➡ Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, discusses his work in monitoring government activities and advocating for the rule of law. He expresses concern about the current state of the country, citing issues such as border control, election integrity, and the suppression of First Amendment rights. Fitton also criticizes the Biden administration for what he perceives as enabling illegal immigration, which he believes leads to crime, strains public resources, and poses national security risks. He suggests that these issues need to be addressed to prevent further deterioration of the country’s stability.

Hi, I’m Alex Sawyer, legal affairs reporter for the Washington Times, and I’m here with Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch and author of Rights and Freedoms in Peril. Tom, I hope you can take a couple minutes and tell us a little bit about you. For those who are unfamiliar with seeing you around Capitol Hill and your work, what Judicial Watch does and then why you felt you needed to write this book. I believe it’s your fourth one, correct? It is. We’ve been kind of chronicling the corruption of the last 10 to 12 years. And for those of you who don’t know, Judicial Watch is a nonprofit.

We’re a government watchdog group. We aggressively use the law to find out what the government’s up to by suing under foia. And then, of course, we also sue government agencies, and directly we represent whistleblowers and generally just push for the rule of law on pretty much every topic that Americans are concerned about. And we’ve just celebrated our 30th anniversary today or this year, I should say. And I’ve been at judicial watch for 26 years now, so we’ve seen a lot. In many ways, there’s nothing new. But and it’s really the reason for this book is, you know, things have gotten significantly worse in the last four to six years, and we kind of have to get a hold and focus on these issues so our country won’t fall apart.

You wrote in the introduction, I believe it was, I have a quote here, that it was a decisive moment in the history of the republic. And you’re referencing the timing of which that this book has come to be. I think it came out October 15th, and we’re just, you know, a week or so out from Election Day. So I have to ask, in your calculations, you talk about corruption, the past administration. What do you think has become the most significant problem with the Biden administration? And how can it possibly be fixed going forward, depending on who wins? Well, you know, in many ways, you got to pick your poison.

Right Is what’s worse is the invasion of the United States that he’s enabled and allowed 10 million people coming across the border, you know, free and clear, practically speaking, the effort to jail Trump for daring to dispute an election, this crazed embrace of diversity, equity, inclusion, which is essentially warmed over Marxism, to divide the country by race, the suppression of First Amendment rights, you know, all of these kind of assaults on our freedoms, our rights, the, you know, the effort to kind of attack the Supreme Court. You know, it’s part of a piece, really. And you Know, when you address one, you kind of have to address them all.

And then, of course, we have the election, right, and how elections are being run. Was it run? Was it run competently and well in 2020? I think the election was ruined in 2020. Is it going to be ruined again in 2024? We’ll see. In the first chapter you touch on, I think it was one of the first things you just listed about border chaos. And you mentioned like that it seems like this was almost planned, right. And you talk about, I think I saw some numbers around 7 million illegal immigrants in the country. And there’s like, calculations, I think, from a few different media outlets that say that’s more than the population of.

I think it’s about three dozen states. So I guess when you talk about the border and immigration being a significant problem for the administration, what sort of issues come with that? Like, I think a lot of people talk about, oh, immigration, like, where is the problem? Does it come with crime? Does it come with labor? You hear sometimes a lot of different reasons. So I wanted to ask you. Well, the consequence of the lawlessness is widespread. First of all, the illegal aliens are harmed. It’s a human trafficking operation never seen before in history. And it’s a trafficking operation that benefits the cartels, outlaw organizations.

It involves sexual abuse. It involves the trafficking and abuse of children and the shakedowns of families and businesses and disruptions in terms of just criminal activity related to the transport illegally of human beings. It’s. And of course, it’s deadly dangerous. So those who want open borders, my view is they’re enemies of illegal aliens and those being trafficked. And of course, here in the United States, we have the crime issue. We have the stress on public resources in education and other welfare. Right. That is deployed to support these aliens unlawfully present Here we have the national security issues of a border being wide open and the appearance of a border being wide open.

Not only do people, practically speaking, get across the border, but it encourages others to try and who knows what will happen in the medium or short term, even from that occurrence. And of course, you’ve got the political and. And transformation of America that could result as a result of, you know, 7 million, 8 million, 10 million, whatever the number is of these invaders. Just even forget about the idea that it’s too easy for them to get away with illegally voting. It’s their presence here, Alex, changes the political equation because they get counted under the census in 2030, unless they’re deported in the meantime.

And that means where they’re residing gets more political power in Congress and more power through the electoral college. I guess I was going to go first with the crime and read a few examples out of your book. But I guess we’ll just jump right into what you just talked about in terms of how can the government. They had you talk about the migrant flights, right. So how did you, did you find out where or how that they decide to send. How do we know where planes are going? Can we know? Is it up to judicial watch to find out and tell us? And then once they’re there, what type of infrastructure issues you talk about, resources, what did you find in terms of how it I guess, directly impacts some of these small communities? I guess one that came to light during the election this campaign season was Springfield, Ohio.

