giuliani and
major journalists on Twitter on their commentary on Ukraine,
“Biden-Burisma 2020,” and George Soros. The search terms flagged
to be monitored by State Department officials on social media included
Yovanovitch, Ukraine Ambassador, Ukrainian Ambassador, Ukraine Soros,
Clinton campaign, and Biden-Burisma.

With Hunter Biden’s admission this week that the FBI is
investigating him, the Burisma scandal is a fetid mess. And no matter
what corrupted FBI and compromised DOJ do, you can trust Judicial
Watch to keep on battling in court for the truth about Biden family
corruption.

EX-CON HIRED BY D.C. AS ‘VIOLENCE INTERRUPTER’ CHARGED WITH MURDER

Your capital city, Washington D.C., is revealing the danger of the
Left’s soft on crime agenda. It’s a city clamoring
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to defund the police while hiring – and even celebrating – a man
arrested for murder. You will be appalled as you read our _Corruption
Chronicles_ report
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In a curious twist, a “reformed” criminal hired by the District of
Columbia’s chief legal officer to help curb violence has been
arrested and charged with murder. The case involves a taxpayer-funded
public safety program known as Cure the Streets
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launched by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to reduce gun violence
by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted and stopped from
spreading.

Cure the Streets typically hires men and women with criminal histories
as violence interrupters because they know first-hand about the
challenges that residents of crime-infested communities live with.
Racine, who was reelected to a second term in 2018, says the
transformed criminals hired by his program perform community-driven
public safety work that can avoid using police.

Here is how they carry out the task, according to Racine’s office:
By interrupting potentially violent conflicts because they have
relationships and influence within targeted neighborhoods. Violence
interrupters “engage with the community to learn about brewing
conflicts and resolve them peaceably before they erupt in violence,”
the program’s website states. Violence interrupters also identify
and treat individuals at high risk for involvement with violence by
meeting with them and implementing individualized risk reduction
plans. “They also help connect participants with needed services,
such as housing, counseling and employment assistance, and develop
action plans for a positive future.” Finally, the D.C. Attorney
General claims violence interrupters mobilize communities to change
norms by engaging residents, local businesses, community leaders and
faith leaders to work with high-risk individuals to reduce violence.
“CTS works with these partners to organize forums and public events
where residents can gather and interact safely without fear of
conflict and violence,” the D.C. government website claims. It is
not clear what impact Cure the Streets is having on violent crime in
the District, but the Metropolitan Police Department reports
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that homicides
are up 20% from last year.

The program operates in notoriously high-crime sections throughout
D.C., which are broken down by wards. They include Eckington/Truxton
and Trinidad in Ward 5, Marshall Heights/Benning Heights in Ward 7 and
Bellevue, Washington Highlands, and Congress Heights in Ward 8. The
Cure the Streets employee recently charged with murder was a
supervisor who led a team of six violence interrupters and outreach
workers. His name is Cotey Wynn, an ex-con with an extensive rap sheet
who served a decade in prison before D.C.’s chief legal officer
hired him. Wynn’s record
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includes felony murder, first degree murder, possession with intent to
distribute crack cocaine, and distribution of a controlled substance,
according to the Metropolitan Police Department. On December 4, the
agency’s Capital Area Fugitive Task Force arrested the 39-year-old
Wynn and charged him with second degree murder while armed. At the
time of his arrest Wynn was under the supervision of the Pretrial
Services Agency for the District of Columbia, a federal agency that
believes preventative detention should only be a last resort
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for defendants, who
should live in the least restrictive conditions while awaiting court.

Police say Wynn fatally shot a 53-year-old man named Eric Linnair
Wright in 2017 near the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast Washington.
The violence interrupter was identified by multiple witnesses after
viewing security camera footage from nearby homes, according to
police. Authorities also tracked Wynn’s cell phone to the location
of the crime. In a statement
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issued to local media, Racine’s spokesperson said this: “The
Office of the Attorney General is aware of Mr. Wynn’s arrest for a
homicide he is alleged to have committed in 2017, prior to his
employment with Cure the Streets. This case will now proceed through
our criminal justice system where Mr. Wynn is presumed innocent. We
are confident that justice will be served once this process is
complete. Our hearts go out to the family of Mr. Wright, the victim in
this case, and to the affected members of the community. The important
work of the Cure the Streets team will continue.”

