➡ Judicial Watch, a legal watchdog group, is challenging the counting of late ballots in several states, arguing it violates federal law and undermines voter confidence. The Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for this case on March 23rd. In other news, the Justice Department and FBI have seized ballot information from Fulton County, Georgia, as part of an investigation into potential election crimes. Judicial Watch continues to advocate for election integrity and the rule of law.
➡ The article discusses a federal investigation into potential voting and election fraud in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. It suggests that the investigation is a vindication for those who questioned the election’s integrity, including former President Trump. The author also criticizes the left for trying to suppress these concerns and argues that the investigation proves there were valid reasons to question the election results. Lastly, the article mentions ongoing civil unrest in Minnesota, blaming it on the left’s encouragement of lawlessness.
➡ The article discusses a situation in Minneapolis where a man, identified as Alex Preddy, was shot by border patrol. The incident has sparked controversy and debate about immigration laws and the actions of law enforcement. The author suggests that the President should invoke the Insurrection Act to maintain order and protect federal law enforcement officers. The article also criticizes politicians who support or encourage violence against law enforcement officers.
➡ The article discusses two main issues. Firstly, it talks about the alleged involvement of Don Lemon, a former CNN journalist, in a violent incident at a Minnesota church. Lemon was accused of encouraging a mob that invaded the church, leading to his arrest. Secondly, the article highlights a corruption case at the U.S. African Development Foundation. Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, played a significant role in exposing the corruption through a lawsuit and whistleblowers. As a result, a key official at the foundation pleaded guilty to crimes.
➡ Zaoui, a company executive, was found guilty of accepting bribes and making false statements. He approved invoices with inflated costs, leading to a loss of about $800,000 for the company. He also lied about not receiving any benefits when he actually received a $12,000 kickback. As a result, he could face up to seven years in prison.
➡ The Democrats in Maryland have proposed a new map for congressional districts that is 97% similar to a previous one, which was rejected by the court for being unconstitutional. The new map is criticized for being less compact, dividing communities, and being more partisan, which is illegal in Maryland. This is seen as an attempt to secure partisan power, disregarding constitutional limits and voters’ rights. Judicial Watch, who previously won a lawsuit against the state’s 2021 redistricting plan, is closely monitoring these developments.

Hey, everyone. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton here with our weekly update on social media. Thank you, as always, for joining us. A lot to get into on the rule of law and the threats to our Republican form of government. The biggest news this week, at least from Judicial Watch’s perspective, is the announcement by the Supreme Court that, that the oral argument in our historic case over the late counting of late ballots, meaning ballots that arrive after Election Day, the oral argument is set for March 23rd, which is a Monday. So it’s about six weeks from now.

We are going to be before the Supreme Court trying to vindicate the rule of law in that important matter. As you may recall from my previous reporting to you, Judicial Watch had filed a number of lawsuits in Mississippi, in Illinois, in California, challenging those states counting ballots that arrive after Election Day. Federal law sets an election day, essentially, you know, the second Tuesday of every November, more or less, for presidential elections, you know, every four years and congressional elections every two years. And these states, upwards of 19 states are counting ballots that arrive late. So they get the mail in ballots in Illinois for up to two weeks after Election Day, in Mississippi for up to five days after Election Day.

California, it’s up to seven days after Election Day. Other jurisdictions have similar extensions of Election Day beyond what federal law requires. Now, besides being kind of a straight up violation of federal law, it obviously encourages fraud and undermines voter confidence because it’s rather obvious and easier way to help rig election outcomes, which is extending the election in, in a way that invites fraud. Now, the case in Illinois was on hold until the Supreme Court ruled just a few weeks ago in Judicial Watch’s case that candidates have the right to challenge this law. So that case is proceeding.

But in the meantime, the court also had another Judicial Watch case, this one to uphold a victory obtained in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals over the Mississippi law, where they found the counting of ballots that were late was in violation of federal law, unlawful. And so the Supreme Court announced oral argument for March 23rd. Our lawyers right now are working on briefs in the case before the Supreme Court. And this could overturn if the Court upholds the 5th Circuit ruling the way I think it should and hopefully will overturn election laws or election provisions in 19 states that undermine voter confidence, invite voter fraud and are outright contrary to federal law.

And already everybody and their mother on the left has filed amicus briefs attacking our case in the Supreme Court. But we’re confident that the majority of the justices will share our views. So I wanted to give you that important update. We Just never stop here at Judicial Watch advocating for the rule of law on election integrity. And we are leading the way literally nationally on this issue. And so that’s been a significant development. We have confirmation of Supreme Court oral argument. They obviously agreed to take up the case initially, but the oral argument being set from March 23.

What happens after that is they’ll hear the oral argument that day, they’ll go into the back and figure out what they want to do, and then they’ll start writing the opinion, and hopefully the majority opinion goes our way. The other important issue related to election law was finally significant action by the Justice Department and the FBI on some of the I believe to be criminal activity that took place surrounding the 2020 election. And they served a warrant. They essentially raided the election hub for Fulton County, Georgia, with a warrant that allowed them to seize virtually all the ballot information that Fulton county had on the 2020 election.

And of course, the left has gone ballistic over this. But I want to explain to you in part, why this is important. And I think I kind of got into it pretty directly with Carl Higbee the other day on Newsmax. Let’s play a little bit of that before I explain things further. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, sir, you guys have been on this for years, but anybody who raised an eyebrow about it got indicted, sued, whatever, here we are. That’s right. The president almost went to jail for raising the questions that have now been validated by a federal magistrate.

