Judicial Watch Warns Utah to Provide Access to Voter Registration Lists
USAID Won’t Reveal Aid Recipients in Gaza
Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Walz’s Chinese Communist Connections
DC Police Department Wants $1.5 Million for January 6 Bodycam Footage
Biden Administration Considered Using Federal Lands for Abortions, Funded Protection against ‘Grave Health Threats’ from Climate Change

Judicial Watch Warns Utah to Provide Access to Voter Registration Lists

We sent a letter to Lt. Governor Deidre M. Henderson, notifying her that Utah is currently in violation of the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993’s (NVRA) public disclosure requirements. The notice letter warns of a lawsuit after 90 days if the issues are not resolved.

We explain that the NVRA was intended both to “increase the number of eligible citizens who register” and “to protect the integrity of the electoral process’ and ‘ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained.” It requires states to maintain “for at least 2 years” and “make available for public inspection” all records concerning the implementation of programs conducted for ensuring the accuracy of voter rolls.

Our review of Utah voter registration law found it fails to ensure compliance with federal “record maintenance and public disclosure requirements” and limits the public’s ability to conduct reasonable election integrity analysis. “This absence of necessary provisions in Utah’s voter registration law directly contravenes the federal mandate under the NVRA.”

In July 2022, we settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections, requiring it to grant access to its centralized statewide list of registered voters. State officials had refused to allow the nonprofit Illinois Conservative Union and three lawfully registered Illinois voters to obtain a copy of the state’s voter registration list, despite their lawful request for those records under federal law.

In short, Utah law makes it impossible – and even illegal – to use voter registration lists to monitor for fraud and accuracy. This is at odds with federal law and undermines election integrity.

As several federal courts have recognized, the public records provisions of the National Voter Registration Act were intended to enhance the ability of private groups to monitor whether states are removing ineligible voters from their voter rolls. In April 2020, a federal court in Maryland noted that organizations “such as Judicial Watch” have “the resources and expertise that few individuals can marshal. By excluding these organizations from access to voter registration lists,” the purpose of the federal law is undermined. That court ordered Maryland to produce complete voter registration records we requested.

In recent years, Judicial Watch has caused the removal of four million names from the voter rolls.

 

USAID Won’t Reveal Aid Recipients in Gaza

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been much in the news lately as Elon Musk uncovers its secrets. We’ve been investigating it for a long time.

It continues to hide the identities of recipients of $27 million in grants awarded to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” that were designated for use in Gaza and that we have been seeking.

A status conference on our lawsuit is scheduled for today before Judge Reggie B. Walton of U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas—a U.S.-designated terrorist organization—invaded southwest Israel, killing over a thousand people and kidnapping hundreds of others.

We sued in July 2024 after the USAID failed to respond to an April 2, 2024, Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:24-cv-02159)) that asks for:

• All records identifying the recipients of USAID funding under the $7,000,000 grant allocation awarded on or about November 15, 2023, and associated with Federal Award Identification Number 720BHA24GR00005.
• All proposals, applications, scope of work documents, or similar records related to any grant award or sub-award associated with Federal Award Identification Number 720BHA24GR00005.

USAID has produced records but refuses to disclose what organizations received the money.

USAID justifies its secrecy as protecting trade secrets, financial information, and privacy:

(b)(4) Program design elements, technical approaches, detailed implementation plans, and related financial information is business confidential information. If released, the availability of this information to the public will cause substantial harm to awardee’s competitive position in the private voluntary organization community.

(b)(6) Parties to the conflict in Gaza have specifically targeted and killed aid workers, targeted relief agency operations and targeted and destroyed health facilities and other civilians targets. Due to highly challenging and unpredictable operating environments for humanitarian organizations, this exemption is required to protect the employees and beneficiaries of the NGOs working in Gaza from harassment and violence.

Disclosure of the name of the NGO would allow third‐parties to determine the identities of the employees and beneficiaries.

