➡ Judicial Watch, a leading group in America, works to ensure election integrity by suing states and localities that don’t follow federal laws requiring them to clean up voter rolls. They’ve had significant success, with millions of names being removed from voter rolls in California, North Carolina, and New York. Recently, they reached a settlement with Colorado, which agreed to report its efforts to clean up voter rolls over the next six years. Judicial Watch continues to fight for cleaner voter rolls, believing that cleaner rolls lead to cleaner elections.
➡ Judicial Watch, a legal group, has been working to clean up voter registration rolls in various states, including New York, Kentucky, and North Carolina, by removing invalid names. They’ve also been involved in lawsuits related to election issues, such as gerrymandering and mail-in ballot rules. The group is committed to ensuring fair and clean elections, and will continue to monitor and take action if necessary. They recently presented their case to the Supreme Court regarding the receipt of ballots after Election Day, arguing that it’s against federal law.
➡ The article discusses a Supreme Court argument about whether ballots received after Election Day should be counted. The main point is that putting a ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting it in the ballot box, and that federal law sets an election day, not an election month. The article also mentions that there’s no historical record of states allowing large numbers of late ballots to be counted until recently. The author hopes the Supreme Court will uphold the rule of law and restore confidence in elections.
➡ The Supreme Court is considering whether mail-in ballots should be counted if they arrive after Election Day. The decision could impact future elections and potentially hundreds of thousands of voters. Some states are already preparing for changes to election law in anticipation of the court’s decision. The final ruling is expected in mid-June.
➡ The organization Judicial Watch, funded by donations, is involved in legal battles to ensure election integrity and clean up voter rolls. They’ve already removed 6 million names and aim to clean up 20 million more. They also discovered a secret room with around 1.9 million records related to various investigations, which they are working to digitize and review. The organization encourages continued support to help them in their efforts.
➡ The FBI has admitted to having a secret room containing around 1.9 million hidden records, potentially related to sensitive investigations. This information was revealed by Judicial Watch, an organization that seeks transparency in government. The records could be significant to understanding past scandals and corruption. The FBI and Justice Department are being urged to release these files to the public as soon as possible.
➡ The FBI and Justice Department are reviewing around 2 million records related to investigations into former President Trump, which could take a year. These documents were found hidden, raising questions about potential criminal activity. The speaker suggests that outside agencies should investigate any possible illegal actions by the Justice Department and FBI. The hope is that the new Attorney General will prioritize this review and speed up the process.

As you may know or should know, that Judicial Watch is America’s leading group in trying to ensure that elections are run with integrity, that cheating is minimized, and where the rules are followed. And one of the key ways we do that is to sue in federal court. States and localities that refuse to follow federal law that require them to take reasonable steps to clean up the rolls. And we’ve had remarkable success in either winning outright or getting agreements through settlements or other actions by the states to clean up the rolls. And in California, I just told you a few weeks ago how they reported to us as under a federal lawsuit settlement to clean up their rolls, that LA county cleaned up 1.2 million names from their rolls just in LA county alone, thanks to the terms of a Judicial Watch settlement.

In North Carolina, about 430,000 names were cleaned up after we sued. In New York, about 450, I think it’s even more than that. Have been cleaned up because of a Judicial Watch lawsuit or our efforts to alert them that the rolls in New York City were filthy. And so just in those three jurisdictions, there’s 2 million names we’ve cleaned up over the last year thanks to our litigation and pressure. And we hadwe also have pending lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Colorado. And we just announced this weekand it was filed with a settlement with Colorado in which they’ve agreed to report to us over six years what they’re doing to clean up the rolls.

And it’s no coincidence, after we filed our lawsuit, and we note in the release describing it, that Colorado, over a key period, increased by 78% the number of voters they removed from the rolls. It was, at least according to numbers I’m seeing here. It went from 172 and changed to about 306,000 names they removed. I think that’s what, over 130,000 name difference. So that’s an extra 130,000 names they removed after Judicial Watch’s lawsuit was filed. We filed the lawsuit way back in October 2020 out in Colorado on behalf of Judicial Watch and three residents of Colorado alleging the state had failed to clean its voting rolls as required by the National Voter Registration Act.

So that’s the law. You have to remember when you’re thinking about what your state is doing or what your locality is doing, what are they doing under the National Voter Registration act to clean up voter rolls? The lawsuit alleged that high registration rates and other voter roll metrics indicated ongoing systemic problems with Colorado’s voterless maintenance efforts. Judicial Watch sought a court order declaring that Colorado and Its secretary of state violated the law and ordering them to develop and implement a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls in Colorado.

And again, I would encourage you to kind of listen to that again or go and look at it. We’ll have a link below. That’s what every state should be doing. They’re all supposed to be doing that. And what Judicial Watch does is we look at the numbers, and if their numbers aren’t seemingly indicating that they are doing this, we go and warn them. And if they still aren’t cleaning up the rolls or show us what they’re doing, we sue them. The number of outdated registrations removed by Colorado under this key provision increased after we filed suit, as I said, from about 172,000 to 306,000 registrations for the period ending in 2022.

The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch its most recent voter roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years. The data is to include the total number of registered and eligible voters, active voters and inactive voters. And inactive voters is a bureaucratic way of saying the voter hasn’t voted in a while and they’re, quote, inactive. And supposedly they’re subject potentially to removal, but they’re still registered, practically speaking. So anyone can vote is an inactiveyou know, just because you’re inactive doesn’t mean you can’t vote. And in terms of the voter fraud potential, it’s kind of a pool of names that fraudsters potentially can use to vote in someone else’s name.