You know, the reason this search warrant was approved was because a federal magistrate looked at the facts and made the conclusion that there was a reasonable belief a crime had taken place, a crime related to the retention of the documents that you’ve talked about and those commissioners were talking about, but also specifically election crimes. So now we have a federal magistrate confirming that people can have a reasonable belief that crimes took place in Georgia, specifically in Fulton County. None of those issues, by the way, many of which have been raised by President Trump initially in 2020, were ever adjudicated by any state court judge in Georgia.

That’s just an amazing development. And to kind of further explain things, they’ve the left media has put out this false narrative. There were 60 cases that were thrown out. You know, most of those cases, virtually all of them were never addressingdid not address the merits. None of the merits were adjudicated specifically in Georgia. As I go on to explain with Carl, the Trump campaign filed a challenge in state court that was never heard. The state court simply refused to hear it. They delayed and delayed and delayed until facts overtook the situation. And, you know, Biden effectively became president and the case was over, so they withdrew the case.

So none of Trump’s cases, as best I could tell the Trump campaign specific cases, were ever adjudicated on the merits. And so that’s one issue. Secondly, now we have, as I said, another major issue is that the subpoena documents confirm that there are crimes being investigated related to the 2020 election, and not just about documents. And the document issues are significant because the controversies recently with respect to documents or ballot documents and documents showing how the ballots were counted show that the ballots were not counted according to the rules. Certifications were not made according to the rules, which throws into doubt the credibility of the whole election, at least in Fulton County.

And the Fulton county numbers obviously were enough to help Biden win. I use the word win in quotation marks. The state of Georgia. Now, what does this mean in terms of what is actually going on, the subpoena leading to the FBI raid? Well, it suggests that there’s another investigation going on. There’s a kind of a broader investigation going on. I don’t think there’s an investigation in Georgia, you know, based on, you know, what you. What I hear folks with the administration saying in public is that there’s something going on in Florida. U.S. attorneys kind of looking at some of these issues.

So it’s likely this is flowing from the Florida grand jury that we’ve been told is going to be looking at all of the lawfare and abuses of power and lawlessness related to Trump and his supporters, really all of us, in some respects. They target you. They target me because we’re perceived to be Trump supporters. And that’s the reality of it. And it was an abuse of power and a violation of civil rights. And the media is pretending now, the double standard is remarkable. So when they raid President Trump’s home, it’s an indication that he’s the worst person in the history of humanity.

Right. He’s a criminal. But when similar court process results in the raid of Fulton county, it’s an abuse. It shows that Trump is out of his mind. It shows that conspiracy theories have taken over the Justice Department and FBI, when, in fact, this is a modest beginning of what ought to be a major and broad investigation. And what the media doesn’t want to tell you about is also are the crimes that are taking that are alleged to have taken place that require this search warrant in order to gather evidence. And when you look at the material in the search warrant, they reference two federal criminal statutes.

So in order for the magistrate, as I mentioned on Newsmax, in order for the magistrate to sign the search warrant requests from the FBI, he’s got to have a reasonable belief that the facts show there’s got to be a reasonable belief that the facts show that a crime took place. That’s essentially what I understand as a non lawyer to be the probable cause standard. So there’s probable cause a crime took place. And as I noted, there were crimes related to the retention of records. So that’s one allegation that is being pursued criminally. So there’s probable cause that there were federal law, there was federal law breaking related to the retention of election records.

But I want to focus on the other law that was referenced in the search affidavit as being in part the basis for the warrant. And this provision of the Federal law is 52 USC section 20511. So this is the US code and this is the Criminal code. And I want you to take a look at it here on my screen, courtesy of FindLaw. Thank you. Find Law. There it is, Voting and Elections Criminal Penalties. And let me bring it up so it’s easier for you to see on screen a person, including an election official, who in any election for federal office knowingly and willfully intimidates, threatens or coerces or attempts to intimidate, threaten or coerce any person for a registering to vote or voting or attempting to register a vote, urging or aiding any opinion or any person to register to vote, to vote or to attempt to register a vote or exercising any right under this chapter.

So if you threaten people or intimidate people from essentially the voting process, you violated federal law. Now is this the section they are investigating? Maybe. I would suggest that maybe the next section is most likely what they’re investigating. 2. Knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds any person who knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process by a the procurement or submission of voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false or fictitious or fraudulent under the laws of the state in which the election is held.

And I guess this is the kicker, the procurement, casting or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious or fraudulent under the laws of the state in which the election is held. So that is. Let’s go back 52 USC section 20511, section 2B or part 2B. I don’t know how they say it in lawyer land. So there you have it. We now have official confirmation by a magistrate signing this warrant that there’s probable cause. A crime took place in 2020 in Georgia in the election for the presidency. And I see all these leftists out there complaining that there’s an investigation going on.

They don’t want to let the American people have full accountability for what happened in 2020. They think we should all just let bygones be bygones. And to the degree we complain about it, they’re going to call us all these names. And as I’ve noted previously, they’ve tried to jail us and abuse us. And what a vindication for President Trump this is. They spent six years, five years, whatever the number is, trying to jail Trump and countless others for saying what a magistrate, federal court judge just said. There’s probable cause. Crimes took place in the elections. And if you said that previously, you’d be censored.