Yeah. So a lot of these flights are being exposed by citizens and whistleblowers. Right. You see them being the flights arriving in the dead of night. And that was initially what was done. And then of course it became brazen with this new program where to avoid aliens showing up at the border and just crossing it illegally, Biden would just let them come in and fly them in, literally. And the flights have been going all over the country. I mean, in this border crisis and frankly, every time we have an influx of aliens across the border, every town becomes a border town in Springfield, Ohio.

I mean, there isn’t a town impacted by this. And you know, the cities have been especially impacted. And I think they would have been happy to be quiet about it but for the interventions of governors in Florida and Texas who made it a, made a show of sending the illegal aliens to these cities. And now they just have to contend with the consequences of their sanctuary policies that encourage the arrival of these aliens and them staying where they are subsidized by not only the cities, but by the federal government. I mean, you have the federal government paying these third parties to run these aliens and take care of them or not take care of them.

In the case of the children. And we’ve been exposing that. Some of it is disclosed in the book. I mean, the news about the unaccompanied children getting lost. You know, it’s been a chaos from the get go as we’ve exposed in the book. Yeah, and you also talk about like the human trafficking, the child trafficking that’s going on. I guess my, one of my questions for you is, is that one of those problems that is just sort of swept under the rug. As a woman, you see a lot of female victims and I don’t know why we don’t hear more about that from our current administration when they’re talking about trying to get a grip on this unprecedented number of illegal immigration that we’ve seen during the past four years.

Well, in terms of, you know, human rights and sort of basic protections, as you point out, for women and children, it’s been a catastrophe. But those catastrophes are politically unhelpful to the administration and the media, cheerleading and allowing and encouraging and looking the other way because there’s this fanaticism related to open borders. And I just want to take a step back though. There’s been this kind of rising communist approach to governance in the Democratic Party, for want of a better way of putting it, because they’re in power now, Republicans have kind of been oblivious to it.

And so when you take this kind of no prisoners approach to governance, the consequences in terms of the toll on human beings is irrelevant to the communist approach. And I don’t use the word communist lightly, but how else would you explain a government that traffics 10 million people into a country and then tells us that, you know, it’s our fault, we did it. It’s incredible. One of the questions that came to mind as I was reading your book and then the moment that we’re in is there was a lot of talk during the campaign about obviously immigration, but also Vice President Kamala Harris role in early on during the Biden administration, saying that they she was going to take a look at this, this migrant issue, this illegal immigration and what could be done at the border in your evaluation? Since we talk about women and children, she is a woman, we don’t hear much about those human rights interests from her.

Or at least we didn’t since the time she was announced to have been tackling this problem. Do you think that, that how big of a deal is that in your calculation based on what your research from this book and then also in your moment that what you’ve been seeing obviously with the election just right around the corner. Well, you know, the interesting thing is the left wants to fight over whether she was called a border czar or not, whether she actually was a border czar or not, which is irrelevant. Right. The point of the debate is Vice President Harris was tasked with solving in a key way the immigration crisis by in the least traveling to the countries from where these individuals were coming and coming up with solutions to stop it from happening.

And it didn’t happen. So she failed in that specific task. And whether or not she had broad purview over the border is another matter. And the children still were moved up, the women were still moved up. I mean, children are a passport into the country. And for these traffickers. So they had an interest in moving family units or units that appeared to be families to get over the border, because the Biden administration made that commitment or change in policy early on to essentially just wave them on through, on in this border chapter. This might be my last question so we can move on.

But there’s a few areas I underlined, and one was through one of your court filings at Judicial Watch, you found that there was a citizen from Ethiopia who had been let in, had previous background of being charged with assault with a deadly weapon, assault on a peace officer, stolen property, parole violation, convictions for other property crimes, a citizen of Mexico, including assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, felony assault, false imprisonment, burglary, vehicle theft. There was a couple murders, right. One was a citizen of Honduras facing charges of burglary. A rap sheet, I think it was said it was five pages long, including a number of felonies.

It was a citizen of Cambodia that was facing charges related to murder. There’s a lot of talk and criticism about when we talk about crime linked to immigration, but it seems to me that you were able to uncover this from a number of lawsuits that your organization FOIA Ed. Right, from some of these records. How can the federal government, going forward, no matter what happens November 5th, properly vet individuals, like, from your lawsuits? What did you find are maybe some, like, loopholes or key steps that you would think our agents could use or better utilize from assistance from the federal government? Well, a, you gotta close the border.