(b)(6) Personal information to include names, job titles and emails due to safety & security concerns.

On November 15, 2023, the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, a component of the USAID, issued a $7 million grantfor “multisectoral response in Gaza.” The grant was awarded to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.” The same day a “continuation” grant of $20 million was also issued for “multisectoral response.” USAID reported that over $282 million was obligated to the West Bank and Gaza in fiscal year 2023.

President Trump recently fired Paul Martin, USAID inspector general, after he published a report that was critical of the Trump administration’s pause on aid. It was recently discovered that USAID provided “millions of dollars in funding to extremist groups tied to designated terrorist organizations and their allies, according to a report published by Middle East Forum, a U.S. think tank.”

In July 2024, the Office of the Inspector General for USAID issued a report titled “Assessment of USAID’s Oversight Policies to Prevent the Diversion of Assistance to Hamas and Other

Terrorist Organizations” in which it states:

The USAID Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG) provides independent oversight of USAID’s programs, operations, and personnel and has previously identified USAID-funded assistance to Gaza as being at high risk for diversion and misuse.

***

Regarding the UN’s processes for vetting their own staff, USAID Administrator Samantha Power noted—following allegations that officials working for UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] engaged in the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel—“obviously the vetting is something that has to be significantly strengthened.”

Americans have a right to know who in Gaza is getting our money from USAID. It is shocking that Marco Rubio’s State Department is hiding this information. Transparency on USAID’s Gaza funding could be critical to protecting the national security of the U.S. and Israel.

We recently sued USAID for records regarding waste, fraud and abuse tied to aid money sent to Ukraine.

In 2018, we obtained State Department documents showing top Soros representatives in Romania collaborating with the State Department in a program jointly funded by, among others, Soros’s Open Society Foundations – Romania and USAID, called the “Open Government Partnership.”

Additional State Department records uncovered in 2018 showed USAID funding for George Soros’s left-wing nonprofit organizations in Albania. The documents dealt primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents showed U.S. grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.

Other records related to the USAID’s activities in Albania showed that the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a group backed by Soros, which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also detailed how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding.

 

Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Walz’s Chinese Communist Connections

On October 29, 2024, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said a Homeland Security whistleblower told the committee that Minnesota governor and 2024 Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was a “target” of the Chinese Communist Party as “someone they can get to DC.”

The whistleblower also disclosed “that officials from U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have been involved in the Department’s investigative and/or intelligence work connected with the CCP, the state of Minnesota, and Governor Walz.”

To get to the bottom of this, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Homeland Security for records regarding Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-00625)).

We sued after Homeland Security failed to respond to an October 29, 2024, FOIA request for:

All documents and communications in the DHS Microsoft Teams group chat “NST NFT Bi-Weekly Sync” from July 1, 2024, to present, including all accompanying, uploaded, or imbedded attachments and documents, referring or relating to Minnesota Governor Timothy J. Walz (or the office and/or staff of Governor Walz)

All Intelligence Information Reports and Regional Intelligence Notes (including these documents that have been titled or categorized differently) from November 1, 2023, to present related to Minnesota Governor Timothy J. Walz (or the office and/or staff of Governor Walz).

All requests for assistance or referrals to other federal agencies regarding Minnesota Governor Timothy J. Walz

Quite simply, there is a massive cover-up of what the Deep State knows about Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party. Secretary Noem should quickly release any records in response to our lawsuit.

 

DC Police Department Wants $1.5 Million for January 6 Bodycam Footage

The Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department wants to charge us more than $1,570,500 for local police bodycam footage of the January 6 protests.

In June 2024 we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Metropolitan Police Department denied an August 2021 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. District of Columbia (No. 2024-CAB-003453)). We are asking for:

All audio/video recordings captured on body-worn cameras from MPD officers during their response to protest activities in and around the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021; and

All body worn camera video captured by Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone when responding to protests at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.