If you were a 1-6- defendant, it was a reason to keep you in jail longer. I can point you to all sorts of filings the Biden gang filed with the Justice Department anytime. Any of the January 6th defendants said, I still think the 2020 election was suspect. They said, that’s more of a reason to keep him in jail. People lost their freedom because of this. People lost their livelihoods because of this. People lost countless resources and money because of the punishment they went through. And this is a vindication for their beliefs. It further shows why the president was right to pardon all the January 6ers.

It shows why there should be, in my view, compensation, everyone caught up in this to make up for the abuses of government in the least that were used to go after people who raised questions about this issue. So it’s a tremendous vindication for those of us who have been blowing the whistle and have been abused, harassed and targeted, including yours truly and Judicial Watch. Remember, they hauled me before a grand jury and harassed me on these very issues. I mean, it was my belief that the elections in the states that counted the ballot slate should have been considered compromised.

That’s what Congress should have done. That’s what happened. That’s why you had these alternative elector disputes. That was the whole basis for it, and it was all in good faith. Now, you may disagree with me. It doesn’t make you a criminal that you disagree with me, nor does it make anyone else a criminal because they disagree with you. But the left wanted the jail people for disputing the 2020 election. And this one subpoena or search warrant signed by this one magistrate judge just blew up the big lie about 2020. Blew it out of the water. Now, the big question is, is this just something that just happened to happen? Because, look, the Justice Department has been asking for these records for months.

I think they sued in court recently. There’s been civil litigation gaining access to these records. A lot of these records wouldn’t be around for the FBI to have gotten but for independent activists who were smeared and attacked and made fun of because they kept on demanding access to these ballot materials. You know, and the loser Republicans and the disingenuous left kept on saying, well, you know, they did recounts. They showed they were right. Well, you know, recounting crap still gives you crap. Recounting ballots that are invalid doesn’t make the election any more valid. It doesn’t get to these underlying issues.

So I’m hoping this is the beginning, and you’ve heard me complain a lot that nothing’s happening. Well, now finally something’s happening. So keep it up. More needs to come. But this is an excellent start, however, late. Better late than never when it comes to justice. And you can be sure we’re going to be asking, you know, we don’t give up on the pressure either here at Judicial Watch. I mean, I want to know what the affidavit was. Normally there’s like a document that an FBI agent or someone files with the court explaining what the probable cause is.

They lay out facts and evidence. Now, that has not been publicized yet. There will be reasons they’ll give us for not publicizing it. But if I have my druthers, Judicial Watch is going to push to gain as much access to this information as possible to get the full truth out about the crimes that are the subject of investigation. And my view is publicizing it doesn’t hurt the criminal investigation. Everyone knows what’s being looked at. So let’s get it all out. Now. You know, in Fulton county, and I will remind you, we caught Fanny Willis, the corrupt prosecutor down there, district attorney, lying to the court about records about her collusion with Congress, etc.

She was sanctioned, had to pay us, I think, over $20,000 because of her corruption. The case was taken from her, and the official appointed by the state of Georgia dropped the entire case. But it only happened two months ago. So they were still trying to put people in jail, literally, for asking the questions. A magistrate confirmed. Yes. Virginia, there is something going on in Fulton county that deserves federal criminal Scrutiny. So a significant development, and let’s hope more comes. You know, the other big news, and I say big news, I don’t mean to kind of diminish it because it’s disturbing, is that there is an insurrection happening across our country, and most notably in Minnesota.

That’s where the left, as we’ve talked about, has focused its insurrection against the federal government in favor of anarchy and lawlessness, trying to get ICE killed, trying to aid and abet criminal illegal aliens from escaping detention under the law, and in doing so, they’ve gotten two of their own killed. You’ve had Miss. Was it Miss Good who was killed after she tried to run over a nice officer? And this gentleman, Mr. Preddy, was killed the other day as he was, it looked to me, attacking and interfering with an ICE operation. And as he was taken down, it became clear he had a weapon in his pants, which caused him to be shot by ICE agents.

And here’s the video of that really terrible thing that happened. You don’t want people to get killed, but it was something that happened because of lawlessness by the left, encouraged by politicians. They doing too much, man, and they keep pushing people, you know, Oh, what the. They killed my. Did they kill that guy? Are you kidding me? Dude, not again. Are you fucking kidding me? That guy’s dead, Yo. We need people on site now. The left has lectured us that, oh, he was just an innocent bystander. He was, quote, an observer, which is a knowing lie.

Okay? The left is. Has an active network, well funded, obviously a very sophisticated network that I think members of the military and intelligence community would be jealous of in terms of the sophistication of it to track ICE agents in order to get communists and other thoughtless folks, in my view, to interfere with law enforcement operations in a very dangerous way. And Preddy was one of those people. Goode was one of those people. And there was a story out of CNN earlier in the week saying, well, you know, there’s another incident that he was involved in and he broke a few ribs.

And if reading the story, you would have thought, well, what happened? You know, was it a big deal or not? Well, take a look at what this pretty guy was doing just a little about a week before he was shot and killed in similar circumstances. This is a moment the news movement filmed on January 13th in Minneapolis, showing a man who appears to be Alex Preddy interacting with Federal immigration agents 11 days before border Patrol shot and killed him. Our footage was analyzed by the BBC, whose facial recognition technology confirmed his identity to a 97% degree of accuracy.

