Impeachment/coup update

[WEEKLY UPDATE]

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES STATE DEPT. FOR RECORDS TIED TO ALLEGED MONITORING
OF TRUMP FAMILY AND JOURNALISTS BY AMB. MARIE YOVANOVITCH

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Judicial Watch is going to court to uncover details of the alleged
monitoring of President Trump’s family, lawyer and journalists, as
ordered by the since-recalled U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie
Yovanovitch.

The two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the State
Department for documents tied to the alleged monitoring of President
Trump's intimate circle and journalists covering him is an extension
of our Judicial Watch investigation
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which began in October 2019, into the alleged monitoring, via
CrowdTangle
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and
other means. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is alleged to have ordered
State Department entities to conduct the monitoring. The list of the
alleged targets includes:

Jack Posobiec
Donald Trump Jr.
Laura Ingraham
Sean Hannity
Michael McFaul (Obama's ambassador to Russia)
Dan Bongino
Ryan Saavedra
Rudy Giuliani
Sebastian Gorka
John Solomon
Lou Dobbs
Pamella Geller
Sara Carter
Amb. Yovanovitch reportedly ordered monitoring keyed to the following
search terms: “Biden,” “Giuliani,” “Soros” and
“Yovanovitch.”

As Judicial Watch previously reported, prior to being recalled as
ambassador to Ukraine in the spring, Yovanovitch reportedly created a
list of individuals who were to be monitored via social media and
other means. Ukraine embassy staff made the request to the Washington
D.C. headquarters office of the department's Bureau of European and
Eurasian Affairs
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After several days, Yovanovitch's staff was informed that the request
was illegal and the monitoring either ceased or was concealed via the
State Department Global Engagement Center
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which has looser restrictions on collecting information.

“This is not an obscure rule; everyone in public diplomacy or public
affairs knows they can't make lists and monitor U.S. citizens unless
there is a major national security reason,” according to a senior
State Department official. If the illicit operation occurred, it seems
to indicate a clear political bias against the president and his
supporters. Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who also has led American
embassies in Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, was appointed ambassador to
Ukraine by Obama in 2016. She was recalled by the State Department in
May and remains a State Department employee in Washington D.C.

We filed the two FOIA lawsuits after the State Department failed to
respond to October 9 and October 23, 2019 requests for documents about
both “the monitoring of any U.S.-based journalist, reporter or media
commentator by any employee or office of the Department of State”
and the CrowdTangle social media monitoring program.

On October 10, 2019, Congressman Devin Nunes told
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Sean Hannity on his program that, “What I've heard is that there
were strange requests, irregular requests to monitor not just one
journalist, but multiple journalists...” Hannity followed this
statement by adding, multiple sources also told him they “believe
there is evidence that government resources were used to monitor
communications” of U.S. journalists and that Yovanovitch may have
been involved. Yovanovitch was questioned on the issue during the
impeachment proceeding in the House and seemed to deny
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any illegal monitoring took place.

Q: “Could you help us understand how the embassy and the State
Department back in Washington collects information on social media?”

A: “I can't really answer the question, because I don't know all the
inner details of how the press section works to gather information.
But they provide us with a press summary, or they used to provide me,
I mean. They provide the embassy with a press summary and it goes out
to other people at the State Department as well.”
Q: “And is part of that monitoring social media accounts from ...”

A: “Yeah. I mean, in today's age, yeah, social media is really
important.”
So, was the Ukraine Embassy illegally monitoring American critics of
Ambassador Yovanovitch? It certainly is disturbing that the State
Department seems to be stonewalling Judicial Watch’s requests for
information on this controversy until after the impeachment of
President Trump.

Also, in November 2019, our Judicial Watch lawyers filed a lawsuit
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against the State Department seeking documents related to a reported
“untouchables list” given in late 2016 by Yovanovitch to Ukraine
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. Lutsenko told
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_The New York Times_ that Yovanovitch “pressed him not to prosecute
anti-corruption activists.” Lutsenko reportedly said
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earlier the do-not-prosecute list included a founder of the Ukraine
group Anti-Corruption Action Centre
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(AntAC), which was funded by Soros foundations, the U.S. federal
government and two members of the Ukrainian Parliament who vocally
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supported the Soros group's agenda.

FEDERAL COURT ORDERS SNAP HEARING ON AWAN BROTHERS, CONGRESSIONAL
DEMOCRAT IT SCANDAL AFTER DOJ FILES DOCUMENT UNDER SEAL

Judicial Watch is engaged in an ongoing legal battle with the Justice
Department (DOJ) for documents about the Congressional Democrat IT
(information technology) scandal involving the Awan brothers. It’s
been delay, distraction and stonewall all the way, as Justice comes up
with one excuse after another to avoid producing records we are
seeking under a November 2018 Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) lawsuit
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against
the FBI over two FOIA requests for records related to the Awan
brothers.

Well, early Monday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta
ordered
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a snap hearing on the matter midweek after the Justice Department
submitted information under seal last Friday following the court’s
demand for an explanation of why no records have been produced in the
case.

