Judical Watch vs Schiff!
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, Judicial
Watch v. v Adam Schiff and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence (No. 1:19-03790)), requesting the subpoenas
issued by the Committee on or about September 30, 2019.
A lower
court ruling 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 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 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 (No. 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.
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 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 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, 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 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.” 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 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. “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 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 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 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.”
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