Seems like at a nice guy, huh? I mean, he looks psychotic in those circumstances. Now, does it mean he should have been shot in the circumstances a week later? Of course not. But it provides important context as to what was happening when he was confronted by ICE and what he was saying and doing and how and why he was resisting. He had a gun prior to that as well. I mean, to go and engage in unlawful attacks on ICE agents and assaults while you have a gun on you is exceedingly dangerous. It’s not about the First Amendment.

You can’t attack anybody. It’s not about the Second Amendment. You know, if you have the gun on your person in the commission of a crime, there are all sorts of issues that arise, mostly about the safety of the officials or the law enforcement officers trying to restrain you and detain you and prevent you from hurting them. And so, as per usual, the left has grasped onto this latest shooting to engage in more foe outrage, whip up incitement, incite more violence and whip up further insurrection against the Constitution of the United States. Essentially, Minnesota is in succession when it comes to immigration law.

Now, President Trump, you know, he sees this and he’s like, well, this is not good. What’s happening. Let me send Tom Holman there. Let’s see if we can turn the temperature down a little bit to protect lives. Now, Homan had meetings with the governor, Governor Waltz and Mayor Frey, the crazed leftist mayor of Minneapolis, and supposedly they suggested they might be more cooperative with ice. Well, I mean, do you believe that’s going to happen? Maybe we can keep our fingers crossed that things are going to calm down, but I don’t think they are. I mean, the left is what they are.

You know, the old maxim, it’s an old title of a book. You can trust the communists to be communists. So Tom Holman comes out and says, look, you know, they promised more cooperation if we’re able to go and get illegal alien criminals. These are people who violated other laws other than crossing the border. By the way, crossing the border illegally is also a criminal violation of law in most circumstances. And remaining here illegally is also a criminal violation of the law. On top of that, you have aliens who commit additional crimes while unlawfully present. And what’s happening in Minneapolis and Minnesota generally is it’s nearly impossible to get those people given to ICE for deportation after they serve whatever sentences or detention lengths in Minnesota, local and state jails.

Supposedly the Department of Corrections at the state level is doing is cooperating, but other jurisdictions aren’t so they say they’re going to cooperate, including the Attorney General Ellison, who’s a hardcore leftist as well, while inciting violence against ice. So I don’t know how it’s going to get resolved. But, you know, my view is, has always been the President should invoke the Insurrection Act. You know, there comes a point when it’s a federal problem, right? The Mayor and the Governor and the Attorney General are an insurrection. So they can’t be relied upon to protect their citizens from these illegal alien criminals and to protect federal law enforcement officers and other Americans.

And that’s what the Insurrections act is about. Does it mean they’re literally an insurrection? They technically don’t have to be literally an insurrection in order to invoke the law. It’s like, is the law capable of being enforced through ordinary means? And if it isn’t, you can go, the President can deploy the military to enforce the law. So in the least, I would recommend that the military be deployed, folks who are trained, hopefully in crowd control, to secure areas where ICE is going to detain these criminal aliens that are released as a result of these sanctuary policies in Minneapolis and other areas in Minnesota.

So if they have to go to 5th and Main, 4th and Main is protected. Everywhere is protected. There’s a perimeter that’s secure so that the detention can take place without people getting killed. These communists want to get people killed. They’ll kill their own. If others get killed, that’s fine. Something that they can leverage. They’re obviously advocating for the killing of ICE agents and it’s spreading. We have the mayor of Seattle using government resources to target and incite violence against ice. We have the Governor of New Jersey, the new Governor who’s just coming in. I don’t know if she’s been sworn in yet.

Using government resources, state resources, to harass ice. You have the District Attorney of Philadelphia engaged in a conspiracy of sedition and insurrection against the government of the United States, working with other local district attorney leftist nutjobs to try to target ICE agents. He calls them Nazis that need to be hunted down. What’s going on in Minnesota is comparable to what went on in South Carolina. You have a local government, remember just at the start of the Civil War, Fort Sumter, Federal fort. The South Carolinians didn’t want the federal government there. Told them to get out. So this is secessionist, Civil War type mentality that the left is running and we’re all supposed to pretend it’s normal.

And what is it in response to the President’s people going and removing dangerous people off the streets pursuant to the rule of law. And the response of the typical, as I call them, loser Republicans and the dishonest left is, oh, well, maybe we should have amnesty for millions of people now. Well, that’s ridiculous in my view. Everyone who is unlawfully here should go home. There are ways to induce them to go home. I know there’s programs to actually help people that give them essentially money to fly home, you know, self deportation, or they can be detained or they can just figure out, well, I can’t do this anymore.

I can’t live here illegal anymore. I have to go back to my home country. So things have gotten a little bit calmer because Tom Holman is such a smooth character and, you know, he’s. Hopefully folks have a little bit of room to back off in Minnesota. But, you know, Waltz is a terribly corrupt governor. He’s facing. I mean, he’s having to leave because of the billions of dollars of corruption that essentially he allowed to happen on his watch with the Somalian community there. And the hard communist left is running the show to Minnesota. So people like Frey and Ellison and even Waltz, they can’t cross them.

So I hope these crazies are ignored. And I tell you, if it can’t continue the way it’s continuing. So the choice for President Trump, and kind of the unpleasant choice of President Trump, either he’s got to stop what’s going. He’s got to stop the apprehensions because his people aren’t safe and the public around them when they’re engaged in the apprehension is just creating too much danger to the public safety. Or in my view this is what he should do, is deploy whatever federal assets, including military assets under the Insurrection act to secure. You know, I posted the other day, and I’m not going to read it to you, but you can look it up.