In August 2019, the Justice Department told the court that it would
begin producing records by November 5, 2019. After producing no
records, on November 13, 2019, the agency told Judicial Watch that it
was having “technical difficulties,” and in a subsequent email
claimed that “difficulties with the production remain.”

In a joint status report
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filed
on December 5, 2019, our Judicial Watch lawyers reported to the court
that the DOJ claimed in a phone call that it was now unable to produce
any records to either of the FOIA requests “because the agency was
waiting for some unspecified action by Judge [Tanya S.] Chutkan in
some other matter so as to avoid having to produce records in this
case.” In that same report, the DOJ told the court that Judge
Chutkan is “presiding over a related sealed criminal matter” that
prohibits the government from releasing the requested FOIA
information.

In the December hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta
expressed frustration and ordered the Justice Department to explain
its failure to produce records by January 10 and to provide Judicial
Watch some details about the delay. Instead, the Justice Department
made its filing under seal and failed to provide Judicial Watch with
any details about its failure to produce records as promised to the
court.

At the hearing, the Court disclosed that another court had issued a
sealed order that will impact the production of the records. The Court
seemed to recognize our frustration at the delay, especially as the
sealing order came many months after we first requested (and should
have received) documents.

Imran Awan and his family were banned from the House computer network
in February 2017 after the House’s top law enforcement officer wrote
that Imran was “an ongoing and serious risk
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to
the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of
our information systems,” and that a server containing evidence had
gone “missing.” The inspector general said server logs showed
“unauthorized access” and procurement records were falsified.

Imran Awan was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) top
information technology aide. Most lawmakers fired Awan in February,
but Wasserman Schultz kept him on until he was arrested in July 2017
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trying to board a flight for Pakistan.

In July 2018, Imran Awan was given a plea deal, and pled guilty
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to
federal bank fraud but prosecutors found no evidence that Awan
“violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems.”

The Awan brothers reportedly
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“were
not given background checks before being given access to highly
sensitive government information and no explanations have been given
as to why.” Additionally, “If they would have run this background
check it would have found out not only multiple criminal convictions,
but $1 million bankruptcy, a dozen lawsuits … it would have found a
whole host of major red flags and the Democrats didn’t do any of
those checks.”

The cover-up of the Awan Brothers Democratic IT scandal shows the
FBI’s and Justice Department’s penchant for dishonesty isn’t
just limited to FISA abuse
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The DOJ’s
handling of the Awan Brothers case has long been an issue of concern,
and now we are expected believe some secret investigation prevents the
public from knowing the full truth about this scandal? We are
skeptical but will have to wait longer. The Court ordered the
Justice Department to release more details related to the sealed order
and report next month on what of the over 50,000 pages of documents
can be released in light of the court-ordered secrecy.

RECORDS SHOW ‘DIVERSITY WORKSHOP’ INSTITUTED BY SOUTH BEND POLICE
DEPARTMENT

The City of South Bend, Indiana, and its former mayor, now-announced
presidential candidate Peter Buttigieg, have been under a cloud for
years, and we here at Judicial Watch have been digging to uncover a
number of irregularities under Buttigieg’s tenure. For example: the
creation of a municipal ID card for illegal aliens
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and secret police audio tapes of wire tapped phone calls
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of conversations that reportedly contain racist remarks by certain
South Bend police officials, which Mayor Buttigieg has been
withholding from the South Bend City Council for seven years.

And, just this week, another South Bend police peculiarity showed up
when we received 127 pages
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of
records from the South Bend Police Department (SBPD) showing the
Department offered diversity training in 2017 that includes a
“cultural competence” rating for personnel, reminiscent of the
kind of social credit score-keeping done by the Chinese communist
government. The training material also names various classes of
prejudice, including “languageism” and “sizeism.” The Mayor of
South Bend at that time was Pete Buttigieg.

The South Bend Police Department training material claims all
personnel have a measurable Cumulative Perceptual Index (CPI) rating,
which measure their “cultural competence.”
“The CPI theory posits that our behaviors and biases today may well
be rooted in our individual measurable CPI rating.” The training
material elaborates further that the CPI theory holds:

> We all have been exposed to bigotry and biases at various stages of
> our lives. What and with what levels of intensity those exposures
> took place is an important variable in our past, current and future
> interpersonal interactions. One thing that the CPI theory holds
> certain is that none of us were born with prejudices and biases. It
> also posits that all of us have had some prejudice or bias get
> dispelled in some way over time and it is that factor that can
> facilitate measurable adjustments in our CPI ratings.
In SBPD anti-discrimination police training materials, one slide
under the title “The Future of Policing” notes that:

> Black lives do indeed mater, but no more, and certainly no less than
> the lives of every community within law enforcement’s
> jurisdictions. The perceptual proof of that belief is unquestionably
> not universally present today because such a Vision is not yet
> universally shared by law enforcement.
The SBPD’s diversity workshop creators have deemed the term “deaf
and dumb” to be offensive, “implying that if an individual lacks
the sense of hearing, they are therefore intellectually deficient.”
This definition completely ignores the historical meaning of the word
“dumb” in this context, which is “mute” or “unable to
speak.” Another supposedly “inappropriate” and “offensive”
term is “hearing-impaired,” which apparently implies that “their
hearing is broken, and needs to be fixed.” The term
“racism/colorism” is, per their definition, “an attitude,
action, or practice” emphatically “backed by institutional
power.”

