Trump Indictment is More Biden Abuse of Power
Delaware Supreme Court Hearing in Biden Senate Records Lawsuit
Judicial Watch Sues Justice for Details on Special Counsel Smith’s Staff
Record Number on FBI Terror Watchlist Caught Crossing into U.S. Via Mexico
Trump Indictment is More Biden Abuse of Power
Yesterday, the Biden Justice Department indicted former President Trump. That day will go down in infamy.
The unprecedented and corrupt indictment of Trump is built on sand and is brazen election interference. It is an indictment about nothing. Biden’s further transforming of the FBI and Justice Department into political enforcers in order to jail his leading political opponent could lead to the end of our constitutional republic. The indictment has followed years of prosecutorial misconduct, harassment, and abuse victimizing Trump. Not only is Trump innocent but he is a crime victim.
Joe Biden wants to distract from his own personal corruption and join the ranks of foreign dictators by jailing and turning Trump into a political prisoner. Congress should act immediately and do everything possible under the law to undo this attempt to wreck our republican form of government. Every candidate for public office should denounce this attack on our elections.
Let’s hope the courts recognize this sham indictment for what it is and shut it down. In the meantime, Judicial Watch will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for its role in the worst corruption scandal in American history – the effort to abuse and destroy President Trump!
Delaware Supreme Court Hearing in Biden Senate Records Lawsuit
We’ll move a step forward next week in our effort to undo the coverup of Joe Biden’s Senate records held in secret by the University of Delaware.
A hearing will be held in the Supreme Court of Delaware on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, in the FOIA lawsuit we filed on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation regarding the secret deal keeping President Biden’s Senate records from being made public (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. University of Delaware (No. N20A-07-001)).
The Supreme Court of Delaware proceeding will be available for viewing here: https://livestream.com/delawaresupremecourt/events/10842485
We filed an April 30, 2020, FOIA request for:
- All records regarding the proposed release of the records pertaining to former Vice President Joe Biden’s tenure as a Senator that has been housed at the University of Delaware Library since 2012. This request includes all related records of communication between the University of Delaware and any other records created pertaining to any meeting of the Board of Trustees during which the proposed release of the records was discussed.
- All records of communication between any representative of the University of Delaware and former Vice President Biden or any other individual acting on his behalf between January 1, 2018, and the present.
On April 30, the Daily Caller News Foundation submitted its FOIA request to the University for:
- All agreements concerning the storage of more than 1,850 boxes of archival records and 415 gigabytes of electronic records from Joe Biden’s senate career from 1973 through 2009.
- Communications between the staff of the University of Delaware Library and Joe Biden or his senatorial, vice-presidential or political campaign staff, or for anyone representing any of those entities between 2010 [April 30,2020] about Joe Biden’s senate records.
- Any logs or sign-in sheets recording any individuals who have visited the special-collections department where records from Joe Biden’s senate career are stored between 2010 to the date of this request.
- All records from Joe Biden’s Senate career that have been submitted to the University of Delaware Library.
In response to both requests, the university claimed, without corroboration, that public funds are not used to support the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Senate papers.
In January 2023, we and the Daily Caller News Foundation filed an appeal brief in the Delaware Supreme Court after the Superior Court sided with the university.
Later that same month, we asked the Supreme Court of Delaware for limited discovery, including, at a minimum, deposing a university representative. The brief argued:
Despite FOIA’s acknowledgment that “public entities, as instruments of government, should not have the power to decide what is good for the public to know,” over the multi-year course of this FOIA proceeding, the University’s efforts to satisfy its statutory burden of proof have been parceled out piecemeal, in minuscule increments, and only in response to court orders, entered after briefing by Appellants. When the shortcomings of the University’s effort are noted in briefing, the University calls “foul.” The University’s umbrage at these proceedings is misplaced. To date, the FOIA Coordinator’s efforts (and her recollections of what steps she took) remain untested by cross examination. Appellants have every right to challenge what they believe has been a lackluster effort by the University to satisfy its statutory burden.
While in the Senate, Biden served as chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which would have given him access to classified records. Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, stated in January 2023 that classified Senate records were discovered during a search at Biden’s Wilmington, DE, home:
The Justice Department “took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate …”
In January 2023, Special Counsel Robert Hur was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s potential mishandling of classified documents.
“No more obfuscation. No more excuses. It’s time for the University of Delaware to answer for its refusal to release Biden’s Senate records,” said Michael Bastasch, editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The sketchy secrecy on the Biden Senate records and his deal with the University of Delaware need to end. And President Biden could end the dispute by simply releasing the details about his Senate records. What is Biden hiding?
Judicial Watch Sues Justice for Details on Special Counsel Smith’s Staff
Jack Smith just indicted President Trump but he and his Justice Department don’t want to tell us who is working on the special counsel team abusing Trump and other innocents!
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Joe Biden’s Justice Department for records disclosing the names of staffers working in Special Counsel Smith’s office on two investigations targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01485)).
Given the overwhelming evidence of anti-Trump bias disclosed in the Durham Report, it is urgent that Americans be able to find out who is again investigating Trump from the Garland Justice Department and his appointee Jack Smith. Special Prosecutor Smith isn’t above the law, and the American people have the right to know about just who is working on his unprecedented and politicized anti-Trump investigation.