I want you to do. This is your homework for the. After you’re done watching me here, go and look up George Washington’s proclamation for the Whiskey Rebellion where he deployed federal troops. And it was up in Pennsylvania. The farmers were mad that there was a new tax. And so they were literally an insurrection. They were, you know, started burning stuff and, you know, essentially threatening federal authority. And President Washington was having none of it. And his proclamation could in large measure be applied to Minnesota on the Whiskey Rebellion. So my point in drawing your attention, I want you to read his proclamation.

You can see, you’re all smart people. You’ll see where it’s applicable directly to people like Waltz and Frey. That if the president does invoke the Insurrection act, he would be following in the footsteps of presidents like George Washington. So I oppose amnesty. I oppose communist revolutions. I oppose leftist attempts to murder ICE agents. I oppose incitement of murder against ICE agents and federal law enforcement. And you might say, well, of course, you know, Tom, of course you oppose all that. Why would you say. Why would you say that? I say that because there are politicians who don’t oppose that, or there are politicians who aid and abet and support and encourage people who want to get people killed.

So Judicial Watch will continue in Minnesota to investigate these issues. I know we have FOIAs pending, so it’s not just. I’m talking about it. We’re going to keep on pushing and pushing to get the details of how this is operating, who’s funding it, analyze that, what’s the network of communists and their funders, and also the reactions and the lawlessness and the details of that from the responsible, irresponsible state and local officials in Minnesota. So you can be sure that we’ll do what we can under the law to figure out what’s going on and try to expose and hopefully prevent more bloodshed by the left.

But in the meantime, pray for America, because we’re under attack from within. You know, and part of that leftist lawlessness, it’s, you know, and it kind of exposes, is not just about immigration. I mean, it’s about so much more. The left wants to destroy everything that you value as a traditional American religion, family, constitutional government, your core rights, etc. And we saw that in the attack and mob storming, violent in many ways, storming of that church in Minnesota involving Don Lemon. And there were some arrests of some of the individuals who invaded that church under federal law.

These, again, were civil rights violations of the law. So these are. They violated the civil rights of. According to the allegations of the church members. And it wasn’t like, oh, you know, they just showed up and started shouting and people got a little nervous. No, it was scary. And Don Lemon, the disgraced former CNN journalist, was there egging and acting as essentially a spokesman and agitator in league with these leftist mobsters who invaded the church. And a magistrate judge abused his power, refused to sign an arrest warrant. And Pam Bondi did get an arrest warrant for Mr.

Lemon, and he was arrested in Los Angeles, I guess, just yesterday. I’m recording this video on Friday. So this is Thursday at midnight. Now, many are going to say, well, you know, the left, of course, is predictably outraged by saying he was just engaged in journalism. I mean, if that’s journalism, then a lot of journalists need to be arrested because there’s something going wrong. Now, he may say it’s journalism. He may say, I was just doing journalism. And here’s all the evidence. Well, tell it to the jury. You know, there’s no exception in the constitution and federal law that allows journalists to engage in criminal activity.

Presidents aren’t above the law, members of congress aren’t above the law, corporate leaders aren’t above the law, and the media isn’t above the law. And so to see all these leftists and legacy media types like CNN who essentially fired Don Lemon, say it’s an attack on the first amendment and journalists rights. No, it isn’t. When you watch the videos of what Don Lemon was doing and what he was saying, he was part of the mob. It’s clear now he may be able to convince a jury otherwise, and that’s his right, but certainly there’s enough to get him arrested.

Judicial Watch had a significant development happen as a result of one of its FOIA cases this week. Thanks to a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit. The justice department admitted that there’s a criminal investigation going on related to looks like information in part presented by whistleblowers that Judicial Watch is representing. So we had a FOIA lawsuit, and we’ve talked about this, I think, on this program before, into the U. S. African Development foundation, which is essentially a government agency that doge tried to take over. There was a big fight about it. Long story short, it’s very controversial. And Judicial Watch had asked for records about this in a FOIA lawsuit regarding corruption there.

And at the hearing in our case, the justice department announced an ongoing criminal investigation related to the agency. And this announcement, as we say, comes after years of whistleblowing by Judicial Watch clients Jasmine Battle and Matteo Dunn Dunne, who bravely have come forward and blew the whistle on what is quite obvious corruption, it looks like, at the U. S. African Development Foundation. We sued the agency in August of 2025 for records regarding its expenditures and deposits related to credible allegations of waste, fraud and abuse committed by senior officials, contractors and and grantees in retaliation against whistleblowers, as well as its attempt to block department of government efficiency audits.

Now, let me be blunt. I don’t think we would have found out or even had this criminal case but for Judicial Watch’s tenacious representation and the bravery of these whistleblowers, they said. And it’s rare for the justice Department to say under a foia in a FOIA case. I don’t. It’s never really happened before. I mean, I’ve been doing this at Judicial Watch. Let’s put it this way. There’s no one who sued under FOIA more than Judicial Watch. So we’re talking hundreds of cases, never, ever happened again where the government said never. It’s never ever happened before.