For instance, if someone has moved away, hasn’t been around for years, and they’re still on the registration list, why would we want that to be? Obviously, it’s an opportunity for fraud. The total number of and this is additional information of address confirmation notices sent to Colorado voters pursuant to the National Voter Registration act, the number of received back, confirming or changing an address and a number that were undeliverable or not returned, and then the number of registration addresses removed pursuant to key provisions of the act. So what we’re demanding and asking is this process be certified more or less under this settlement agreement, and they’ve agreed to it.

And this process is the process that results in these names being cleaned up. And so what happens is the way I understand it’s supposed to work in practice is that if you don’t vote in a federal election, you’re supposed to get a notice, a card from your registrar, say, hey, you haven’t voted. Are you still there? Can you confirm you’re at this address and if you don’t respond or otherwise don’t vote in the next two federal elections, so that we’re talking maybe as long as five years, they’re supposed to remove your name. So we had indications that wasn’t going on in Colorado.

Maybe they were sending some of the stuff out, but they weren’t receiving or removing names when they should have. You know, there are all sorts of arguments we were having back and forth with Colorado, and in the end we settled it. They said that this is we’re going to be able to track the numbers in a more direct way. And of course, once we sued, they took a bunch of names off, which was really the ultimate purpose of our lawsuit, don’t you think, is just to make sure they’re cleaning up the rolls and then they have a process in place that we’re going to be confirming through the settlement that they will clean up as things proceed, which is a typical part of a settlement agreement in a situation like this.

Now, by the way, the Colorado Secretary of State is an ardent leftist who hates Judicial Watch. She said our effort here was, you know, fighting democracy, was anti democratic. I mean, how is cleaning up voter rolls anti democratic? She’s using these left wing talking points. They don’t even make any sense in the context. And if we were going to war against democracy, why is she settling this federal lawsuit with us? Because there’s something I think we fairly were bringing to the table and they wanted to settle with us. Now, we didn’t. You know, it’s a settlement.

Right. So both sides give something up when you settle. So we’re satisfied with the settlement. She, rather than just saying she’s satisfied with the settlement, decides to attack Judicial Watch, which I think tells you that we were probably right to begin asking questions in the first place, don’t you think? So coming on the heels of a massive voter roll cleanup in Colorado, thanks to our lawsuit, this settlement agreement is a major victory for all Colorado voters, and I would submit, all voters across the country. Because, you know, when the voter lists are clean in any particular state or cleaner than they otherwise would be, that means that the elections there are more honest.

And at the federal level, elections have consequences, obviously state by state, you know, obviously at the presidential level, most obviously. But at the congressional level and Senate level, you want the federal election rolls to be clean as possible. Simply put, cleaner voter rolls mean cleaner elections. And the inverse of that is dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections, and that’s what we oppose. So Judicial Watch is the national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, we’ve assembled a team, a crack team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and other achievements.

And that Hawaii case, that’s something, I mean, I have to go back over that one day with you. I don’t have time to do it tonight. But that case is where the leftists in Hawaii wanted to have a race based election process. And then it wants people of a certain race to vote in elections to try to push an effort to have Hawaii secede from the United States. Of course, that was endorsed by the Obama administration, but we won. We had the Supreme Court stop that election. As I said earlier, in February, Los Angeles county confirmed removal of 1.2 million ineligible voters from its rolls since last year under the settlement, under the terms of a settlement agreement they agreed to back in 2017.

So I said, it’s a process, right? They said, we’re going to follow these rules. And this is what led to 1.2 million names being removed from the rolls just simply by doing this basic list maintenance. And it’s not perfect, it’s not perfect, but at least you’re ensuring there’s a process in place, that we’re going to try to make them cleaner. We settled a case in New York City, As I said, 441,000 names removed after we had sued and warned them. And of course they promised also to take reasonable steps like Colorado did going forward to clean its voter registration rules so that, you know, we’re not just going to walk away.

We’re going to monitor what happens and go back if there’s an issue. Kentucky, I think the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands as well. We had a consent decree there, so they agreed to clean up the rolls. And Kentucky is a Republican oriented state. I talked about North Carolina and that was another big voter roll cleanup where they removed over 430,000 registrations from its voter rolls after we sued. And of course, there’s other litigation in Maryland. We beat back a Maryland Democratic legislator attempt to rig elections in favor of Democrats in Congress through improper political gerrymandering.

We have an ongoing case in Illinois over there counting ballots that arrive up to two weeks, mail in ballots that arrive up to two weeks after the election, including ballots that aren’t postmarked. It’s on odds with federal law. So this is just great stuff. Our lead lawyer is Bob Popper. He’s our lead lawyer on the Election issues. He was previously a Justice Department attorney. So not all things that happen in the Justice Department are terrible. Bob worked in the Justice Department. He was at the voting section of the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. So, you know, Bob knows what he’s talking about.

And this is why when Judicial Watch goes to court, we have Russ Nobel, who also worked at the Justice Department, and some other great lawyers involved as well. You know, these states have to pay attention to us. So, I mean, who would have thought that Los Angeles county and California would have settled with Judicial Watch? Who would have thought that New York City, you know, you know, the very far left jurisdiction would settle with Judicial Watch. Colorado, you know, the Secretary of State evidently can’t stand us, but she still settled with Judicial Watch. And that’s frankly to their credit.

I mean, she’s calling us names. I think it’s good they settled. That’s what a responsible public official does. We’re bringing this forward not to destroy people, but just to try to get the law enforce so elections are cleaner and so good for New York and California and Colorado for settling with Judicial Watch, of course, after we filed the federal lawsuit, to be clear. So it’s not completely voluntary, but kudos to them and obviously kudos to Judicial Watch because it would never have been done otherwise. By the way, this law can be enforced, this cleanup law by the federal government, by the Justice Department.