To be blunt, the military should be deployed to secure the border, and then you get a handle on everyone who’s here and deport them, whether they’re criminals or just present illegally, which is also largely criminal. You have to shut down the sanctuary city policies to the degree federal law allows them to get away with it. It should be changed. Sanctuary cities that provide aid and comfort and allow local officials to actually protect individuals they’ve arrested for crimes and convicted of them and convicted for crimes and then release them onto the streets without telling ICE about it.

That’s the one thing ICE consistently complains about, even during the Biden administration, is that the one or two people, they actually wanted the port, the sanctuary cities refused to tell them when they’re released. And so they get released onto the street and. And ICE has to go running after them. You know, so those are really key policies that need to be followed. And, you know, the left likes to pretend. Well, Aliens don’t commit crimes anymore in any different numbers than non citizens. Well, unless you eliminate the crime of crossing the border. But these are crimes that are unlike US Citizen on US Citizen crime.

These are crimes that would not have been committed but for the failure of the federal government to secure the border. And that’s what’s morally outrageous. And that’s why people react the way they do, and they should. Mm. Do you think that’s also why we are seeing immigration as like a top issue under economy in some of these polls, what we’re noticing right now? Oh, I think it’s all tied. I mean, you have immigration causing, in part stress on the housing markets. It certainly leads to the kind of the air of lawlessness and concern about the economy that Americans are focused on right now.

To me, it’s just one part, you know, like the economy and immigration and such. They’re tied hand in hand in my thinking, for many voters. You talk about lawlessness and you go on in your book, the next chapter, I think you dedicate to lawfare against former President Trump. And I wanted to start with the New York hush money trial. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about was when we’re talking about where trials are undertaken and you discussed in your book Manhattan’s District Attorney Alan Bragg. Do you think that if this was a different venue.

I think of someone like John Edwards. Right. In North Carolina, more of a swing state. Do you think that we would have had a different result with the actual conviction that we saw? Not only would, not only would you have had a different result, you wouldn’t have even had a prosecution. I mean, Alvin Bragg is a left wing Democrat who ran in part on going after Trump. He was pressed by the left and activists to pursue these crimes up in New York against Trump. I have no doubt the Justice Department and the Biden administration was cheerleading him on and coordinating.

You have another elected Democrat politician in Fulton County, Georgia, similarly go after Trump. And then on top of that, you had the Biden administration themselves. So all of these folks who were prosecuting Trump and Trump allies are Democrat politicians. Let’s be clear. They ran for office. They’re in the position of prosecutor. In the case of Joe Biden, he made it clear. You can read about it in the Washington Post. He wanted Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump and Garland did so. Politicians now are trying to put their political opponent in jail. And it’s a storm front from Georgia up to Washington here, up through New York.

Yeah, you talk about the leading characters which you just mentioned you also in your book, you mention Attorney General Letitia James and her focus on Trump and Trump Organization and the courts. I wanted to ask you, and also you talk a lot about due process and the former president’s constitutional rights. One of the things I wanted to ask you is what issues do you see as with the American justice system that you found to be alarming in terms of what we witnessed with Alvin Bragg and the conviction you mentioned, the crime alleged in the judge handling that case you reference in your book? So I wanted to ask you, what sort of constitutional rights were you pointing out? Due process, Sixth Amendment, that sort of thing.

Can you elaborate some examples there from your book? And then also, do you anticipate that this conviction could be overturned? So the civil rights are numerous. I mean, the first one is the First Amendment right. He’s being retaliated against for engaging a First Amendment protected speech. Then you’ve got this core attack on the Constitution where he’s being prosecuted for his work as president of the United States, for which the Supreme Court has found that he is immune largely. So all of that prior to that court ruling was extra constitutional. It was outside the law. You have all sorts of violations of his civil rights related to his right to counsel, the targeting of his lawyers in a way that we haven’t seen before, not only of him, the lawyers by prosecutors, but by partisan and ideological bars that are abusing and harassing and sanctioning.

And in the case of Giuliani and people like that, trying to throw out of the bar and essentially disbar them for doing their jobs as lawyers, things that had never been contemplated in terms of going after the left when their lawyers engage in pretty out there litigation. But it’s public interest, political type litigation. And that’s the way it was supposed to be. You make the case, you lose in court. If the court doesn’t like the case, maybe there’s a sanction here or there. But we have this law fair for just doing things that we have a right to do under our Constitution.

And, you know, the president has a right to petition the government like anyone else. And that’s a core First Amendment right that we often kind of slip by. Right. When we talk about the First Amendment, it’s the free speech, but to petition your government and he’s being punished six ways to Sunday for doing all of that. It’s, I’ve never, you know, I know they wanted to jail him, but to have the courts kind of enable it, the way they’ve been enabling it is Extremely disturbing. So, as a reporter and a lawyer, I find a lot of the.