I mean, where the government said, oh, we’ve got a criminal investigation going on. And they announced it at the FOIA hearing. That’s what they did in our case. And then what happened next is today it’s announced that a key official at the US African Development foundation pled guilty to crimes. You can be sure it was tied to Judicial Watch pressure through the FOIA and the brave whistleblowers. So, incredible developments. This is an example of Judicial Watch pursuing a case of waste, fraud and abuse and it leading to the exposure of criminal acts in this case, criminal acts that had been admitted to.

So it’s not like a question. He’s pled guilty. And this has been floating around for a while. And of course, it was buried initially by the Trump administration. Excuse me, the Biden administration, a senator wrote November 2023, according to whistleblower complaints received by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, complaints that I understand have also been shared with the Office of Inspector General, Current President and CEO Treyup Travis Atkins, former President and CEO C.D. glynn, Managing Director for Finance Administration, Matthew Sauey, Chief Program Officer and former Acting President and CEO Elizabeth Felicki and Chairman of the Board of Directors Jack Leslie, are aware of and may be complicit in corrupt and potentially unlawful practices.

So that’s the senior leadership of that agency. The whistleblower allegations included misuse of official funds, conflict of interest and inappropriate partnerships, discriminatory employment practices, and retaliation against employees who dared to raise questions about this misconduct. Now, of course, some folks dropped the ball. Institutions designed to protect whistleblowers, including the USAID Office of Inspector General, the Office of Special Counsel, and the eeoc, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, failed to provide meaningful protection or relief. So, you know, this is what happens. Whistleblowers come forward and the agencies and the officials that are supposed to be helpful aren’t helpful.

And this is what the value, this is part of the value Judicial Watch brings is that we can help them. It’s still very difficult. We’re fighting the swamp. But in this case, to the credit of the Trump administration and his team, they took, it looks like, I mean, the proof is the pudding. I mean, the whistleblowers come forward with allegations and lo and behold, there’s a plea deal and it looks like there may be other criminal charges to follow. For years, Battle and Dunn cooperated with law enforcement, including the Department of Justice, resulting in today’s public announcement, or it should be yesterday’s right, resulting in the public announcement of an ongoing criminal investigation.

But for speaking out against a corrupt agency, they have been retaliated against, mistreated and maligned. The systems that were created to protect them as whistleblowers, as I said, like the USAID Office of Inspector General, the Office of Special Counsel and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have thus far failed them. Today’s announcement is vindication for the years they spent exposing government corruption. And so that announcement in court, clearly they were pressured by our FOIA lawsuit and our whistleblowers to pursue this. And they released next the details of a plea agreement which show extraordinary corruption and infuriating corruption over at the director of over at the US African Development Foundation.

Here’s the press release the Justice Department released today, Friday, January 30th. I want you to look at that headline. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the intrepid reporting of Luke Rosiek of the Daily Wire, who also exposed a lot of this corruption as well. But look at that headline again if you’re a Judicial Watch supporter, that’s the results in part from your support of Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch in partnership with the whistleblowers helped achieve that. And look at the details here. Matut d’ Zawi is charged with accepting payments from a government contractor and then abusing his position by directing the African Development foundation funds to that contractor for little to no work.

Corruption by senior officials representing the United States cheats American taxpayers and rigs the system against honest work. That’s a nice way of putting it. This guy stole money to give to his friend. The plea agreement demonstrates the Criminal Division’s pursuit of bad actors who engage in waste and abuse in government contract government contracting. So according to the court documents, the CFO arranged for the foundation to pay vendors and contractors through a Kenya based company which they call Company One. Company One was owned by a government contractor whom Zawi had known for over 20 years. And so for three years, Zaoue arranged for the company to act as a pass through for foundation payments to certain vendors, rather than have the foundation pay the vendors directly.

For example, when the foundation needed to pay a past due debt for staffing due to a staffing vendor, Zaoui directed the vendor to invoice Company One instead of the foundation. Company One then invoiced the foundation for the vendor’s past due amount, but added a markup of over $20,000 to the amount owed. What a racket. Zaoui approved Company One’s invoice even though he knew Company One had provided no services related to the vendor’s work. So we’re talking at least of about $800,000. Zaoui approved pass through invoices that included markups ranging from 17 to 66% above the amounts owed to the vendors.

In total, Company 1 submitted more than 20 pass through invoices of this total amount to pay at least $617,000 to company one. And of that, $135,000 were retained as a markup. And that’s just kind of the tip of the iceberg. It’s pretty clear. And of course, when he was interviewed by law enforcement agents, Zaoue was asked about his relationship with the company and he lied. He falsely stated that he didn’t receive any benefits, when in fact he got it looks like a $12,000 kickback. So he agreed guilty to one count of accepting gratuities, which is bribes, essentially, and then making a false statement.

He faces upwards of two years in prison for the gratuities charge and five years for the false statement charge. So eventually there will be a plea hearing and then he’ll be sentenced. And now I know he pled guilty here. He may be cooperating. I don’t know that, but he may be, I would presume. So the sentence may not be as much as you might think. But my understanding of Justice Department policy from prior Judicial Watch work is that they, you know, if you plead guilty, you kind of have to plead guilty and be willing to spend time in prison, even if you are a cooperator.

So there’s going to be jail time. As a result of Judicial Watch’s work, our excellent whistleblowers, some independent media, and let’s be fair, Doge, because Doge and Elon Musk’s team, they focused in on this agency. They were told, oh, no problem, you know, there’s nothing here. And the leadership there was vicious in attacking Musk and making all sorts of outrageous smears and allegations to defend themselves from being held accountable under the rule of law and to taxpayers. I mean, this is basically, you know, it’s ayou know, there’s this, the left funds itself through agencies like this.