It refuses to do that. And so it’s up to Judicial Watch because the Justice Department is run by leftists. They don’t want clean voter rolls ideologically, and they have zero interest in having the Justice Department enforce this area of the law. So it was up to Judicial Watch to come in and sue in federal court on behalf of voters and the American people and of course, you Judicial Watch supporters. And we’re winning and we’re making gains for election integrity and fairer and cleaner elections. Just great, great news out of Colorado. And more is coming. We’re expecting a new set of numbers about voter registration numbers later in the year.

And you can bet if the numbers are bad again in any particular state, we will go and figure out what’s going on. Demand changes. And if the changes aren’t made, we will sue again to clean up the rolls, which is, you know, as you. I don’t need to tell you, or maybe I should remind you, it’s especially important since we’re doing this, what I believe to be reckless. Massive mail in balloting and voting all over the nation. The least we can do is ensure the voting rolls are clean. So we’re not sending ballots to people we knew, we know, or should know aren’t there.

And it’s a lot easier and a lot less risky in terms of fraud just to try to vote in someone’s name through the mail. So we got to ensure at least the names that are being registered and acted upon are legit in terms of being eligible to vote. So thank God once again, that Judicial Watch is doing this core work, because it would not be done otherwise, and our elections would be even worse off than you may think they are now. A very important week for Judicial Watch and for America, as the Judicial Watch legal team was able to make its plea in person to the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the federal law that sets an Election Day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, as the day that ballots are supposed to be received.

Many states or too many states, have allowed the counting or the receipt of ballots to occur days and weeks after Election Day. And we had a court ruling in the lower courts, the Fitzer Court of Appeals, that found that to be unlawful. Now the Supreme Court has taken the case up and is expected to rule in June. Judicial Watch led the way in the challenges to late election ballot counting. We filed lawsuit in Illinois. We filed a lawsuit in Mississippi. Similarly, the RNC filed a lawsuit in Mississippi. So both Judicial Watch for the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and the RNC were before the court.

We were also joined in court by the Solicitor General of the United States on behalf of the US Government, who agrees with Judicial Watch’s analysis that counting or allowing the receipt of ballots after Election Day is contrary to federal law. The lawyer who made the key argument for Judicial Watch, our clients, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, was Paul Clement. He did a wonderful job. And I can tell you, and let me give you some background, what it’s like to go into the Supreme Court and watch these arguments in person. It’s pretty intense. The justices, all of them, all nine of them, were very interested in the case.

The oral argument went on for well over two hours, which is a pretty lengthy argument. And as I said, the justices were paying close attention to both the lawyer from Mississippi that was seeking to uphold the Mississippi law that was at issue that allows the counting of ballots that arrive for up to five days after Election Day. And Paul Clement, on behalf of our client and in partnership with Judicial Watch, made an excellent presentation. And the way it looked, well, I’ll tell you how it seemed to come out a little bit later, but let’s look to see what Paul Clement’s argument was.

So what happens? Is the Mississippi attorney, I think Solicitor General, or was it the Attorney General or Solicitor General? Now I’m confused. It’s a Solicitor General. He made his argument, followed by our argument made by Paul Clement. And the argument began with a statement by Paul laying out the nature of what the issue is. And you’ll see this clip from C Span, which incorrectly labels him as lawyer for the rnc. In fact, he was lawyer for our client, the Mississippi Libertarian Party. So let’s listen to Paul’s opening statement. Mr. Chief justice, and may it please the court.

All agree that elections for federal office have to end on the day of the election specified by Congress. And all agree that you can’t have an election unless you receive ballots and there must be some deadline for ballot receipt. Nonetheless, Mississippi insists that ballots can trickle in days or even weeks after Election Day. That position is wrong as a matter of text, precedent, history, and common sense. Mississippi all but concedes that the original public meaning of election included both offering to vote and the receipt of that vote or ballot by election officials. And of course, the key distinction between voting and an election is an election involves the combined action of voters and election officials, as this court underscored in its decision against Foster, against Love.

And of course, Mississippi insists that at the time these statutes were passed, ballot receipt and the casting of the ballot were so inextricably intertwined, no one would have thought of one without the other. That seems to me to be a damning admission, but it also ignores the advent of field and proxy voting in the Civil War and the enormous efforts that states went to to to ensure that all of the ballots, whether by proxy or by field vote, were received by Election Day. In the state’s view, all of those Herculean efforts were for naught or were entirely gratuitous.

Now the state’s position actually works even worse as a matter of common sense. If somebody in Gulfport the day after the election asks, is the election over? The common sense answer is, no, it’s not. The ballots are still coming in. And if somebody asks, who won, the truthful answer is, we don’t know yet. The ballots are still coming in, and they may trickle in for weeks or months. And in fact, they may trickle in for weeks or months, with or without a postmark, in differing ways in differing states. That reality gives the lie to the idea that we have a uniform national election day.

So a great summary of the argument, and what’s even better, you imagine the intense preparations both sides make when prepping for a Supreme Court argument of such importance, you can’t dismiss the fact that you’ve got, generally speaking, nine pretty darn smart people with a lot of smart lawyers working for them who also bring something to the table. And I got a hand to Justice Alito, who kind of summed up the argument in a very accessible way to pretty much any American in his commentary as to what Election Day means. Listen to Justice Alito muse on what it is Election Day means.

We have lots of phrases that involve two words, the last of which, the second of which is day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, George Washington’s birthday in December, Independence Day, birthday and Election Day. And they’re all particular days. So if we start with that, if I have nothing more to look at than the phrase Election Day, I think this is the day in which everything is going to take place and. Or almost everything. And then we have three points in time, 1844, 1872, 1914. And we can ask what would people. So you have a birthday, right? No one thinks that when you get greetings after the birthday, the person’s on time.