We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department rejected a December 9, 2022, FOIA request for staff rosters or similar records that would identify the names of Smith’s employees.
Justice responded on April 12, stating that records responsive to our request have been located but are being withheld “pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(A)” of FOIA:
Exemption 6 pertains to information the release of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Exemption 7(A) pertains to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November to take over two investigations involving Trump, who is running for president in 2024.
The first investigation involves Trump’s handling of classified documents he retained at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, residence after leaving the White House in January 2021.
The second investigation regards Trump’s challenge of the 2020 presidential election results, which allegedly included a plan to submit separate slates of electors to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
Garland named Smith to the position three days after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024. Smith previously was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them.
This isn’t our first effort to shine some light on agency staffs. Through FOIA, we uncovered information about Special Counsel’s Mueller’s budget and staff. We also sued for and obtained records for the budget of Special Counsel John Durham. We also uncovered calendar entries of Mueller special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann showing that he led the hiring effort for the investigation that targeted President Trump.
In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section at Justice about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Government officials were looking to step up a probe into requests for tax-exemption from organizations with conservative sounding names like “Tea Party” and other “political sounding names,” according to a later report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general. Smith appears to have been a key player in this attempt to silence conservative voices.
According to the documents we obtained, Smith directed the head of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch, Richard Pilger, to meet with the director of the IRS’s Tax-Exempt Organizations division, Lois Lerner. In one email we obtained, Lerner discusses an idea that the Justice Department could build “false-statement cases” against tax-exempt conservative groups.
We later obtained additional documents detailing a planning meeting between Justice Department, FBI and IRS officials about possible criminal prosecutions. Thanks to our disclosures, House investigators discovered that the IRS improperly turned over confidential tax records of non-profit organizations to the FBI—sparking a public uproar and forcing the return of the records to the IRS. Read more about the case here.
I’ll keep you apprised as events warrant on this important lawsuit.
Record Number on FBI Terror Watchlist Caught Crossing into U.S. Via Mexico
If you’re going to throw the border wide open, you can expect all kinds of scoundrels to come rushing over. Our Corruption Chronicles blog describes a very serious class of illegals.
While the Biden administration and its media allies highlight that illegal immigration has dropped considerably since the termination of a Trump-era restriction, a record number of suspected terrorists have been caught trying to enter the U.S. through Mexico. Not surprisingly, mainstream news reports have focused on the positive effect that the expiration of a COVID-related rule known as Title 42 has had on migration. One story claims encounters between federal agents and illegal aliens have dropped by half since the administration nixed the emergency public health order implemented by Trump to quickly expel migrants from the country. Another celebrates that the measure’s expiration has “brought fewer migrant arrivals than expected” and quotes Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying that the number of migrants at the southwest border is “markedly down over what they were prior to the end of Title 42.”
In the meantime, a record number of people who appear on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) terror watchlist have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents this fiscal year. In April alone, the frontline Homeland Security agency caught 16 foreigners who appear on the nation’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) trying to enter the country through the southern border, according to the latest government figures. The TSDB contains thousands of records that are updated daily and shared with federal state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement as well as the intelligence community and international partners to “ensure that individuals with links to terrorism are appropriately screened,” according to the FBI. The April figure is more than the total terrorists caught in four previous years—2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 combined. With more than three months till the end of the fiscal year, Border Patrol agents have already encountered 98 migrants that appear on the TSDB list.
The unprecedented figures have caused incredible alarm in Congress and lawmakers who serve on several committees—including Homeland Security, Counterterrorism, Judiciary and Oversight—have launched investigations. Last month they fired off letters demanding answers from Mayorkas, who was shamefully ousted as a Bill Clinton federal prosecutor after orchestrating the pardon of a big-time southern California drug dealer. The first letter warns the DHS secretary that the House Oversight, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees are investigating how his agency is handling “the elevated national security risk presented by an increasing number of aliens with terrorist ties illegally crossing the southwest border into the United States.” Since Biden began reversing policies deterring illegal border crossings the nation has faced historic levels of illegal immigration and the number of individuals with “derogatory information in terrorist screening databases illegally crossing the southwest border has also skyrocketed,” the lawmakers write. They are seeking documents of those apprehended on the southwest border with terrorist ties to assess the national security risk created by terrorist infiltration and determine if DHS handles the cases correctly.
A few days later, a separate group of legislators demanded information on the arrest of two men—an Afghan and a Pakistani—on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in mid-May. The Afghan national was apprehended near San Diego, California along with a group that had just crossed the border illegally. The Pakistani national was arrested by federal agents in southeastern Arizona one day after the celebrated expiration of Title 42. In a letter to Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray members of the House Homeland Security, Intelligence and Counterterrorism committees demand to know where the individuals are being held, what terrorist groups they are associated with, when DHS and the FBI became aware of their intentions to travel to the U.S., what was their path of travel and what financial support they received. “These reported arrests raise serious questions about the security of our Southwest border and the potential for terrorists to take advantage of the glaring vulnerabilities due to the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border policies,” the letter states, adding that witnesses warned at a recent congressional hearing that the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan has left a security vacuum in the region that could result in further terrorist encounters at the southern border.
Until next week …