Right. But there’s also a corruption component. It looks like it’s confirmed here. So not Only is it used to kind of advance the left and take care of outside leftists and just keep the left Borg going. But they take money for themselves. I mean, this is what is proven here. He’s admitted to it. And look at this tweet by Elon Musk. I think I, maybe I responded to it. Oh. So Luke, who’s the reporter who wrote the story for the Daily Wire, said when Doge went to audit the African Development foundation, its CFO locked them out.

The move was heralded by Democrats and the media as heroic. Turns out when people resist audits, it’s because they have something to hide. Today, the agency CFO admitted taking bribes, and Elon Musk tweeted that out. They tried to hide their crimes, as I noted below. Judicial Watch. I misspelled Judicial Watch honored to represent the whistleblowers who came forward about this corrupted agency. So stay tuned for more. I think it’s. This is a pretty significant victory for the rule of law. It shows you that every, you know, it’s not the first time there have been criminal investigations as it relates to Judicial Watch’s findings.

You know, Hillary was criminally investigated, but they never did anything with her. You know, thanks. You know, it was because of Judicial Watch, she was criminally investigated. But in this case, these whistleblowers, it’s clear they came forward, the plea agreement followed. The proof is the pudding, Right? So just great work for our legal team and our investigators. And, you know, we still got the foia. I mean, can you imagine the FOIA records about what these people were up to? So stay tuned for more. You know, there’s another big fight related to elections over gerrymandering and gerrymandering, or used to be called gerrymandering.

Reagan, by the way, President Reagan hated gerrymandering. And essentially it’s a political party in control of a state who makes the congressional districts as beneficial as possible to the power of the party that’s making the call. So Republicans control Texas. They decided to update the congressional map and gerrymander districts in a way that would result in more essentially Republicans winning because the voters in the districts were overwhelmingly Republican. It goes on in Democrat states as well, where you have states that have gerrymandered. You know, places like in Massachusetts. I’m just going off the top of my head.

So I think Massachusetts has this where, you know, they got 30, 40% of the Republicans in the state. There are no districts represented by Republicans in Congress. That’s the result of gerrymandering. Now, people object to it and rightly so because they seem abusive sometimes on their face. You know, you get these crazy looking districts that connect one part of the state with the other part of the state and it really undermines, it undermines our system when you have abusive gerrymandering like that. That being said, it’s not always illegal. It may be objectionable, but it’s the way the system is.

If you don’t like it, vote inif you’re in Texas, you don’t like the Republican drawn maps, vote in Democrats. You in Massachusetts you don’t like the Republican the Democrat controlled maps vote in Republicans. But in some states it is illegal the solicit gerrymandering. One of those states is in Maryland. And in Maryland they have only one congressional district that is Republican district. It’s Congressman Andy Harris who happens to be the current head of the House Freedom Caucus, the most conservative group of House members on the Republican side at least. And you know, and I don’t, I’m sure you’ve been reading the news that the Republicans and Democrats have been gerrymandering various states to try to get a one up and be sure they’re more able to retain or in the case of Democrats, obtain power in the House and take control of the House.

So the Senate, excuse me, Texas added some Republican seats. It looks like in California they’re going to try to add some Democrat seats. Currently the gerrymandering fights have led to a slight Republican lead more or less in terms of getting extra seats. I don’t know how that’s going to turn out. And Democrats in Maryland are trying to join the fight by getting rid of that one Republican seat. Well, the problem they have is that their plan was already thrown out thanks to a Judicial Watch lawsuit. Now, is it the exact same plan? No, but it’s literally 97% of the same plan.

Let me explain. Let me go to the Judicial Watch press release. Judicial Watch analysis Maryland’s proposed 2026 congressional map replicates. Let’s go to the press release. Unconstitutional gerrymander previously struck down in Judicial Watch lawsuit. Judicial Watch we undertook an analysis through our election team. Our election law team found that the proposed 2026 plan recreates the same distorted configuration rejected by Judge Lynn A. Battaglia for Maryland’s 1st congressional district, which shares 97% of the geographic area of the unconstitutional 2021 district. As before, the district again crosses the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to link disparate regions, an arrangement the court previously found unlawful.

So what does that mean? So think of I don’t know. You got to get a map of Maryland. Actually, we have the maps of Maryland. Let’s bring up the maps of Maryland here. Give me a minute. Let’s get them viewed. Okay, so this is the current. This is the current Maryland map. Now, you see up here, this is what they call the panhandle of Maryland. In theory, it should be a Republican district, but it’s essentially Democrat. Republicans haven’t been able to get it. And this is the District one, which is. This is the far right on your page.

So this is the current district. Okay, so this is the district represented by the one Republic, this one quote, Republican district in Maryland. Now, the map that was presented in order to erase that district as a Republican district looks like this. And it was rejected by the court. See what they did here? It used to be the map essentially went down straight, but over here is the Chesapeake Bay, essentially. And they bopped over the district across the Chesapeake Bay, which is. I don’t know what is the Chesapeake Bay separated by. Put it this way. It’s like being on the other side of the.