That’s why it’s a late birthday greeting. Right. So kind of a brilliant insight by. Although a simple insight, but a brilliant one nevertheless. And you know, what’s going on here is that Mississippi and those defenders of the late arrival of ballots say, well, you know, the voting takes place prior to Election Day, and that should be enough, even though the ballots aren’t received until after Election Day. And the key response to that is putting your ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting your ballot in the ballot box. And the powerful language of the straightforward law that federal Election Day is the date that is set by federal law raises all sorts of other interesting issues about early voting and such.

And Justice Thomas asked our partner in this argument, Paul Clement, about that, and here’s that dialogue. How would you define the day of election? I would say that the day of the election is the day. It’s the last day in which all the ballots are cast and. And they are received into official custody. So how would you treat early voting as compared to late reception of votes? So I would say, I mean, you know, I think the best place to look for a treatment of early voting is the Kreisling decision by Judge Kleinfeld in the Ninth Circuit, because after Foster Against Love, there was a suggestion in Foster Against Love that maybe early voting is a problem.

He rejected that claim based on two things. One is the distinct history of early voting, and the second is the idea that was explicit in this court’s decision in Foster Against Love that election day is the date of consummation. So I would say under our theory, early voting is permissible largely because it has a different history and because of this idea that the election day is the date where the election is consummate. Would you spend a few more minutes on, or at least a little bit more time on the voting? During Civil War, there was some suggestion that that’s an example of late reception of votes.

And I think in your intro and was my thinking that it was not that proxy voting was a way to make sure that the vote occurred on election day as opposed to afterwards? Well, not surprisingly, Justice Thomas, you were exactly right. So proxy voting is the thing that happened in the Civil War that is most analogous to absentee voting. And the thing that is most striking is I think five states had proxy voting. Every one of those five states required the votes, the ballots to be received by election officials back home by election day. Now that’s an incredibly inconvenient thing that was done in the Civil War to ensure the ballots were received by election day.

And under the state’s view, they didn’t need to do that. Now, it’s really no different in the context of field voting because there were like maybe a dozen states, if you’re not going to count the Confederate states, there are about a dozen states that did field voting. Again, every one of those ensured that the ballots were received into official custody by election day. And of course, most of the states went to enormous efforts to replicate the machinery of the ballot box and everything else in the field and some variation in that. But the one thing that didn’t vary at all was the ballots had to be received into official custody by election day.

So it’s an important historical point and it’s a fascinating issue because we didn’t have mail in balloting essentially until, or as Paul Clement highlighted a version of it, until the Civil War. And immediately after the Civil War, I think it was in 1872, was the first election. Federal election day statute and, you know, other statutes similarly have set election day for first the House, then the presidency and then the Senate with the direct election of senators in the early part of the last century as the election day. We all know the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

And there’s really no historic record that states thought otherwise until essentially Covid. There have been exceptions, like Washington State has that 21 day rule that goes back a ways and a state here or there that’s an outlier. But the idea that, you know, there’s been this long tradition of states allowing counting of ballots in large numbers after election day that arrive late after election day is just ahistorical. And even though, even if it was, quote, historical, the law says otherwise. So there are all sorts of things that had gone on for a long time that were unlawful under federal law or unconstitutional that the Supreme Court says, well, you know, too bad.

So sad. Too bad, right? You got to follow the law. And then there’s the issue, as I said earlier, of whether just dropping something in the mail is the equivalent of receipt. And I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. But if you’re trying to justify, in my view, the indefensible, you pretend that dropping in the mail therefore allows you as a state to receive that ballot anytime after election day, which is, in effect, what they’re saying. Because if it’s not five days, should it be 21 days, should it be 100 days? And here’s a discussion about that issue again with Paul Clement, who’s the lawyer, despite what the C SPAN graphic says, for our Joint Judicial Watch clients, the Mississippi Libertarian Party.

The reason I’m focused on ballot receipt is a, it’s what’s directly at issue here, but also B, it’s the thing that to this day, every state considers indispensable. No state Washington is the one that lets 21 days go by. But no state says that you don’t have to have a receipt ballot receipt deadline at all. And under Mississippi law, it’s not. Despite what they want to tell you, the ballot is not final when it’s submitted. The ballot is final when it’s received by election officials within five days. And you can have all the certifications that this was before election day, and I have it notarized.

And if it comes in on the sixth business day, this is the November 11th problem. What the state does is they treat it as a nullity. And under the state statute, they direct it to be destroyed. So the ballot doesn’t become final just when it’s submitted. The ballot becomes final when it is submitted. And under Mississippi law, it is received into official custody by the registrar within five business days. That’s finality under Mississippi law. And our humble submission is finality should take place on election day. Pretty simple, right? And now the three justices of the Supreme Court who were appointed by Democratic presidents, you know, took the opposition view and aggressively questioned in a way that I didn’t find persuasive at all or even Making me nervous that they had a case that would be persuasive to their fellow conservative justices.

And here’s my initial reaction outside the Supreme Court to the oral arguments. Everyone just walked out of the Supreme Court, where the Judicial Watch team was making historic legal arguments to preserve the idea of Election Day. The other side wants to allow the counting of ballots that arrive after Election Day. Our team made the argument to the Court that it’s contrary to federal law, it creates the issue of voter fraud and generally undermines voter confidence. Look, putting your ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting your ballot in the ballot box. And federal law sets an election day, not on election month.

And we’re hopeful the Supreme Court will agree and bring back the rule of law to our elections in a way that restores confidence. So a really interesting debate. I don’t think the fact that this potential election day law raises issues about early voting is going to stop the Court from saying in the least election Day means the ballots have to be received by election Day. I think the early voting issue is a bit more interesting. You know, Paul made the argument that perhaps it’s legal. Others may make the argument that perhaps it’s not under the election day statute, and that may come up later, or the court may address it indirectly.

