Race-Based Reparations Under Investigation

[INSIDE JW]

JUDICAL WATCH VS SCHIFF!

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In 2019 Rep. Adam Schiff, Chairman of the U.S. House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, secretly issued congressional
subpoenas for phone records as part of his impeachment abuses
President Trump.

We filed a FOIA lawsuit
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_Judicial
Watch v. v Adam Schiff and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence_
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(No.
1:19-03790)), requesting the subpoenas issued by the Committee on or
about September 30, 2019.

A lower court ruling
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in
our suit upheld the secrecy of the subpoenas. We of course challenged
that in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit. A hearing was held on March 24, and this week we released a
transcript
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of
the oral arguments.

Some background:

Our lawsuit sought the controversial impeachment-related subpoenas for
phone records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s
lawyer. (Schiff and the Committee are being represented, using your
tax dollars, by the Office of General Counsel for the House of
Representatives.)

The subpoenas led to the publication
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of
the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devin Nunes,
journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria
Toensing, and other American citizens.

Schiff and the Committee claim “sovereign immunity;” “Speech or
Debate Clause” privilege; immunity from FOIA and transparency law;
that the records are secret; and that Judicial Watch and public do not
need to see them. We are appealing the lower court decision, which
suggested that Schiff and the House have “absolute” immunity from
inquiries about the subpoenas.

Our senior attorney James Peterson argued to the three-judge panel:

This case is about shedding light on unprecedented and illegitimate
congressional subpoenas. The extraordinary subpoenas at issue
represent a supposedly unlimited government surveillance power and an
unlimited ability by Congress to, at their whim, invade the privacy of
any American.

***

Congressman Schiff secretly subpoenaed the phone records of a number
of private citizens from telephone companies. He did not provide
notice to these individuals in advance that their phone records were
being sought. He did not subpoena the phone records directly from the
citizens. Instead, he subpoenaed the phone companies for the records,
preventing any opportunity for the private citizens to seek court
review, as would happen in any other case in where the government is
seeking this kind of information about any citizen.
In response to a House attorney’s argument that the materials be
kept secret to protect the privacy of the targets of the subpoenas,
one of the appellate judges remarked:

Well, I do think it’s, if not ironic, noteworthy that one of the
interests you’ve just put forward is the invasion of privacy when
the whole claim of Judicial Watch is that this Committee invaded the
privacy of private citizens in the first place.
The Pelosi/Schiff House asserts it has an unlimited government
surveillance power and an unlimited ability to invade the privacy of
any American with zero accountability and transparency. The courts
should reject Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi’s corrupt cover-up of the
unconstitutional subpoenas that abused the civil rights of
then-President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, journalists and other American
citizens.

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES FOR RECORD ABOUT REPARATIONS PROGRAM IN EVANSTON,
ILLINOIS

One major agenda item for the extremist Left is “reparations” for
slavery. To advance this radical agenda, the city of Evanston,
Illinois pushed forward a reparations program that raises significant
legal and constitutional concerns. Judicial Watch just filed an
Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the city
for records about its controversial, taxpayer-funded
“reparations” program (_Judicial Watch v. City of Evanston _
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2021 CH 01761)).

On March 22, 2021, the Evanston City Council adopted Resolution
37-R27, authorizing the implementation of the Evanston Local
Reparations Restorative Housing Program and Program Budget. The
program allocated $10 million to provide $25,000 to Black/African
American individuals who are either Evanston residents or direct
descendants of Evanston residents to the exclusion of all other
residents or direct descendants of residents.

Concerned that this program violates the Equal Protection Clause of
the U.S. Constitution as well as other state and federal laws, we
opened an investigation into the program and requested information
under the Illinois FOIA. Specifically, we requested:

A. Records identifying discriminatory housing policies and practices
that the Restorative Housing Reparations Program seeks to remedy;

B. Records identifying the ways in which the Restorative Housing
Reparations Program will remedy discriminatory housing policies and
practices;

C. Records identifying all methods of remedying discriminatory housing
policies and practices the Evanston City Council examined before
enacting the Restorative Housing Reparations Program;

D. Records identifying all reasons why the Evanston City Council
enacted the Restorative Housing Reparations Program instead of any
alternative method of remedying discriminatory housing policies and
practices;

E. Records relating to the development of criteria by which recipients
of Restorative Housing Reparations Program funds will be selected;

F. Records identifying the ways in which providing Restorative Housing
Reparations Program funds to the selected recipients will remedy
discriminatory housing policies and practices; and

G. Records relating to any other discrimination of any kind,
regardless of racial group, the Evanston City Council considered
remedying as part of the Restorative Housing Reparations Program or
any other proposed reparation programs.
After Evanston officials failed to search for and provide the
requested records, we sued in the Circuit Court of Cook County,
Illinois. Our Illinois lawyer is Christine Svenson of Svenson Law
Offices in Chicago, Illinois.