It was not that long ago that the same office, charged with enforcing
D.C. laws and protecting the interest of its citizens, bragged about
what a great guy Wynn is. In a profile
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posted on
the Attorney General’s website over the summer, Wynn was portrayed
as somewhat of a saint. “When observing Cotey at work, you see a
respected professional, a loving father, a devoted friend, and a
pillar of the community,” according to the piece which includes a
photo of the accused murderer delivering resources to D.C. residents
during COIVD-19. The story also reveals that Wynn could not find a job
after a decade in prison since “the damage to his reputation made it
hard for him to find employment” so D.C. government hired him as a
violence interrupter for Cure the Streets.

Stay safe out there.

JUDICIAL WATCH CONFRONTS THE ELECTION CRISIS

Our chief investigative reporter, Micah Morrison, provides
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a good summary of our work over the years for election integrity in
his latest Investigative Bulletin:

President Trump has been pounding the bully pulpit about the integrity
of the electoral system as he battles for a second term. We know how
he feels. Judicial Watch litigation teams have been working for years
to clean up dirty voting rolls. Here’s the president in a December 2
speech
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“It’s a widely known fact that the voting rolls are packed with
people who are not lawfully eligible to vote, including those who are
deceased, have moved out of their state, and even non-citizens of our
country. Beyond this, the records are riddled with errors, wrong
addresses, duplicate entries, and many other issues.”

That’s not a surprise to Judicial Watch supporters. We’ve
extensively reported on our legal fights to clean up dirty voter
rolls, many of them in battleground states. Under the National Voter
Registration Act, states are required to remove “inactive voters”
from registration rolls if they do not respond to an address
confirmation notice and then fail to vote in the next two general
federal elections. Many “inactive voters” in fact have died or
moved to a new location.

In October, we published a groundbreaking study
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analyzing data that showed there are at least 1.8 million of these
“ghost voters” spread across more than 350 counties in 29 states.
The data revealed eight states where the number of registered voters
actually exceeds 100% of eligible voting-age citizens in the state!
That dubious distinction goes to Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland,
Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Dirty voting rolls are a breeding ground for fraud. The Judicial Watch
study “highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and
ballot applications to voter registration lists,” says Judicial
Watch President Tom Fitton. “Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty
elections.”

Earlier this year, we sued Pennsylvania for failing to make reasonable
efforts to remove ineligible voters from their rolls, as required by
the NVRA. The state set out a ludicrously low level of inactive names
eligible for removal under the NVRA, as we reported
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in October. The state initially claimed that in one county of 457,000
registrants, it had found _only eight inactive names_ eligible for
removal. In another county of 357,000 registrants, _only five names
had been removed_. In a third county of 403,000 registrants, _only
four names_ were removed.

Pennsylvania has since revised its numbers, admitting it had reported
incorrect information
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to a federal agency on the removal of ineligible voters. But even the
new figures are too low. Pennsylvania now admits that in eighteen
other counties—which together contain twenty-five percent of the
entire state’s registered voters—it removed a grand total of
fifteen inactive, ineligible voters in a two-year period.

We also went to court in Colorado, where studies have shown that a
majority of the state’s counties have registration rates that exceed
100% of the voting-age population. Our lawsuit
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charges “an ongoing, systemic problem with Colorado’s voter list
maintenance obligations.”

We filed a lawsuit
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in North Carolina for the same reason—large numbers of ineligible
voters on the state voter rolls. By our estimate, North Carolina has
nearly one million inactive voters on its rolls.

We’ve warned five states—Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina,
California, and Virginia—to clean up their dirty voter rolls
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In California, we uncovered 1.6 million inactive voters on electoral
rolls and sued, forcing Los Angeles County to clean up its act
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We’ve successfully taken on Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana as well. In
Ohio, a Supreme Court decision upheld
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a voter-roll cleanup stemming from a Judicial Watch lawsuit. In
Kentucky, we sued for a voter-roll cleanup and won
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Indiana agreed
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to clean up its rolls after Judicial Watch launched an investigation.

Judicial Watch is happy to see President Trump take on election
integrity issues. When it comes to voting rolls, he’s right. We’ll
keep fighting to clean them up, no matter who occupies the Oval
Office.

Until next week…





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