So, you know, as I’m sitting there, remember, it’s only the oral argument. So no one’s promising any vote at the oral argument. They don’t take a vote at the oral argument about how they’re going to vote. What literally happens is after the argument is over, they go back and have into their Supreme Court conference room with the nine justices, and they meet with each other and they take a vote then. And then after that, or contemporaneous with that, they start writing the decisions, either the majority or minority decisions or dissenting decisions. And I couldn’t tell whether we had the majority of the votes.

Now, I could guess that we could, but I wasn’t sure because I could count based on the questioning. And you can look at the full hearing and draw your own conclusions. This is what I love about the Supreme Court. It’s designed in many ways to be accessible to the American people. You can watch the video below. We have a full link to the C SPAN video. I think the transcript is available now. I think we can find that transcript link and provide it to you as well. So you can just read through it and you can see there are seemingly four conservative votes to uphold the notion of Election Day.

The two votes that I had questions about were Justice Chief Justice Roberts, because he didn’t really ask any questions, and then Justice Barrett, who asked tough questions of both sides. But I wasn’t quite sure where she was coming from or on what she wanted assurance. So I walked out of the court thinking, oh, you know, I think we’re, I think things are looking good. We got at least four votes and obviously we just need one more to win. But I wasn’t prepared to say, oh, it looks like the voting is going to go our way. The funny thing is the media thought we won.

I mean, when you see these media headlines from, what is it, cnn? And there’ swhich one is that, that’s New York Times. Oh, wait, we’ll talk about that later. But there were several other stories. There’s the Associated Press or NBC News. Supreme Court Conservatives Appear Skeptical of Mail in Ballots that Arrive After Election Day. Let’s go to the other headline, Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Counting Mail in Ballots that Arrive After Election Day. So and the other headlines I read about the hearing that I saw, these are people who don’t agree with Judicial Watch on anything and they think we’re going to win.

So I’m not going to second guess that. Right. But the next day I felt a lot more confident because I thought about the hearing because I was there watching it. And you know, it occurred to me that the three left wing justices provided no safe harbor for any sensible conservative justice to kind of vote with them. Because as you can see from the arguments, it’s either we have election day set by federal law or we have chaos where there is no set election day. The states can choose and pick and choose when they have election day, essentially, or what the deadline is for mail in balloting.

And I just don’t think any of those judges or justices, even the ones who I’m not sure about, are going to go on that side. So I’m increasingly confident that we are going to win in the Supreme Court and get an historic victory that will restore the rule of law on this key area of elections to upwards of 30 states. Ballots are going to have to get there on time if things go as I suspect they will go before the Supreme Court. Now, one reason I’m even moreone more reason to even be even more optimistic is this story in the New York Times, which I thought was pretty incredible.

And here it is, some states already preparing for a potential Supreme Court ban on late ballots, and they highlight the skepticism of the conservatives. And this is how the story opens up. Francisco Aguilar, the Secretary of state in Nevada stepped out of the Supreme Court on Monday, where justices had just heard arguments about the legality of counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. He immediately called his top deputy. The court’s conservative majority had appeared deeply skeptical of the arguments for continuing the practice. So his message was urgent, he later said in an interview. He began listing things we need to start working on and answering.

And in the middle of midterm election season, they couldn’t wait for a decision to land. Perhaps as late as June. We have to provide a roadmap for county clerks. Mr. Aguilar, a Democrat, is one of 18 top state election officials in states and territories across the country bracing for the possibility that the Supreme Court will require major changes to election law just months before the midterm elections. Part of the urgency? Getting the message out to voters that late arriving ballots may no longer be counted. Such decisions could affect hundreds of thousands of voters. So boy oh boy.

New York Times says these left wing politicians in the various states that wanted to keep on counting ballots late, that arrived late, they see the writing on the wall, too. According to the New York times, at least 725,000 ballots arrived in the time period after Election Day. So that is a lot of ballots. And what’s the solution as these politicians are kind of prepping, which is what they’re supposed to do to be fair to them, hey, we got to make sure that the public knows that they need to get their ballots there on time. And so there’s increased pressure to frankly vote in person and not rely on mail in balloting.

I think that should be part of the pressure as opposed to, you know, making it even riskier to vote through mail in balloting. But it’s a strong indication that I’m correct in assessing that, hey, it looks like we’re going to win before the Supreme Court. So this has been really a big week for the rule law on elections. This is the most important election law case in a generation. Kudos to Paul Clement, who argued for the Judicial Watch legal team. Kudos to the Judicial Watch legal team, Russ Nobile, Bob Popper, Eric Lee Polarfenides, who leads the entire legal team here at Judicial Watch.

And kudos to you, dear Judicial Watch supporter, because we would not be here before the Supreme Court making these arguments that will go down in history in terms of preserving the very idea of election day. It looks like we’re on the cusp of victory. Of course, the fat lady has not sung yet, so pray that our hopes are well founded and are Vindicated when the ruling comes out, likely in mid June. But it looks like we’re going to have a significant uplift, right, for election integrity, so that, you know, allowing ballots to come in after Election Day and still be counted, that will be no more.

If things go as it’s suggested, they will go after this historic Supreme Court argument. And I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, the only reason we’re here at this moment, on the cusp of this victory, is because of Judicial Watch’s heavy lifting. We were taking the lead on this Election Day fight with our litigation, with our legal strategy, with our legal theories, and everyone else followed our lead. And so we’re pleased the RNC stepped up as well, because the RNC used to kind of be AWOL on some of these election integrity issues. And so they played a role here.

