➡ President Trump and his family have settled a case with the IRS, creating a compensation fund of $1.776 billion for victims of government misuse. This fund was created after a contractor leaked Trump’s IRS forms, leading to a civil rights lawsuit. The fund will be transparent, disclosing who receives money and how much, and will be managed by five people appointed by the Attorney General. This decision has sparked outrage among anti-Trump Democrats and Republicans, with some accusing it of being a slush fund, while others argue it’s a necessary measure for those victimized by the government.
➡ In 2017, a lawsuit was initiated due to concerns about dirty voter rolls in California. As a result of the lawsuit, Los Angeles County sent out 1.6 million address confirmations to inactive voters in 2019. If these voters didn’t respond or vote in the next two federal elections, they were removed from the voter rolls. This process led to the removal of 1.2 million names, helping to prevent potential voter fraud and ensuring cleaner election rolls.
➡ Judicial Watch, a legal advocacy group, has presented its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing against the counting of ballots received after Election Day. They believe this practice contradicts federal law, which sets Election Day as the final day for ballots to be received. The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in June. The case has sparked intense debate about the nature of voting and the definition of Election Day.
➡ The article discusses the issue of mail-in ballots and their receipt deadlines. Historically, all ballots had to be received by election day, but this changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. The author argues that dropping a ballot in the mail should not be considered equivalent to it being received by election officials. The Supreme Court is currently debating this issue, with some justices questioning whether ballots should be counted if they arrive after election day. The author believes that a decision upholding the traditional election day deadline could restore order to the election process.
➡ The Supreme Court is considering whether to ban counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. This has led to some states preparing for changes to election laws. The potential decision could affect hundreds of thousands of voters who send their ballots late. The Judicial Watch legal team, who argued for this case, believes they are close to a victory which would uphold the idea of Election Day, meaning all ballots should arrive by then to be counted.
➡ There was a plot to imprison President Trump during his presidency and election campaign, which could threaten our democracy. Unusually, documents were found hidden in burn bags, but it’s unclear why they weren’t destroyed or who hid them. This situation may require a criminal investigation. The Justice Department and FBI are expected to speed up their review of these documents, and there’s hope that the new attorney general will address this issue promptly.

So in the news this week was the settlement between President Trump, his family and his and his family’s businesses, and the IRS that resulted in a compensation fund funded initially with 1.776, $1776 billion of taxpayer money to compensate victims of government weaponization. So you can imagine the left is furious about it. And I don’t mean the left in a partisan sense, I mean the left in a bipartisan sense. Anti Trump Democrats, anti Trump Republicans, and the usual, you know, Trump haters in the media. What happened is a left wing contractor for the IRS stole Trump’s IRS forms and the IRS forms of countless other Americans and leaked them to the media, including the New York Times, who then mischaracterized them in a way to make Trump look like a bad guy.

Outrageous violation of the law, relatively speaking, they gave him a slap on the wrist. The courts and I think in the Biden administration, the guy who stole the records and Trump filed a civil rights lawsuit and he settled it. And rather than take billions in damages that I think he was owed, he gave up the billions and settled the case and said, this is what you need to do. You need to have a compensation arrangement for other victims. I’m not going to get the money. Victims of the weaponization of government under Biden, et cetera, are going to be eligible to apply and get the money.

And the way it’s going to work is there’s something called the judgment fund in the Justice Department that is used to pay judgments and to settle cases before they go to trial in terms of claims against the federal government, various agencies and such. And that’s not a terribly transparent system because if it settles before trial, you may not get the information, it’s not public. But this compensation arrangement that he’s set up is going to be much more transparent because according to the founding document or documents, they are going to disclose who gets the money and how much.

I think that’s their goal. And it’s going to be run and who’s is by five people appointed by the Attorney General, fireable by President Trump. Now of course, everyone’s screaming that this is outrageous. You know, the January 6th people who were abused, they should be abused again by being denied access to any vehicle to compensate them for the misconduct and abuse targeting them. They don’t want President Trump or his allies to be able to at least be made partially whole for the damages they suffered as a result of, of the lawfare run by the Biden gang, the deep state, Obama, etc.