A government program that provides taxpayer money to individuals based
on race plainly violates the law. The City of Evanston is unlawfully
hiding records about its extremist reparations program that will spend
tax dollars in a racially discriminatory manner.

DOZENS RELEASED FROM GITMO WHO RESUMED TERRORISM REMAIN AT LARGE

We can only wonder what our national security bureaucrats are thinking
— if they’re thinking at all — when we watch them carelessly
deal with Islamist terrorists who have been captured and then let go,
only to return to their chosen trade. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog
has the latest
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Dozens of captives verified by the U.S. to reengage in terrorist
activity after being released from the military prison in Guantanamo
Bay are at large, a recently declassified intelligence report
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reveals.
Recidivism among detainees freed from the compound at the U.S. Naval
base in southeast Cuba—also known as Gitmo or GTMO—is nothing new
and has been well documented for years by the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI). In its latest disturbing update, ODNI
discloses that the whereabouts of 69 former Gitmo detainees that the
government is certain returned to terrorism is unknown.

In all, 729 detainees have been released from Gitmo since the prison
opened nearly two decades ago and the ODNI says 125 have been
confirmed as reengaging in terrorism, though the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) put the figure
at 130. The top security facility houses the world’s most dangerous
Islamic terrorists, including 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
(KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al
Hawsawi as well as USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. “Based
on trends identified during the past 17 years, we assess that some
detainees currently at GTMO will seek to reengage in terrorist or
insurgent activities after they are transferred,” the latest ODNI
report states, reiterating language used in past reports. “Transfers
to countries with ongoing conflicts and internal instability as well
as recruitment by insurgent and terrorist organizations could pose an
increased risk of reengagement.”

There has been no shortage of examples of Gitmo captives rejoining
terrorist missions after the U.S. let them go. Judicial Watch
has reported
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on
it extensively after obtaining both domestic and international
documents involving the matter. Examples of recidivism among freed
Gitmo jihadists include dozens who have rejoined Al Qaeda in Yemen,
the country where the 2009 Christmas Day airline bomber proudly
trained, and several high-ranking Al Qaeda militants in Yemen involved
in a sophisticated scheme to send bombs on a U.S.-bound cargo plane. A
Gitmo alum named Mullah Abdul Rauf
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who once led a Taliban unit, established the first Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria (ISIS) base in Afghanistan. Another, Sabir Mahfouz
Lahmar, was arrested in France as part of a terrorist cell that
operated an ISIS recruiting network. The Obama administration released
Lahmar even though his Department of Defense (DOD) file
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says
he has links to “multiple terrorist plots” and as a member of the
Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) plotted with Al Qaeda to attack the
United States Embassy in Sarajevo.

The George W. Bush administration also released quite a few Gitmo
captives confirmed by the ODNI to be “directly involved in
terrorist or insurgent activities
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Among
them is a Saudi national, Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, repatriated under a
Saudi Arabian “rehabilitation” program that supposedly reforms
Gitmo jihadists but instead has served as a training camp for future
terrorists. Years after releasing al-Rubaysh, a known Al Qaeda
operative, the U.S. government put him on a global terrorist list and
offered $5 million
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for
information on his whereabouts! The State Department even classified
the “senior leader” of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
a Specially Designated Global Terrorist
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“He serves
as a senior advisor for AQAP operational planning and is involved in
the planning of attacks,” according to a State Department
announcement. “He has served as a senior AQAP sharia official since
2013, and as a senior AQAP sharia official, al-Rubaysh provides the
justification for attacks conducted by AQAP. In addition, he has
made public statements, including one in August 2014 where he called
on Muslims to wage war against the United States.”

Just a few months ago, the DOD cleared for release
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an
Al Qaeda operative classified as a “forever prisoner” because he
was once considered too dangerous to be freed. His name is Said Salih
Said Nashir and his DOD file
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says
he has ties to 9/11 conspirator Walid Bin Attash and trained at the
infamous al-Faruq camp in Afghanistan to participate in terrorist
operations against U.S. forces in Karachi, Pakistan and inside the
U.S. The document labels Nashir a high risk likely to pose a threat to
the U.S. A few years ago the Office of Military Commission’s parole
board denied
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the
Yemen national release, determining that “continued law of war
detention of the detainee remains necessary to protect against a
continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”
Until next week,



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