And kudos to them for standing. And it’s not because they’re, quote, Republicans. It’s because they’re standing with the rule of law, heck, early. You know, getting the ballots there on time can impact Republicans, too. It will impact Democrats, rural voters, you know, the New York Times points out rural voters, you know, face more impacts with election delay or mail and ballot delays, and they tend to be Republican. But in Virginia, 73% of the ballots that arrived late in the last election went to the Democrat. So it cuts both ways. This is a nonpartisan issue. And I want to know why aren’t Democrats standing with us to uphold federal law, that Election Day means Election Day? And of course, the Trump administration, they’re standing with this as well.

President Trump had an executive order early on, and the Solicitor General of the United States filed an amicus brief, an important amicus brief. He made argument there on Monday, or, you know, before the Supreme Court recently as well. He was there with Paul Clement arguing for our side. So it’s a team effort. But the biggest part of the team are you, dear supporters, because we wouldn’t be here without you. None of this is free. This litigation costs money. The education efforts around it costs money. And the only reason we’re able to do it is because we receive voluntary donations from our members, charitable donations.

So I encourage you to continue to support our work, because I tell you, even if we win, there’s still going to be battles. And there are other election integrity battles that are underway right now with Judicial Watch and cleaning up the election rolls. We’ve cleaned 6 million names from the rolls thus far. There are 20 plus million more to be cleaned. And if, depending on how the ruling comes down, there may be additional litigation to ensure that the sanctity of Election Day is upheld under the law. But what a great day for Judicial Watch and the American people in the sense that it looks like victory may be at hand.

Knocking on wood on upholding the notion of Election day and balloting, making sure that the ballots are supposed to get there on Election Day if they’re to be counted. I mean, it’s to me a rather obvious issue, right? Election Day means what it means. You know, the ballot box closes on Election Day. And I think the Supreme Court’s been persuaded by Judicial Watch’s legal argument. And it necessary, you know, it didn’t mean it was going to go our way. And I think it was our, our wonderful legal argument, ably and expertly presented by Paul Clement, that secured to the degree we do get a victory, it will be because of the excellent legal work by the Judicial Watch team.

So I’m taking credit for it. I’m president of Judicial Watch, but as an American, I’m thankful for our work, that’s for sure. You’re not going to believe what we just found. So you may have heard about the secret rooms and the burn bags and such that Dan Bongino, who was then FBI deputy director, and Cash Patel have disclosed. These were files that supposedly were hidden from the leadership and designed to be hidden from the leadership by the Deep state, the Biden and Obama, FBI, the anti Trumpers, the Jack Smith people and all of that. And Dan disclosed last year material about or information about what they found.

We actually linked to this in the lawsuit. We wanted the information about what Dan is about to say here on Fox News or said on Fox News back in looks like May of last year stuff that’s coming out. But does he still have loyalists in the building? Because when I hear the FBI director saying, you guys are finding boxes that are hidden. Okay, how does that happen in the bureau? Well, we were there a couple of weeks and luckily there were a lot of people up there who grabbed us by the arm the minute we came in and said, thank you for being here.

You know, we need to talk. There are people there who are really horrified at what happened. And there was a room and we found stuff, a lot of stuff, hidden room. I wouldn’t call it hidden, but hidden from us at least, and not mentioned to us. And then we found stuff in there and a lot of it’s from the Comey era and we are working our damnedest right now to declassify, just so you know, because I get the public. I totally understand people saying, well, do it now. The process is not all the information is ours to declassify some as other intelligence agencies.

It’s not. We literally can’t do it. Once that gets done and that gets out there and you read some of the stuff we found that by the way was not processed through the normal procedure. Digitizing it, putting in FBI records. We found it in bags hiding under Jim Comey quickly, yeah, you’re going to be stuck. So Judicial Watch thought, oh, isn’t that interesting. So our team filed a Freedom of Information act request, literally just asking for the records. Dan Bongino referred there asking for the records cash. Patel was referencing the boxes and things. And the FBI stalled, installed, installed.

But they finally confirmed to Judicial Watch, yes, there are files there. And not only there are files, but there are a lot of files. One point upwards of 1.9 million records has been found in that secret room that Dan Bongino disclosed. Records about Jack Smith and other anti trump investigations and who knows what else. Here it is in black and white in let’s go to the. Let’s go to the. This may date me. Let’s go to the videotape. Even though I’m not going to the videotape, I’m going to the Internet here. So here you see our press Release lawsuit uncovers FBI found up to 1.9 million Jack Smith and other records in hidden room.

And I’ll read you this section, you probably can’t see it, so I’ll just read it to you. So they explained the documents were found in a skiff. So at least they were kept in a secret facility, meaning a facility with or room that has protections in terms of securing classified information. But as Dan Bongino disclosed, it was they wereit was in a room designed to be hidden from the new incoming leadership. You have to remember over in the FBI they have maybe five or six, I literally don’t know how many. But it’s a scary small number of people that are hired as quote, politicals.

You’ve got the FBI director who’s appointed by the President, Dan Bongino even. I don’t think he was even technically a political appointment. I think he was a civil servant who was hired. So there are no typical political, few typical political appointments. It’s all just deep staters or to be fair to some who are trying to do their work, just civil service employees or FBI agents, etc. So they found their records and they told Judicial Watch in the court. So this is a Court filing. It was in a. I think it was in a joint status report filed in our lawsuit for these records.

So this is the government talking in this part of the joint status report for item one. Plaintiff seek all documents referenced by Deputy Director Dan Bongino concerning a room located in FBI headquarters. So you just saw the video. The room references a sensitive compartmented information facility, which is the shorthand for that is scif, the acronym that houses records related to both closed and open investigations. The FBI continues to assess the contents of the room and the total volume of records in the room. The FBI continues to determine what records, if any, responsive to the request. Until all documents have been digitized and reviewed.