Now, the rules haven’t been put out there, but supposedly a bunch of Republican senators who don’t give a rat’s tail about what the deep state did to countless Americans are furious about it and want to restrict it, if not destroy it. And they’re so furious, they left town for a week plus long vacation for Memorial Day. Do you get a week vacation for Memorial Day? Do you get a 10 day vacation for Memorial Day? I doubt you do. Right. But the Senate and Congress does, and they didn’t want to. They were planning to have some. Bill to fully fund DHS finally, because they’re still not getting the money they’re supposed to.

There’s still this shutdown debate. And rather than just do that, as they were planning to do, they left town because they were so angry that President Trump gave up the opportunity to get billions of dollars through litigation and settlement and instead directed the government to start compensating victims of weaponization in a more transparent way then otherwise they would be able toany American would be able to see under the current way of taking care of people who’ve made credible allegations of being victimized. So that’s where we are. You have Republicans in the senate fleeing Washington, D.C. because they’re mad that Trump is trying to help citizens, most of whom would be supportive generally of the people who are abandoning them now.

I’m outraged about it, you know, and everyone else is supposed to say, everyone’s out there saying it’s a slush fund. It’s no such thing. If you’ve got a claim, you should be able to try to pursue it. I don’t think any of the January 6th defendants were properly prosecuted. I don’t think these were good faith prosecutions. They were treated differently than others similarly situated. President Trump, I mean, there’s no doubt he was victimized. Countless others, Trump’s aides, others were just harassed out the wazoo by these leftists running the Biden administration. I mean, and the crimes continue.

Did you see what happened this week? They just prosecuted or indicted a former, well, I guess a current. I don’t know if they’ve been fired yet, but a senior Justice Department official for stealing a sealed document about one of the Trump investigations and sending it to her home emails or private emails using a disguised name, like calling it a, call it a chocolate cake recipe or bundt cake recipe. These documents were under seal. They weren’t hers to steal. And at the same time, she’s supposed to be investigating lawfare against Trump and she’s continuing it. The lawfare hasn’t stopped against President Trump.

And frankly, a lot of the objections and the threats around this compensation fund are, are further. Are further developments in lawfare. Oh, don’t you dare give away taxpayer money to someone who was destroyed as a result of the Biden Vendetta and the January 6th jihad, because we’ll come after you, too. It’s threats upon threats from these leftists. And to see Republican senators buy into it, I guess it’s no surprise. Look, the Republican Senate controlled Senate didn’t pass the SAVE Act. It’s not because of the filibusters, because Republicans don’t support the SAVE act. Not all of them, but enough of them don’t.

And I don’t even think it’s a principled position. I think it’s because they hate Trump. You’re seeing the same thing over this ballroom fight. The President wants to is in the process of building a ballroom to better accommodate guests to the White House, provide better security. For the complex generally. And Congress was trying to push through some extra money to support making the ballroom complex, which includes offices for the first lady and other White House staff, hardened. And they don’t want to do that. So these crazed anti Trump Republicans in the Senate are putting the President of the United States and the White House staff and all the visitors to the White House at risk because of the ballroom.

I mean, I know there are a bunch of people who think, well, Tom Fitton, all he does is he hates Democrats. That’s ridiculous. I don’t a hate anyone. I don’t like ideologies. But this is an example of politicians who are nominally conservative acting in reprehensible ways. And I’m calling them out. So call your senators. Ask them what they think about denying funds to people abused by the Biden regime, trying to make them whole. Ask them what they think about denying necessary security protections to President Trump. Ask them what they think about using their anger over President Trump.

As an excuse to leave town and not fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, our immigration enforcement, etc. And abandon the White House and the American people to who knows what type of security threats because of their craziness about being anti Trump. So again, on this compensation fund, Trump gave up billions to make sure that Americans got a little bit of money who were victimized by the Biden regime, the Obama regime and the deep state. And the left is furious and Republicans are angry at him for it. Incredible. I have some great news for you. Judicial Watch has confirmed through communications with Los Angeles county that the county has removed 1.2 million ineligible names from their voter rolls as a result of Judicial Watch’s litigation and federal court settlement that LA county and the State of California entered into a few years ago.

Now, this litigation was filed under the National Voter Registration act, which is maybe, you know, as the Motor Voter Bill. It was passed during the Clinton administration and it was designed by the left to get the government to register everybody. And the SOP to Republicans and those concerned about having duplicate registrations as a result of the government registering people time and time again was that the states had to take reasonable steps to clean up the rolls. Guess which part of the law the left enforced? The registration part. They didn’t want the rolls to be clean because in my view, they want the extra names there as a cushion if they need to steal elections if necessary.