The DC Metro Police initially rejected our request because, it claimed, the videos were, at the time, “part of an ongoing investigation and criminal proceeding.”

But since President Trump’s pardons of January 6 defendants, the DC government will make public the videos (supposedly containing over one thousand hours of footage) if we agree to pay over $1.5 million.

There never has been a legitimate reason to withhold the January 6 police bodycam videos. If they wanted the videos out for political reasons, they’d be public, but instead the DC government wants more than $1.5 million in order for the public to view its January 6 videos.

On January 20, President Trump issued pardons and a directive to the attorney general to “pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the U.S. Capitol on January 6.”

We have extensively investigated the events of January 6.

A hearing was recently held in the Fani Willis documents scandal regarding her search for records of communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee. Thanks to this lawsuit Willis finally admitted to having records showing communications with the January 6 Committee but refused to release all but one document in response to the court order that found her in default. She cited a series of legal exemptions to justify the withholding of communications with the January 6 Committee. The only document she did release is one already public letter to January 6 Committee Chairman Benny Thompson (D-MS).

A trial date is currently set for July 20, 2026, in the $30 million wrongful death lawsuit we filed on behalf of the estate and the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

In April 2024, we received records from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in a FOIA lawsuit, showing that the FBI opened a criminal investigation of Babbitt after her killing and listed four “potential violations of federal law,” including felony rioting and civil disorder.

In January 2024, we filed a FOIA lawsuit on behalf of Aaron Babbitt and the Ashli Babbitt Estate against the U.S. Department of Justice for all FBI files on Ashli Babbitt.

In July 2024, we sued the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for all records related to any shots fired inside the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and records of requests for CIA support including bomb technicians and bomb-detecting dogs placed on standby or used in response to the massive protests in and around Washington, DC.

In September 2023, we received records from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, a component of the Department of Justice, in a FOIA lawsuit that detailed the extensive apparatus the Biden Justice Department set up to investigate and prosecute January 6 protestors.

A previous review of records from that lawsuit highlighted the prosecution declination memorandum documenting the decision not to prosecute U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd for the shooting death of Babbitt.

In October 2023, we received the court-ordered declaration of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at the U.S. Capitol.

In January 2023, documents from the Department of the Air Force, Joint Base Andrews, MD, showed U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In November 2021, we released multiple audio, visual and photo records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the shooting death of Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building. The records included a cell phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police interview of the shooter, Byrd.

Biden Administration Considered Using Federal Lands for Abortions, Funded Protection against ‘Grave Health Threats’ from Climate Change

The values of the Biden administration were not those of most American people.

We received 115 pages in a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) showing the Biden administration, following the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, considered declaring a “public health emergency” and using federal lands to provide abortion services.

The records also show that millions of taxpayer dollars were used to establish an office to protect against “grave health threats” allegedly caused by climate change, and for facilitating then-Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine’s extreme focus on LGBT and “gender-affirming” health care.

On June 30, 2024, media reports indicated Levine rejected the suggestion of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) that an age limit of 14 be placed on those seeking gender-altering medical procedures.

We filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after Health and Human Services failed to respond to a July 2024, FOIA request for the records of Levine and other officials regarding the removal of the minimum age for the treatment of children in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) 2022 standards of care (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:24-cv-02588)).

The records include a “Briefing Memo for Assistant Secretary Admiral Levine,” which contains talking points prepared by staff for Levine’s July 19, 2022, meeting with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) to “provide an update on OASH’s [Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health] work in shared areas of interest,” including:

• Reproductive health access, including Title X (https://opa.hhs.gov/grant-programs/title-x-service-grants/about-title-x-service-grants)
• LGBTQI+ (especially youth mental health …)
• Long Covid …
• Commissioned Corps (https://www.usphs.gov/)
• OCCHE (Office of Climate Change and Health Equity)

A section of the briefing memo titled “Public Health Emergency” asks if an official public health emergency will be declared, and a prepared answer includes: “The Biden-Harris Administration is never going to stop fighting to protect access to abortion care.”