The defendant, the FBI Justice Department cannot identify the anticipated number of documents responsive to the request or the anticipated dates for release of the requested documents. The FBI can provide the following update about the status of the process. Specifically, the FBI has assessed that the room presently contains the following records that require digitization, meaning I guess they get either moved over to an unsecure system digitally or if they’re printed records, they have to be scanned before they can be scoped for responsiveness and process for production. Several five drawer filing cabinets, safes that the FBI estimates to include approximately between 950,000.

There you have between 950,000 and 1.9 million pages, which may fluctuate depending on whether there is material on both the front and back of the pages. So I guess they are. There are actual. I just noticed that they’re actual pages, they’re hard copies. So they literally kept the paper files in that secret area away from, as Dan alleged leadership for I think nefarious purposes. So they’re going to need at least 10 to 12 months to even process the records, meaning digitize them and review them for potential release. So what are the records about? The records appear to include the following.

You can see on the screen here, legacy files. These records consist of older legacy records, the majority of which refer to two closed historical investigations. These records belong to the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General and prior to release must be sent to the DoJ OIG for consultation on its equities in the records. I mean, this is like absurdity piled upon absurdity. The doj. So these are DOJ files and the DOJ is going to send DOJ files to another DOJ agency. It’s like the DOJ is going to send files to itself. So we can be told when we get the records.

I mean, it’s outrageous enough when they use, oh, these could be CIA Records, or these could be Department of Transportation records. We’re going to send them over there and wait forever and a day before we release them because it’s, you know, we have no control over them. I mean, it’s a way basically to ditch records effectively, because you can’t. The time frame is incredibly long, but I get distracted. Other files, these records consist of more record, more recent records related to various investigations, including, for example, active investigations and prior special counsel investigative records, many of which are likely to require consultation with other government agencies prior to release.

So these are Jack Smith records. They’re probably Mueller records, they’re probably Hillary records, they’re probably Russiagate records, they’re probably Durham records. Given the quantity of records, it’s multiple cases, legacy cases. I don’t know what that means, how far back it goes, I don’t know. Go back to Kennedy. I mean, I say that half jokingly, but I have no way of knowing that. And they may not either, because they haven’t looked at them all. So when I see numbers like 1.9 million records that have been hidden, I think. What do I think of. I think of the Epstein records, right? There were three and a half million records that were released.

I mean, this is comparable, and dare I say it, I think they’re probably more important than the Epstein records. Given the lawfare against Trump that could have destroyed our republic, if indeed these records cover it. This is an astonishing piece of information from the Justice Department and the FBI. It would not have come out but for Judicial Watches. Heavy lifting in federal court. You know, you see these news stories and there’s little to no follow up. The follow up from Congress is easily thwarted and ignored. It’s a political back and forth. I’m not saying Congress is wrong to ask the questions, but it’s relatively ham.

It’s relatively hapless in its ability to get the records, or at least all of them. And the value of the FOIA cases that Judicial Watch brings, we can’t necessarily get all the records either, but there’s a process for getting the records in a more timely way and understanding what’s being withheld and the ability to fight and challenge them in a way that’s much more direct than Congress. And in the best of circumstances, you have Congress asking for records, you have Judicial Watch asking for records, and then you see, what did Congress get? What did Judicial Watch get? What did Congress get that Judicial Watch didn’t? And what did Judicial Watch get that Congress didn’t? And that’s often what happens, and often what happens is Judicial Watch gets all sorts of records that Congress doesn’t get, and it’s infuriating.

And just so you know, over time, in recent years, Congress has noticed this. They say Judicial Watch gets these records and Congress isn’t. We’re done with it. Let’s push harder. So our work has encouraged Congress to do more. It’s not enough, but to do more in terms of getting access to records. So you could be sure that our friends in Senator Grassley’s office and Senator Johnson’s office and Jim Jordan’s office and. And Congressman Comer’s office are going to look at this press release next week, say, wow, 1.9 million records. We haven’t gotten half. I think they’ve gotten maybe 40,000 records at most.

And I don’t even know those records came from that secret room. So, again, the headline is, the FBI admitted there was a secret room hidden from FBI leadership appointed by President of the United States that contains essentially secret records, 1.9 million pages, potentially on issues that are quite sensitive, related to special counsel investigations and Office of Inspector General investigations and who knows what else. I mean, this is like, why it’s crazy to work at Judicial Watch because we’re prepping for a Supreme Court hearing of historic proportions. And concurrently, we get this disclosure from the FBI and Justice Department in a joint status report, which is usually.

They’re pretty. I shouldn’t say boring, but they rarely have significant disclosures. This court filing that says they’ve been hiding 1.9 million records from the American people, it’s just crazy town sometimes here at Judicial Watch because of all the work that we’re doing. And it just comes in, boom, boom, boom of disclosure after disclosure, evidence of corruption after evidence of corruption as we continue our cases to. To save our elections, to preserve transparency and protect our constitutional republic. This is an astonishing and troubling revelation. I note in our press release, the FBI and Justice Department must go all out to release the nearly 2 million secret FBI DOJ files on the lawfare against Trump and whatever else the Obama and Biden gangs want the American people to know about.

And I have no doubt, as I said, that these records are far more important than the Epstein files. Now, you know, as Congress passed a law requiring the release of the Epstein files, so the FBI and Justice Department had to go to town, right? And they had hundreds of people looking through millions of records. I think they should take the same approach here. And it shouldn’t take a law. In fact, there already is a law. It’s called foia. And they should take it seriously, given the nature of the records that are likely here and review them as quickly as humanly possible.