And that’s my blunt analysis of it. And so, thankfully, the law allows for private enforcement. The Justice Department, I think, only filed one or two lawsuits in its entire history on this key law to make sure that election rolls are clean. And certainly it’s more important than ever, given the over reliance on mail in balloting that requires ballots to go out to people. You want them to have rolls that are clean, whereas clean can reasonably be. So in Los Angeles and in California, the roles were generally a mess when we sued. I think our lawsuit was initiated back in 2017.

So five years ago? No. Is it five years ago? What is this? What year is this? 2003. Six years ago. And we noted at the time, I think, that there was 20% of the rolls were dirty and California, it turns out, hadn’t cleaned their rolls. And I don’t want to get into detail why they didn’t, other than they didn’t think they needed to under the law for 20 years until Judicial Watch came around. And so we sued on behalf of registered voters and our friends at the Election Integrity Project of Election Integrity Project California, which is a public interest group also involved in monitoring California’s election rolls.

And under the terms of the settlement agreement, Los Angeles county sent almost 1.6 million address confirmations in 2019 to voters listed as, quote, inactive on its voter rolls. Under the law, voters who do not respond to the notices and who do not vote in the following two federal elections must be removed from the voter rolls. The settlement also required an update to the state’s online MVRA manual, which is the manual that the counties used to make it clear that ineligible names must be removed and to notify each California county they are obliged to do this. So what happened was we began this process in 2019.

And essentially the two federal have passed. So folks who haven’t responded have been removed from the rolls. And it’s 1.2 million names. So if you don’t respond and you don’t vote, it doesn’t mean you can never register and re register or vote subsequently, but it means you need to re register and vote, otherwise your name gets dropped from the rolls. And why is it important that the rolls be clean and that they shouldn’t have millions of inactive registrants? Because even if you’re inactive, you can show up and vote or request a ball. And if you know people are moved away, obviously that’s a temptation.

That’s a pool from which fraudsters can draw if they want to engage in voter fraud. And that’s why there’s this law requiring the states to have clean election rolls. Now I don’t have to. I guess I shouldn’t have to explain that to you since you instinctively know dirty election rolls can mean dirty elections. The left hates the idea that Judicial Watch has been doing this. And you can be sure they’re going to be very upset with the news that we disclosed. As the result of this settlement and this process for which we had to be patient for the time to pass, 1.2 million names were removed from one county in California.

And so what is happening? Under the settlement agreement, Los Angeles county was sending us email reports telling us about what was going on. And so we had an email report from January of 2022. Maybe we can throw this up on the screen because you’ve got to look at both to understand the numbers here. The number of active registrations as of January of 2022 was 5.438 million. So more or less. The total inactives on that file was 1.672 and included 317,000 names who had just been just placed on that list in the last year. At least in 2021 or just before 2022.

The number of individuals who hadn’t voted in two consecutive elections as of 2022 was 1.2 million, 1,207,613 to be exact. There were 814,000 names of people who hadn’t voted in six years. At least 685,000 names hadn’t voted in four consecutive federal elections. So that’s eight years plus five or more consecutive general federal elections. At least half of the names on that list hadn’t voted in 10 years or more. We got that number right and then they sent us a follow up email this year dated which just came in on the 15th. So what’s today? The 23rd.

So it just came in last week. The number of active registrations, it’s gone up a little bit. 5.625, up from 5.4 last year. The number of registrations in the inactive file dropped to 529,000. Now, just because they’re inactive doesn’t mean they can be removed under the law. As I’ve described, the number of registrations placed in the inactive file of the last year dropped 210,000. And these are the big numbers. The number of registrations continuously on Los Angeles is inactive file or showing no voting related activity for two consecutive elections. 03 consecutive elections. 04 consecutive elections. 05 or more consecutive general federal elections.

0. What a victory that is. 1.2 million names have been cleaned off from the rolls. This is a tremendous victory for the rule of law. It wasn’t done by the Justice Department. It was done through Judicial Watch. Your support for Judicial Watch has led to a massive cleanup of the rolls in California that will have statewide, potentially nationwide implications in the sense that those elections will be at less risk for voter fraud as a result of this mass cleanup. I tell you, there’s been nothing like this ever done by the federal government. And I guarantee you they’ll never do anything like it in the future unless there’s a radical change of leadership.