You mentioned First Amendment. I found a lot of First Amendment concerns with a number of these lawsuits. One you also mentioned in your Lawfare chapter, and it’s the defamation lawsuit involving E. Jean Carroll. One aspect of that I know was the president at the time, I think it was like maybe 2019 or so. You are, you might know better than me the exact timing, but the ability just to respond to allegations was then the subject of a lawsuit. I think you discussed the problems with the prosecution of Trump in New York under Alvin Bragg, but then also with Jack Smith and some gag orders that we’ve seen issued from courts.

How do you. You talk about the First Amendment, but do you see this being also in terms of when the president, the former president, complains of election interference? Like, what is that? When someone is not able to respond to allegations against them. Well, I’m glad you brought that up, because as far as I’m concerned, the election’s already been compromised right through this law. Fair. You know, that trial, for instance, Trump was in up in New York over his finances. Six weeks in the middle of the campaign, held hostage. He couldn’t campaign, and to this date, he is under gag orders, so he can’t fully defend himself against this lawfare.

It’s blatant election interference. Right now, the Justice Department, Jack Smith, the Biden Harris Justice Department, with Judge Chutkan here in the District of Columbia, are harassing Trump in the month before the election with a flurry of pleadings that there’s no need to have them be pushed now other than they want to affect the election. I don’t think any sensible person looks at that activity and think that Jack Smith is doing this crazed insistence on trying to get Trump and smear him for anything other than politics, I tell you. And Trump defended himself in the Carroll case.

He said, I didn’t do it. I deny it. And, you know, he goes through some type of show trial exercise there in response, after a law was specifically passed to target Trump to get the statute of limitations extended so he could be sued over these issues. Really, it’s just awful. And, you know, and of course, the blowback is to other politicians. Right. If you’re falsely accused of something. Right. And you say, I didn’t do it. Well, now you’re opening yourself up to defamation, right? Exactly. That’s one of the things I study defamation law and I found alarming.

When we’re looking at, I think it was an order talking about double defamation and it was. The opportunity to deny an allegation against you now counts as defamation. Along with that, gag orders typically, in my experience, are used to protect a defendant. Constitutional rights heading into a trial, not to, I guess, hamper one’s First Amendment rights among due process and others. Given that this is just unprecedented, that we’re talking about a defendant who’s a former president and also running for reelection. You talk about Judge Chutkan in the federal election fraud case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

One of my questions from you from reviewing this chapter on was that massive filing we saw. I think it was like, at the end of September that Judge Chutkan greenlit. It was supposed to bring forth new evidence that Jack Smith had to bolster the superseding indictment from following the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, which you mentioned. How big of a deal was that? Do you. You mentioned that you think that that’s one example of how it could have interfered with the election. Typically, I know a defendant is first allowed to file a motion to dismiss. That was one of the things that was kind of.

It was that Judge Chutkan allowed to be skipped over so that this massive filing could be made. Is that another unprecedented turn that you found with your experience looking at lawsuits over. You mentioned 30 years with judicial Watch. Yeah, I mean, it’s consistent with the prior behavior of the court and the Jack Smith team, which is to try to kind of accelerate the process and abuse the process to make Trump look bad, all with the goal to be clear of jailing him. I mean, they still want to jail him up in New York. The big fight about the Letitia James case is about whether he has to basically have his business destroyed because they question whether he valued properties.

Right. For getting mortgages and loans that the banks were fully paid back on and were happy with. I mean, it’s a distortion like we’ve never seen before. And as you point out, it just is going to. It’s going to run up until the election. And so I was thinking, Alex, I said, you know, what happens if Trump wins and what happens if. Or what happens if Vice President Harris wins? In many ways, these issues don’t go away either way. You know, Vice President Harris wins. Obviously, the Justice Department investigations that will continue to try to jail Trump, all the abuses I’m concerned about will continue.

But the left isn’t going to stop just because Trump wins. They’re still going to try to jail him. They’re still going to try to abuse our First Amendment rights. They’re going to Defend the aliens who have invaded the country under Biden Harris, try to prevent them from being deported. Nothing’s going to on whose side in terms of the government folks will be on. Some of these issues might change, but the underlying battles will continue no matter who the president is. You mentioned jailing him. I believe it’s later in November that Judge Marshawn has the sentencing hearing related to the conviction on the hush money trial in New York.

You wrote in the chapter a little bit about Judge Mershon’s daughter. I believe it was Lauren is her first name. Can you explain a little bit about what you found out about her, about any sort of potential conflicts of interest with the judge? And then I guess the ultimate question is, you know, if Trump were not to win, do you think he, this judge goes ahead and sends him to jail? Oh, I don’t even think his winning is going to change what Marshan does. You know, he convicted him on, you know, baseless charges and allowed it to proceed.