The following question is: “What did the President mean when he said he directed his team to look into whether he has the authority to declare a public health emergency? You haven’t actually done that yet? Is it still under consideration? And you said everything is on the table – what about federal lands?”

The prepared answer is:

The team has been evaluating every option – including a public health emergency. When we looked at declaring a public health emergency, we learned a couple things. One is that it doesn’t free very many resources. For example, what’s in the public health emergency fund, there’s very little money – tens of thousands of dollars in it…

In a section titled “Federal Lands” a question is posed: “What is the Administration thinking in regards to using federal lands to provide abortion access?” The answer includes: “As I have continued to say, we’re exploring many options. However, we at HHS [Health and Human Services] are not experts on public lands.”

A section in the briefing memo dedicated to OCCHE [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity] states that its mission “is to protect the U.S. population from the grave health threats posed by climate change.”

Talking points address the office’s accomplishments in its first 10 months and discuss a multi-agency $206 million budget allocation for fiscal year 2022:

Internationally: By making commitments to community and health system resilience and decarbonization in our health systems, we not only have provided global leadership in climate change and health but also signaled domestically the direction the US health system is heading in these areas.

Intergovernmental: Launched the Biden Administration’s Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat, which coordinates that national response to extreme heat. Extreme heat kills more Americans than any other weather-related disaster.

***

Launched a federal health systems learning network on decarbonization and resilience [including the Veteran’s Administration, Department of Defense, and Indian Health Service].

Within HHS [Health and Human Services]: Has mobilized every HHS OpDiv [Operating Division] to create climate health and equity strategies that they are beginning to implement.

***

One of OCCHE’s [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity] key priorities is health sector decarbonization and resilience.

***

The Office is also committed to a suite of activities to build climate literacy within the health sector workforce. This includes ongoing collaboration with climate change and health physician fellowships at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

***

On May 31^st, an Office of Environmental Justice was established under OCCHE [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity] to better protect the health of disadvantaged communities and vulnerable populations on the frontlines of pollution and other environmental health issues.

***

The Fiscal Year 2022 budget also included $6 million in evaluation funding to create the OCCHE [Office of Climate Change and Health Equity] and $100 million each to NIH [National Institutes of Health] and CDC [Centers for Disease Control] to invest in climate and health research and adaptation.”

The records contain an agenda for Levine’s June 26-29, 2022, trip to Florida, including:

• A “Trans and non-binary youth event” in Orlando.
• An appearance and photo-op at the Pulse nightclub memorial site in Orlando.
• A meeting at Borinquen Health Care Center in Miami to advocate for children under age 5 to receive the Covid vaccine.
• A meeting with Miami’s “Heat Officer” Jane Gilbert, who the agenda describes as “the first position like it in the world” (to coordinate heat protection efforts for vulnerable communities (https://www.miamidade.gov/global/economy/environment/chief-heat-officer.page)
• A gender affirming care trans health roundtable.
• A meeting and lunch with officers of the “Take VA Pride Event” in Miami (an event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) specifically designed to celebrate and support LGBTQ+ veterans).

A briefing memo for Levine’s June 29, 2022, appearance at a “Trans Health Roundtable” held at The Miami Foundation states:

HHS [Health and Human Services] is committed to using every tool in our toolbox to ensure health equity for all. This includes actions like NIH [National Institutes for Health] increasing funding on gender-affirming procedures to further develop the evidence base for improved standards of care. SAMSHA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] is advancing research addressing the harms of conversion therapy. HHS expanding access to gender-affirming care as an essential health benefit.

Admiral Levine and the Biden administration were obsessed with promoting the transgender extremist mutilation of children. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and, quite frankly, law enforcement, should do a thorough scan of what Levine was up to.

Until next week,

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