I’ll try to think of a comparable. It’s like going to a different world. One side is Washington, and the other side is called the Eastern Shore, which is a completely different political mindset, mostly Republican. I mean, it’s like, you know, essentially D.C. you know, versus Southern Alabama. I mean, I’m exaggerating slightly, but not much. So in order to get Democrats elected, they added this little inlet across the Chesapeake Bay into basically Democrat Maryland. And they rejected the court. Rejected it. So you see that? And this is what they proposed. So the court rejected this, said it’s unconstitutional, and look at what they did.

This is their next game. This is the proposed map. Now I can’t get it. Hold on. Same thing. 97% the same map. Old map. Here’s the old. Let me go to the old map. This is the old map. Now I’m confusing myself. This is the map rejected by the court. There you see the little thing there? Here’s the new map that Democrats are proposing. Virtually the same. It’s literally 97% the same. And there are other problems. The analysis found that the proposed 26 map is less compact than both prior maps under all three compactness measures relied upon by the court.

And compact means, you know, it shouldn’t look like a Rorschach test. It should look like something that a human being drew. And there’s a compactness requirement in the Maryland Constitution. So that sort of that. Right. That legislatures have to remake congressional districts under the Constitution can be limited, obviously by the state’s own constitution, although that’s even debatable. But that’s what the law is. Additionally, the proposed redraw substantially increases county and municipal splits compared to the 2022 map that’s currently in place. Another factor. So when you draw a map, let’s say it’s Dallas. If you just draw a map into Dallas or another community and just kind of split it in half and divvy it up, you know, that’s frowned upon when you kind of draw maps that divide communities rather than kind of preserve continuity or contiquity.

What is the word? There’s a word I’m thinking of and I can’t just quite grasp it. It’s probably not a word. That’s probably why I’m thinking. That’s probably why I can’t grasp it. But you get what I mean, don’t you? It’s like the town shouldn’t be split up. It should be in the one congressional district. So people on one side of the town are represented by congressman, the same congressman on the other side of the town. And then there’s the efficiency gap, another technical term. And essentially it determines that. We found that the map is more partisan under the efficiency standard, meaning they make it.

You know, they make it, they get the most value out of Democrat value voters in the map. And it shows that it was partisan. And if it’s two partisan, it’s illegal in Maryland. And it looks like they were also up in Baltimore, which is heavily black. It looks like a minority, generally, they were playing race games up in Baltimore. So there are several reasons why this map should not go anywhere. And I don’t know whether it’s going to go anywhere in the legislature because even some Democrats don’t want to mess with it. But our biggest point is this is the same map of court largely throughout, and it’s deficient in all the reasons that Judicial Watch persuaded the court to throw it out.

Maryland is currently operating under a congressional map adopted in 2022 following Judicial Watch’s successful lawsuit on behalf of 12 registered voters. That suit challenged the state’s 2021 redistricting plan as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander gerrymander that diluted voters rights. This is a rerun of the unlawful gerrymander that a court already threw out. Maryland Democrats appear determined to entrench partisan power at the expense of constitutional limits and voters rights. We are watching these developments closely. You know, this is the problem I have with gerrymandering and, you know, it doesn’t mean that a little bit of gerrymandering is not.

Is okay, but it’s a way, if abused, to rig elections. I mean, essentially, if you use the gerrymandering map to prevent reasonable representation by the other party, it’s kind of abusive. Now, does it mean that it not be used in states where it’s allowed to be used? No, it doesn’t necessarily mean that. I’m just kind of doing it as apolitical person. If I were a Republican or a Democrat in any of these states, I’d probably be all in favor of it. But I can’t help but tell the truth as I see it. But in Maryland’s case, the laws at the state level, their constitution and their human rights declaration, civil rights declaration, they prohibit this type of abusive gerrymandering.

So I know some of you are thinking, oh, gosh, is Tom Finn ever going to stop about gerrymanderings? Well, you know, it’s how people are elected to Congress. And you can complain about Congress, but, you know, one of the complaints about Congress is because, you know, arises from the system that puts congressmen in power. And in places like Maryland and too many states, there’s little political competition. And so there’s a whole category of party members on either side who, you know, feel they can do anything no matter what any other American says. You know, we think that, well, you know, there’ll be pressure from the opposition.

Well, you know, if there is no opposition in your state, there’s no pressure. So that’s the problem with gerrymandering. In the end, it’s probably going to be even Steven. The gerrymanders will probably basically cancel each other out, maybe a slight edge for the Republicans. Is it going to be enough to save the Republican majority in this year’s elections? I have no idea. So isn’t that interesting? So I don’t know, you know, based on Judicial Watch’s work here, the Democrats, it seems to me, should just give up. I mean, we beat this unlawful map before in court.

So them doing the same thing again, I can’t imagine the court’s going to be very appreciative. Right. So a lot of things going on in our country these days, I mean, you can see that Judicial Watch once again, is kind of in the center of much of it, especially when it comes to saving our elections. And I encourage you to support our work. Support our work to save elections, to protect whistleblowers, expose waste, fraud and abuse, use transparency law to get the truth out about what the government’s up to and protect your civil rights as traditionally understood, freedom of speech, your right to vote that the left wants to steal and break and destroy.

Support our work. Go to Judicial Watch.org, judicialwatch.org and I encourage you to wherever you’re watching this video, follow our channel, share, comment, like, do whatever you can to get the word out. Because I guarantee you there’s no one else in D.C. telling you the truth that Im and Judicial Watch is. So thank you and I’ll see you here next time on the Judicial Watch weekly update. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below.
[tr:tra].

See more of Judicial Watch on their Public Channel and the MPN Judicial Watch channel.