So why would jailing him be outside his ambit in terms of what he’s willing to do? And, you know, Judge Merchant’s daughter, you know, there are these conflict of interest issues. His daughter was involved in fundraising for essentially, Biden World. Right. And so she’s. Adam Schiff was one of the. And so you have this connection where there are people running against Trump who are paying his daughter, and that’s under the ethics rules in New York. That’s close enough. But even more directly, he’s a donor to Joe Biden. He gave him money, a small amount. He gave money to Joe Biden and other left wing political clauses as a judge, which is a violation of the ethics rules.

So no matter how you slice it, he shouldn’t be the judge on this trial. No matter how you slice it. And the fact he’s still sitting on it is a failure of the judicial system in New York. Do you think that that becomes an issue once how. I guess I am not familiar with New York’s law. So once sentencing happens, is that something that could be stayed? I guess while we see these issues appealed all the way, likely up to the Supreme Court, I would guess. Is that correct? Yeah, because Merchant, you know, he hasn’t addressed or I don’t think he’s fully adjudicated the issues and nor have they been either.

Now, I don’t recall if he’s adjudicated the issue of the Supreme Court immunity issue, which. For which Trump was, you know, they had material used against him in the trial that would been. Would have been covered by presidential immunity. And the Supreme Court said, you can’t do that. So the trial to me, or the conviction needs to be voided. Right. So that’s the opportunity, it would seem to me, that Trump would have in terms of pursuing any sentencing and such. But I think, you know, from what I recall, Merchant is going to put it off a little bit in terms of deciding what to do past the election.

You also talk a lot in your book. Your next chapter is dedicated to a critical race theory. Can you define that and also talk about from your research, what some examples of the harm that you found. A lot of people don’t, I guess, know or understand differences between maybe critical race theory. Dei, you mentioned both in your book. Can you elaborate for those that might be confused or think, you know, I thought that the Supreme Court did away with affirmative action, that sort of thing. Well, I call it basically Marxist revolutionary theory. Right. It’s repackaged in a way for the American experiment and to undo America.

And what they do is they look at the history of America and everything that goes on in our country and they kind of look at it through this Marxist racialist lens that reflects, of course, poorly on America because they believe under this theory that the country is systemically racist, meaning everything we do is tinged and tainted by our racist decisions and history, including slavery. And the only way to fix it is through revolutionary approaches that redistribute wealth, reorganize the nation, undo our constitutional protections, you know, to usher in this new socialist paradise. So they just want to, it’s all a vehicle for undoing the country.

And if it means violating the constitutional’s provision, the constitutional provision in the 14th Amendment that guarantees all of us equal protection under the law, no matter the color of our skin, they don’t care. They’ve given up on that. They want segregation, they want racial division, they want reparations that would give money, tax money to individuals based solely on their race. We have this class action civil rights lawsuit in Evanston, Illinois, where they’re giving 25,000 or had been given $25,000 in cash payments to individuals. And the key, and the key qualification is race. It’s not legal. It’s not legal.

And so and on top of that, you’ve got this whole, this kind of anti Americanism, whether it be critical race theory, dei, it’s kind of all different sides of the same coin. It’s in our military, it’s in our military academies, the West Point Air Force Academy, Naval Academy, our rising military leaders that’s where the new officers are being trained, are being brainwashed or attempting to brainwash them into this anti Americanism. They’re trying to alienate our rising military leadership from the country they’re swearing to defend. It is a threat, a dire threat to our future. You talk about, I saw in here a reference to the Biden administration, the White House issuing directives basically to for equity regarding the federal government.

You just touched on the military in West Point. I had been tracking lawsuits related to this issue with the military academy. And I know you’re familiar with the Supreme Court’s ruling when it came to Harvard and UNC with affirmative action, they didn’t touch the military. So I guess going forward, what do you. What is the problem in terms of when you promote or focus on race when we’re talking about the military sense? Why didn’t the Supreme Court tackle it then? Do you expect that they’ll have to going forward, given what you found with the Biden administration and how this has been a real focus throughout the federal government? Well, the Biden administration, you know, this DEICRT agenda, it’s a guiding principle for the Biden administration.

It’s through which all these policies are supposed to be analyzed. No policy promulgated by the Biden administration is supposed to go forward without it being analyzed for its DEI impacts. The same goes in the military. And, you know, the military, their first job is, you know, I’m not a veteran, but my general understanding from our veteran friends and those we’ve been representing in trying to get these documents is, you know, to identify, stop and kill the enemy. And that’s not what you’re doing unless you think Americans are the enemy in telling our recruits and those in the military and those we’re training as officers in the academies that America is a bad country and we got to change it systematically.

And by the way, if you’re white, you’re a child of privilege, and if you’re a minority, you should get special protection and be patronized and get special help and treated like you’re a child. So it’s nasty no matter how you slice it. It treats everyone involved as victims who are helpless or tyrants and evildoers. And that’s one way to destroy the country. It’s not one way to defend it. One of the. You just, you mentioned the lawsuit in Evansville and like this being unconstitutional, Taking a look at race, using race as a consideration. One of the other aspects in this chapter was you talked about, I believe it was CRT talking points that were Used.