I tell you, even under the Trump administration, they weren’t terribly interested in doing much here. This is a tremendous victory for the rule of law. As I said, it wouldn’t have happened without your support. Our legal team, led by Bob Popper on the election integrity side, has done yeoman’s work here. Russ Nobil is on our side, too. Eric Lee has done great work. Our three attorneys who have been working on this case. This has just been a tremendous effort that took five, six years of careful work, litigation, and then being on them to make sure that the settlement was enforced.

Now, I know many of you are saying, well, how do you know this isn’t being. This is true? Well, I mean, it was sent to us pursuant to a federal court settlement. So, I mean, they’d be really putting themselves at some risk if they’re lying about the numbers here. And we have other ways of validating these numbers as well, so trust us on that. But I want you to take a step further back. So this isn’t the only positive thing that’s happened, because you may recall I told you how in New York City, we settled a lawsuit after New York City removed thanks to Judicial Watch, 440,000 names.

And you may recall last year, North Carolina, we ended a lawsuit there because North Carolina, after we sued, removed 430,000 names. So over the last year, Judicial Watch has confirmed over 2 million ineligible voters have been removed from voting rolls in New York, North Carolina and California, thanks to our historic litigation efforts. You know, if I could applaud Judicial Watch, it would be appropriate. Great work by Judicial Watch, don’t you agree? And there’s more to be done. We’ve had previous successes in making sure that Maryland Democrats couldn’t rig elections by gerrymandering seats in a way to ensure that only Democrats got elected, something completely illegal under state law.

We have an ongoing lawsuit in Illinois challenging Illinois’s position that they should be able to. And they have been counting ballots that arrive by mail up to two weeks after Election Day, including ballots that haven’t been postmarked. We have an ongoing civil rights lawsuit there. And of course, we’ve got ongoing litigation in Pennsylvania and Colorado to require those states and certain counties in those states to clean up their roles as the law requires. So we ain’t done yet. And you can bet as the new numbers come in, voter registration details for following up the 2022 elections, Judicial Watch will be looking at those details very carefully to decide where and whether to sue or warn people that they need to clean up the rolls.

Because at this point, just us warning people gets them to clean up the rolls. That’s happened in state after state. It happened in Florida, I know, in Pennsylvania, one county after we sent them a letter saying, what’s going on here? You haven’t been removing names as you were supposed to. They immediately removed 69,000 names. So I tell you, if Judicial Watch wasn’t doing this, our voting rolls would be a mess, an absolute mess. And I told you, we settled with California and New York City. Now, they’re not exactly the friendliest states and localities when it comes to Judicial Watch on election policy matters, don’t you think? But, you know, kudos to them for settling, seeing what the writing on the wall was in terms of the law and not wasting time and money and just getting the work done and following the darn law again without the help of the Justice Department.

So this is further confirmation that Judicial Watch is your watchdog in Washington. It’s your Justice Department. I know we’re not literally the Justice Department, but when it comes to enforcing the rule of law, we put the Justice Department to shame, certainly on election Day. So it’s just great work. Great news. And it’s going to be hard to match the success of this litigation, but we’re going to try, and you can bet, given the left’s attack on free elections, fair elections, and clean elections, by opposing voter id, by dragging their feet on cleaning up the rolls through this outrageous ballot harvesting, through unsupervised voting, meaning vote by mail, which is an anathema, in my view, to free and fair elections.

There’s a lot more work to be done, and Judicial Watch will continue to be the national leader in defense of free and fair elections under law. 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 Fitzerk 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 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 youand 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 Clementine, 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 the 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 and senior 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 in 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 the advent of field and proxy voting in the Civil War and the enormous efforts that states went 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 asked, 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 because 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 to hand it 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, 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, 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 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 the 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 by 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 the 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. Hey, everyone just walked out of the Supreme Court where the Judicial Watch team was making historic legal arguments to proceed. 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 up it 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 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 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 skeptical, 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, 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 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 Polar Finidis, 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. 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. You know, 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. Knock it 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. An unbelievable story at the FBI dating back to the James Comey era.

A secret room at FBI headquarters 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 record 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 three and a half million records. Records. This is upwards of two 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, 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. Just 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 are 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 burned 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 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 at the Justice Department and the FBI recognize that this is a priority issue and they speed up the review 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 expedite 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. Thank you. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below.
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