When did we file this lawsuit? Well, I’m sure we asked for the records last year. So we asked for the records in the summer of last year. We filed the lawsuit. I think it was in November, and now it’s March and we still don’t have any records. And they want us to wait another year. Do you think that’s acceptable? If you don’t, you know who you should call? Call Pam Bondi. Call Kash Patel. Remember what I said about petitioning your government. Ask them to, hey, give these records to the Judicial Watch of the American people. These could be the keys to these scandals.

Heck, they’re not prosecuting anyone. The least they can do is release records on the corruption. This is just great work by Judicial Watch. And you know, I was looking at the release and at the end of the release, sometimes we put, at, let’s say we do a press release on topic X, we put the material in the press release and at the end we say, by the way, on topic X and related issues, this is also what we’re doing. And so when you look at that in our Release, you’ll see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, at least 8 major cases and disclosures that Judicial Watch has filed and been part of the release of FISA warrants, the illegal lying FISA warrants.

We exposed them, we got them public. First time ever FISA warrant applications have been made public thanks to Judicial Watch litigation. We’ve been suing for Hunter Biden records, shady FBI records, all the lawfare records. And we’ve been exposing so much of what we know about the abuses targeting Trump and American citizens. And I suspect we’ve hit the mother lode here with the 1.9 million records. Potentially could be a little less or it could be a little more, depending on what goes on that we’re in this secret room. Really incredible development. And I do give credit to the Justice Department and FBI for being forthcoming in this regard.

I mean, it wouldn’t be out of the realm possibility that they could come up with reasons not even to tell us the number. I mean, they have all sorts of reasons for not telling you information. They have all sorts of excuses, oh, we can’t tell you the number. We can’t tell you what it’s about. So I don’t want to, I want them to do more. But I do applaud the transparency in this disclosure, however troubling it is because it could have gone the other way. We may have been kept in the dark by a prior administration, even under a Republican president.

I mean, during the Trump first Trump administration, it was a disaster in terms of transparency. The DOJ was in some ways worse than Obama in terms of transparency. So very, very interesting development, to put it mildly. An unbelievable story at the FBI dating back to the James Comey era. A secret room at FBI headquarters in Washington that is allegedly filled with piles of documents. The majority anti Trump documents, all deliberately hidden in burn bags. When the United States government and agency heads want things to disappear and want things to be buried and hidden, they know how to do it.

But what they didn’t count on was President Trump winning him, electing leadership across the United States government to say, go find out how they corrupted and weaponized law enforcement. So burn bags are common at, like embassies to burn sensitive documents. You don’t want the public to get, you don’t want adversaries to get. But typically you don’t hear about burning documents at the FBI because those documents are typically needed in both current and future investigations, not to mention for the historical record. But our next guest says it goes way beyond that. There are nearly 2 million pages of records from Obama to Biden related to Jack Smith, Russiagate elections and the lawfare they used to try to take down Donald Trump for more than a decade.

Tom Fenton is the president of Judicial Watch. He uncovered this entire story and went public. Tom, good to have you on. I know you filed a Freedom of Information act lawsuit with the FBI and they confirmed the existence of all of this. So where are we now with releasing these documents? So Dan Bogino and Cash also, as you can see, talked about these records that were either in burn bags or in hidden rooms. So we said, well, give us those records. Right? And we were stalled and we didn’t get the records. We sued. And to their credit, the FBI disclosed specifically just how many records were at issue.

Generally what they covered, as I said, Jack Smith, and it could go back who knows how far in terms of other investigations that were political into Trump or related issues. Who knows what other special counsel investigations they’re hiding or other IG investigations they’re hiding could be Russiagate, for example. And they said they need about a year to kind of go through it all and get a handle on it. And I compare this to the Epstein files, right, The Epstein files with 3 1/2 million records. This is upwards of 2 million. And if I were the FBI and Justice Department, I would I would make this a priority because as far as I’m concerned, the Epstein records had a lot of interesting revelations.

But what the lawfare lunatics were engaged in was a plot to undo our republic by trying to jail President Trump when he was president and then when he was running for president. So that ought to be a problem. Let me just stop you so I can just. I want to get everybody on the same page, just so. And there’s been a lot of changes at the Department of Justice in the last several hours, so we’ll see where this goes. These were in burn bags. That’s really, really unusual. Can I ask you, do we have any insight into why Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t burn them? We don’t know who put them in there, why they were hidden, what was the purpose of hiding them from other.

The incoming FBI leadership had to figure out they were in either the burn bags or in the secret room generally. And to me, that ought to be subject to a potential criminal investigation, and they should be questioning people closely as to how that happened. You know, and that kind of goes to the issue of, you know, Pam Bondi, you know, was essentially fired by President Trump. You know, I think in the end, the FBI can investigate the FBI, the Justice Department can investigate the Justice Department. We can get the transparency. I think we’re getting more transparency.

But in the end, to the degree there are criminal actions by the Justice Department, FBI at issue in of terms terms of the lawfare against President Trump, I think there should be outside agencies or independent counsels outside those two agencies, looking at what went on here. Okay, next step in the process. I’ve got 30 seconds, Tom. Well, the FBI says they need a year. I’m hoping leadership of the Justice Department and the FBI recognize that this is a priority issue and they speed up the review of of these documents. The Epstein file shows it can be done where there’s a political will, and I’m hoping there’s a political will to expose these lawfare documents.

Very good point. And I’ll just add to that that because of your work and you coming on tonight, the White House is aware of this. Donald Trump is aware of this, whereas a couple of weeks ago he didn’t know about this, so now he knows. So I think that there will be something done to exponential that process. A year seems like way too much time, and I think that that is something that will be addressed by the new Attorney General, hopefully. Tom Fenton, great to have you on tonight. We’ll have you back. Thank you. Thank you, Ron.

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