Was it at the military academy? Can you go a little bit onto that and then tell me in that respect, do you see that as even a First Amendment issue? Well, you know, you know, it’s a hostile. What is it? Hostile workplace. Right. That used to be the key anti discrimination law, but now every place is a hostile workplace. If you. It’s dei, including the military. Imagine being a senior officer, having to go through one of those programs and being told, if you say X, you will be punished and you must admit X, otherwise you’ll be punished.

Meaning X being I am a child of white privilege, I do have privilege. Or if you object, you’ll be targeted as well. And we’ve seen individuals drummed out of the military, and I’m convinced the vaccine mandate was one way to target those individuals, to push them out of the military. And this, I think, was after the book, but we just uncovered. I don’t know if you saw Alex, in the Secret Service, their DEI program was every day, in every way, it has to be advancing dei, everything they do. And that’s a quote. Every day, every way.

Mm. I was going to ask you a little bit about Secret Service and some of those issues. As I know you, your organization looks for Freedom of Information act requests and then litigates what you’re not able to find, what the government won’t turn over. And one of those areas that you explore is COVID 19 and the pandemic. What you uncovered from some of those FOIA lawsuits. I guess two questions for you. One, you talk about Dr. Fauci in this chapter and also the idea of the US funding for gain of function research. Can you explain a little bit about that? And then I guess, like a cherry on top, so much was about, like, Covid took over our lives.

Not just, I mean, I guess if you were in Florida. I used to travel to Florida in 2020. It felt like 2019. After a few weeks, it was no masks and everything, but everywhere else in the country was still shut down. You still saw masks. So since what during that whole, I guess, sometimes years long event, what did you find most troubling from your discoveries through these FOIA lawsuits? Was there one thing that stuck out above all else? The US Government was funding gain of function research in China. And they had been doing it for years.

And they tried to lie about it and they tried to disguise the potential origins of COVID in my view, to cover up their role in potentially creating it through gain of function research directly or teaching the technique to the Chinese colleagues of fauci’s agency grantees, you know, Ecohealth alliance and things like that, that were getting money from Fauci’s agency and then spending it in China. The documents we show obtain show that those labs should never have been given this type of money. The labs were unsecure. It was going on in more than just the Wuhan lab.

And then we find out that gain of function research is essentially going on here in the United States as well. So what is gain of function research? To take a step back, it’s taking a virus, a biological agent like a virus, and making it more dangerous, more likely to infect human beings. So the whole debate about who was responsible for Covid, whether the natural or man made, was twisted because Fauci’s people had an interest in pretending it was natural to cover up their involvement potentially in having it made or created or engineered. And we got document after document exposing it.

Congress didn’t get the documents. Judicial Watch got the documents. And you did mention, and you use the word in your chapter as like Covid origins were thought at the time to be taboo, that we weren’t supposed. There was like this thing about questioning it. Do you think it’s because of the funding issue or do you think there was an underlying sense of politics, like the idea of, I guess like officials from the Trump administration suggesting that there was a lab leak rather than this was a natural occurrence? Well, in some ways it was pro statist. Right.

They didn’t want the government was expanding its power. They didn’t want Americans to object in any substantial way. It was anti Trump because Trump had called it the China virus. So anything that would benefit Trump was to be suppressed and censored. And of course they’re just protecting themselves. So let’s censor Americans from focusing their ire on Fauci’s agency and the federal agencies who funded this potentially lethal research that if it was tied to Covid, you know, would have been the biggest disasters in, you know, in history in terms of man made disasters. I tell you, there’s got to be a criminal investigation as to what went on there because by the way, they weren’t supposed to be funding the gain of function research.

And when you look at the documents, they knew that this agency, EcoHealth, was breaking the rules and yet they just let them keep on getting the money. And it was only, I think it was the last few months the Biden administration finally said even we can’t give them money anymore because of all the rule breaking related to the gain of function. Yeah, that was one of the areas that I highlighted in this chapter. Specifically, you talked about that. You said Fauci and all of his people knew early on about that they had funded this gain of function research.

And basically their downplaying also then led to censorship. Can you elaborate on the censorship? Yeah, yeah. I mean, just early on, what struck me was more of a recent disclosure. It’s in the book, I think. I think it was back in 2016, they talked about this research being used to create mutant viruses. Mutant viruses. I never had thought to call the gain of function in the early days. The gain of function in the early times of debate. They’re creating mutant viruses. Well, they. That’s what they called it. And we had this widespread suppression of not only questions about the origins of the virus, which are all legitimate and good faith, but questions about everything related to lockdowns, shutdowns, the impact of the vaccines, and the alternative approaches to taking on the virus and protecting people.