We obtained the records in response a June 27, 2019, Access to Public
Records Act (APRA) request for:

* Complaints against the SBPD related to bias of any kind (racial,
religious, sexual orientation, etc.) from 2015-present.
* SBPD policy documents relating to discrimination on any basis, and
training materials used by SBPD relating to discrimination of any
kind.

These documents show how South Bend police under Mayor Buttigieg had
to contend with politicized “training” that had nothing to do with
public safety.

MEXICAN POLICE CHIEF UNFAZED BY U.S. ALERT; ARRIVAL OF MIDDLE
EASTERNERS GOING NORTH IS ‘NORMAL’

The “open borders” crowd would have you believe that border
security isn’t an issue worth worrying about. Never mind the illegal
alien crime or the sheer numbers overwhelming our government (and
taxpayer) capacities. We at Judicial Watch have had an eye out on the
disturbing trend of unvetted immigrants from terrorist nations
filtering through our border, and this week’s _Corruption
Chronicles_ highlights our latest discovery:

> A January 8 U.S. Customs and Border Protection Intelligence Alert
> warning Mexico of armed Iranians planning to enter the country
> through its southern border didn’t faze a busy Mexican border
> city’s police chief, who confirms the region is full of Middle
> Easterners, Africans and Asians heading north toward the United
> States. In a Latin American news report
>
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published
> shortly after the U.S. issued the bulletin, Mexicali Police Chief
> María Elena Andrade Ramírez said, matter-of-factly, that the
> arrival of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia as well as
> the rest of the Americas is “normal” in her California border
> city of about a million residents
>
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> Nevertheless, the chief, who affirmed receiving the U.S. government
> bulletin, said she planned to cooperate and coordinate with state
> authorities to “reinforce security.”

> The alert was issued last week by the Department of Homeland
> Security (DHS) and largely ignored by the American and Mexican
> mainstream media. Only a few conservative media outlets in the
> United States reported about the warning after one obtained a DHS
> document
>
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outlining
> the threat. The document, issued by the Border Patrol’s regional
> intelligence operation center in Arizona, says that a Guatemalan
> national may try to smuggle five Middle Easterners—including a
> suicide bomber—into the United States through Mexico. The smuggler
> and four other men and a woman transited through Guatemala and
> Belize before reaching Veracruz, Mexico, according to the bulletin.
> The Guatemalan, whose name is redacted in the government document,
> was deported from California a year ago. The Spanish-language
> article linked above elaborates that American intelligence officials
> received the threat after picking up recordings distributed via
> social media. A _Mexicali_ news story cites Mexican authorities
> downplaying the situation by assuring citizens that the arrival of
> people from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and the rest of
> the Americas is “something normal
>
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> This new norm creates a serious national security crisis along the
> famously porous Southern Border, though Islamic terrorists have long
> been present in Mexico. We have investigated and reported on it for
> years, uncovering several operations involving Mexican drug cartels
> joining forces with Islamic terrorists to enter the U.S. and carry
> out attacks.

> Back in the spring of 2015, we here at Judicial Watch broke a story
>
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about
> an ISIS training facility just a few miles from the U.S. border near
> Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. At the time,
> sources including a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican
> Federal Police Inspector, confirmed that “coyotes” engaged in
> human smuggling—and working for the Juárez Cartel— help move
> ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between
> Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico. A few months later
> we exposed
>
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a
> separate scheme in which Mexican cartels smuggled foreigners from
> countries with terrorist ties into a small Texas rural town near El
> Paso, Texas.

> A few years ago, we obtained State Department documents
>
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showing
> that the government has long known that “Arab extremists” are
> entering the country through Mexico. Among them was a top Al Qaeda
> operative wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during
> his cross-border jaunts. More recently, federal statistics show that
> unprecedented numbers of migrants from terrorist nations, labeled
> Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the government, are entering the
> United States via Mexico. A congressional probe
>
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completed
> in early 2019 found an astounding 300% increase in Bangladeshi
> nationals attempting to sneak into the country through Texas alone.
> Bangladesh is a south Asian Islamic country well known as a
> recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda
> Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Before the year ended, Mexico confirmed
>
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that
> large groups of migrants from terrorist nations are in Tapachula
> awaiting asylum in the United States, and federal authorities in
> Houston arrested
>
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a
> Mexican-based Bangladeshi smuggler and charged him with bringing in
> 15 fellow countrymen through the Texas-Mexico border.

> When the Central American caravan got started in the fall of 2018,
> Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales confirmed that nearly 100
> ISIS terrorists
>
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had
> been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation.
> Guatemala has long been known as a major smuggling corridor for
> foreigners from African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries making
> their way into the United States like the Iranians identified
> recently by the feds. No wonder Mexican authorities are unfazed.
Until next week …





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