So it put people in harm’s way because it denied them information about dangers to their health and ways to protect their health because some government official somewhere decided that we shouldn’t have it and the big tech marched lockstep with them. One of the. I mean, obviously Covid also impacted the 2020 election and how people voted in mail in ballots. You go on, in your subsequent chapter, you talk about. One of the key points that I thought was interesting you make is that basically elections involving Trump are unlike any other, which I think we’ve seen that to be very true.

In 2016, you discussed the allegations of Russian collusion and the Russian government’s interference in the election, would you say? I was covering Capitol Hill at the time. And I remember that was basically a two year probe where every day it was. Some reporters seem to be staked out outside of lawmakers who are on the Intelligence Committee. So I wanted to ask you, do you think that was the start of what you, what you talked about, the Trump law there? What the January 6th or Covid going all the way back to when you discussed the Russian. Oh, yeah, yeah.

In the election of 2016. Yeah. So, you know, when you. When you go back, as soon as Trump showed up, they started making these allegations and the primary campaign even wasn’t solidified one way or the other in terms of Trump winning as they began these investigations of him that were manufactured and purely political. And it was almost as if they were looking for every slim read and in many cases making it up Trump to justify prosecutions and unprecedented spying on Trump. Remember, it’s not just an investigation, it’s spying. So when you get people and say, go spy on the Trump campaign, I don’t know how else to describe it.

And then it continued after he was elected, with the approval of Obama and Biden, they subverted his presidency as he came in. And we’ve never seen anything like it before in American history. The sedition by Obama and Biden in the beginning of the Trump administration where they were talking about withholding information, sending the FBI director to try to get him to confess to something he didn’t do. You remember Comey went over and talked to Trump about the pee tape, Right. He did that with the tacit approval of Obama and Biden. Biden had it in for General Flynn.

Flynn got ambushed as well by the FBI subsequently. Boy, talk about subverting democracy. Right? And that’s kind of where I wanted to you do it in your book, you connect the dots between the Russian collusion narrative that never came to be really. And then go to 2020 and you talk about how we heard basically for two years, you special counsel probe, Robert Mueller was on this, about how the 2016 election was unsafe due to, or unsecure, I should say due to Russian interference. But then in 2020, some of the documents that you’ve. You discussed with your organization was, I think it was the statement that was out, put out in 2020 from it was at the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency which said, quote, that 2020 now was the most secure in American history.

You question how we could go from, in four years from the, I guess, to be fair, a special counsel probe. And then John Durham. So a special counsel probe of a special council probe that related to this Russian collusion interference to then all of a sudden having the most secure election in US History. How do you think we got there in four years based on your findings? Oh, it was election interference. It’s consistent. You talked about how Covid was used to manipulate the election processes. Increased unsupervised voting through mail in balloting, which in my view, made the elections even more compromised than they otherwise would have been because it becomes impossible to check or pursue voter fraud if someone is voting far away from the ballot, from the voting place.

You had the rule changes and you basically had people scared away from voting in person by the left. I testified to Congress about it. I said, you know, they were saying that, you know, you shouldn’t have to, you know, it shouldn’t be your life or your vote. Right. So if that doesn’t explain to you why Covid became as important as it did for the left and the government, the big government, the deep state types. And I don’t know what would I mean, they saw Covid as a way to leverage changes to the elections to increase the opportunities for fraud and make them less secure.

And some of those changes have stayed. So I know like some states had moved for how many days past Election day, mail in ballots could be counted. It looks like the fifth Circuit had just ruled that a Mississippi law that did that was unconstitutional. So yeah, that was a Judicial Watch case. Yes, it’s going to be interesting to see going forward. Obviously, I think that ruling just there was one that just came down so too close to our current November 5th election. But it’s something obviously that I suspect won’t be going away and will be something possibly the Supreme Court ends up taking up in future terms.

I wanted to you mentioned January 6, you talk about in your book. I know where I wanted to fit in a couple more questions while I have time. One aspect of January 6th that you write about in your book, January 6th, 2021, was Ashley Babbitt and the one Trump supporter who was shot dead. What was your organization able to uncover related to the shooting? And a little bit more of what you don’t hear about in mainstream media, I suppose, or across media platforms about that shooting and the officer that what his reasoning was and if there’s been this investigation, where it stands, is it closed? Well, they never pursued the officer in any serious way.

Lt. Byrd we exposed didn’t cooperate with the police. Judicial Watch foyers exposed how in fact, he was put up at Joint Base Andrews for four, five, six months in a hotel in quarters typically reserved for generals. So he was protected. Think of every other police officer involved shooting in recent years that’s been controversial, grand juries, serious criminal investigations. None of that happened for Lieutenant Byrd. Ashley Babbitt was a 14 year veteran of the Air Force. She was in that Capitol walking around alone. She ended up outside the speaker’s lobby. She went through that window and was shot, sight essentially unseen by Lieutenant Byrd.

And that’s why we filed a big lawsuit for her estate and her family. 30 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit that is going to see a trial in 2026. And Lt. Byrd had no business shooting into that crowd and killing Ashley Babbitt dead. She was the only official homicide victim that day. So for all the noise you hear about deaths on January 6 and some people died who probably shouldn’t have died either, you know, to be clear. But in Terms of, you know, Roseanne Boylan, for instance, I don’t know. You know, that death looked suspicious in terms of the failures and negligence that led to it.

But certainly Ashli Babbitt was shot dead by a cop who shot into a crowd. And we hear them defending it like it’s normal. So this is why this lawsuit’s important. There’s got to be justice for Ashli Babbitt. And highlights the whole narrative of January 6th being. It’s all about politics. It was used as a cudgel. It’s right now being used as a cudgel to target President Trump and trying to jail him. You know, Alice, I’m tired of being lectured. You can’t talk about January, you know, don’t talk about 2020. And usually lectured by our friends. Right.

But they’re trying to jail people based on January, on 2020. Right. So let’s, let’s talk about it. Mm. And one of those, obviously, we talk about that with the law Fair with the Jack Smith case. And you write about the lawfare going on with Trump might. January 6th defendants obviously, are also part of that and their treatment compared to other litigation, other sentences that have been handed down to rioters involved in federal property. One of the things you mentioned previously that I think, because I’m running out of time, I wanted to touch on with you was your investigations into the Secret Service.

You talk about in your book the issues with the Biden dog bites attacks, also the President Obama, I believe it was his chef, that. What else did you find troubling with the Secret Service? And I think maybe you alluded to it with some of their hires. And what’s going on with some of the investigations regarding the Trump assassination attempt. Well, you know, just going back to the dog attacks. I mean, imagine working in the Secret Service, protecting the president of the United States, and you and 24 of your colleagues get bitten by his dogs, and no one does anything about it other than telling you to shut up and not tell anyone about it.

Right. Talk about a morale killer. And it’s obviously also being dangerous. I mean, it’s dangerous for President Biden to have a Secret Service agents worrying about possibly having to shoot his dog. And then Obama’s chef dies. There’s an emergency situation. Lots of detail there in the book, but something that I think is of particular interest. So the woman who was with the chef comes rushing up to the Secret Service and they go to try to rescue him. They go to the boat that’s on this big pond in which Obama’s massive estate sits and the first boat doesn’t work.

They go to the second Secret Service boat there for emergencies, it doesn’t work. And they have to use the groundskeeper’s boat to try to go find the guy. So you’ve got like this dysfunction, this willingness to put Secret Service agents at risk to protect politically Joe Biden. And you’ve got this incompetence, as I say, up in, you know, with the Obama chef death, you know, and all of it’s coming out not because we’re getting public disclosures and they’re being honest. We had to go to federal court to get this information. Federal court to force out basic information about these massive security breakdowns.

No wonder Trump was nearly killed twice under the watchful eye or unwatchful eye of the Biden Harris Secret Service. I know, also I think it was you in reference to the Obama chef investigation, what was going on there when former President Obama showed up? I believe you said that the search was paused. I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but for some reason I remember it being for a course of lengthy period of time. And I remember thinking, given the circumstances, obviously you want to secure a former president. But also the immediacy of needing to do the search, that also seemed to be out of step.

It was paused so he could talk to the witness and he was there for the witness interviews. Very strange. And with, with water, anything timing and a search timing is of the essence. My last question real quick, since I think we only have about a couple minutes left, is how can Americans rein in the government to decrease this law fare that you’ve highlighted and have, you know, Washington work for them instead of the insiders or the establishment? Well, when government officials abuse the law and the powers entrusted to them, there’s got to be a consequence. And in my view, there haven’t been sufficient consequences.

So if I’m President Trump or the next honest president, I would demand and direct a criminal investigation of those who targeted him and other Americans for abusing their powers to go after his civil rights under color of law. I mean, it’s that simple. There’s got to be consequences. There hasn’t been much in the way of any consequences. It’s been exposed. There’s been some accountability through the exposing of it, and it’s curtailed it somewhat. But if there’s no punishment for abusing your power, you’re not going to stop abusing the power. So that to me is key. And he should go on a transparency tear so we know what’s going on.

And Congress has got to step up and step into these funding debates and curtail the funding and punish the agencies because I think some of them, frankly, can’t be redeemed at this point that have been really enemies of the rule of law. Well, and maybe that the idea you said consequences, maybe that’s the title of your next book, once we do a follow up administration look into all this. I appreciate you taking time with me, Tom Fitton, on your book rights and Freedoms in Peril. Tell people real quick where they can find it. It’s available all over Amazon, Barnes and noble and judicial watchbook.com.

great. Thank you so much. You’re welcome.
[tr:tra].

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