➡ The article discusses the power of judges and the potential for overreach, particularly in relation to immigration policies. It suggests that legislation could be passed to limit the scope of injunction power, and that Congress could support the president’s efforts to reduce waste and fraud. The article also touches on the role of Congress and the importance of timely justice. It ends by questioning whether the Trump administration has been too quick to call for the impeachment of federal judges.

➡ The article discusses a disagreement over a judicial decision, with some suggesting that the Chief Justice’s response was politically motivated. It also covers a caller’s opinion that the President should have the power to fire any federal employee found to be corrupt or not performing up to standard. The article further discusses the issue of President Biden’s dogs attacking agents and staff, and the ongoing pursuit of a Freedom of Information Act suit related to an interview with Biden. Lastly, it touches on the concept of “the swamp” in Washington, referring to a culture of secrecy and resistance to change.

➡ The discussion revolves around the political climate, the role of judges, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The speaker expresses concern about the perceived political bias of judges and the lengthy process of obtaining documents through FOIA. He also mentions the work of Judicial Watch, an organization that files lawsuits in the public interest, often assisting journalists and citizens. The speaker hopes for a more transparent government where citizens can access information without needing to file a federal lawsuit.

Back with us at our desk, it’s Tom Fitton. He’s president of the group Judicial Watch. It’s been about a year since we’ve had you on. So for viewers who may not be familiar, what is Judicial Watch? What’s your mission? How are you funded? We’re a nonprofit educational foundation funded by the public, no USAID funding, and we sue the government for documents. We sue the government when they engage in wrongdoing. For instance, we’ve been doing work on election integrity, cleaning up voter rolls. We’ve been challenging reparations programs and woke racism, as I call it. So we’re kind of a conservative version of the aclu and we are, when it comes at least to open records laws, the number one litigator in the country on terms of government transparency.

Conservative version of the aclu. Does your mission or your tactics change when there is a Republican in the White House versus a Democrat in the White House? You know, if you’d asked me 20 years ago, I probably would say, oh, yeah, things change. But things don’t change that much. We have to sue the government to get access to information, no matter who’s in office. You may have support from the president individually on transparency issues, but the agencies are really slow to follow any direction in that regard. The I joke. The resting state of the deep state is secrecy.

And all things being equal, they’re not going to give you the material. How do you get the material? You say you sue the government. Where do you go to sue the government? Well, there’s a federal Freedom of Information act. And what happens is you ask for the records and more or less you give them some time to respond or not respond, and depending on the nature of the response, you can actually go into federal court and then the agency has to come in and defend its withholdings or explain to the court why it is they need more time to respond.

And so you’ve got the federal version of that also you have the state version of those laws. And sometimes the state laws are better than the federal law in terms of ensuring transparency and ensuring a quick government reaction. So we sue at the federal level, obviously, mostly. But we have several FOIA or open records lawsuits at the state level as well on election integrity and other issues of public interest. What’s your opinion of federal judges? My opinion of federal judges? The judiciary is a branch of the federal government established by our Constitution. It’s a separate but equal branch.

And it’s incumbent in my view. Kind of get to the point, I think of your, of, of the topic here today, potentially for judges to apply the law fairly and neutrally without letting their political animus get in the way of it. What is judicial activism? Judicial activism is substituting your own personal views for the fair and neutral application of the law. And it’s a temptation for judges of both the left and the right. It’s like, oh, well, I know what the outcome of this particular case should be, and I’m going to figure out a way how to get there.

You know, using, using the judicial process. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. You know, you can have a philosophy as you approach issues, but you’re really supposed to fairly apply the law without regard to party or partisanship. The Washington Post has a story about cases pending in federal courts having to do with Trump executive orders. This is the lead graph. Unions, civil rights groups and others are squaring off in court, with the Trump administration filing roughly 140 lawsuits over the dismantling of cuts in agencies by doge, firings of federal employees, immigration restrictions. The challenges have blocked many of President Trump’s initiatives for now, while the administration has won a few significant early victories.

Does that concern you, the number of lawsuits and the number of executive actions that have been blocked via federal courts? The number of lawsuits doesn’t concern me because I recognize President Trump is engaged in an unprecedented strategy of reform that’s really broad and hard to keep up with. So it’s no surprise that his political opponents or people who think they’re being harmed are suing. What’s concerning is how many judges are kind of what I would. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve enough unfortunate experience in litigation with the government is how quickly these courts are interfering with the presidential powers, duties and responsibilities and granting emergency relief to these individuals in ways I don’t think the law allows for.

So there’s this almost panicked judicial decision making that’s more political than constitutional, in my view. And that’s what’s concerning. It’s everyone has a right to sue, you know, within the law. But courts are supposed to police requests for relief that aren’t really appropriate under the law. You know, I want to sue on all sorts of things. And the lawyers will say, tom, well, you can sue, but the question is whether you’ll be successful. And the problem is the perception is that if you’re a conservative pursuing this type of claim against a Democratic administration, you would not get this reaction from the judiciary that was so helpful to the left.

Now, in the end, Trump may Win more than he loses, but the process is the punishment. And in my view, you have judges usurping the executive and legislative powers and pausing self government for months based on a legal pretext to cover a political animus. When should a federal judge be impeached and removed? When? Well, the constitutional envisions obviously impeachment for the traditional corruption, bribery crimes, either, you know, ethics crimes, obvious ethics crimes, someone taking money for a judicial decision or obstructing justice, you know, the way some judges actually were accused of doing and impeached for and removed.

And. And the interesting thing about the impeachment power is that the founders were concerned, not the founders, but Americans were concerned about the Constitution and whether it gave the judiciary too much power. And in the Federalist Papers they said, don’t worry if you have a judicial usurpation of the powers of the other departments or the other branches of government, the legislative or the executive. There are a few things they said. The judiciary is weak, really can’t enforce its powers without the support of the other branches. And also you have this complete security of impeachment. So impeachment was put in there not just to check corrupt judges in the criminal sense of the word, but judges who act outside their power.

And there’s been really no impeachment of that nature. The kind of impeachment of activist judges, as I would call it, since 1804. And there was one judge who was justice who was impeached. He wasn’t removed. But there’s only been impeachment, impeachments for corruption since then, not on activist judges. And I think it should be discussed. If I were Jim Jordan or the House leadership, I’d be holding hearings on the impeachment power. Is it likely to result in anyone being removed? No. Even impeached? Maybe not, but I think some of the judges who have been involved here, I think you’ll find if they wanted to do a serious impeachment inquiry, a series of rulings, not just one ruling, showing that the judge is activist and doesn’t respect his oath to stay within his lane, which is to make judgments based on a neutral application of the law as opposed to, you know, basically being a politician in robes on hearings.

Should note the House Judiciary Committee today holding hearing the title Judicial overreach and the Constitutional limits of the federal Court, examining the judicial powers of the federal court. You can look for coverage on the C SPAN networks for that for this next 30 minutes or so. Tom Fitton is with us, a man who knows the federal courts very well, president of Judicial Watch Judicial watch.org if you want to call in phone lines as usual. Democrats 2027488000 Republicans 2027488001 Independence 202748, 8002 as folks are calling in along with that hearing, the House is also going to vote on the no Rogue Rulings act this week, which would strip individual federal judges of the power that they have been using to have injunctions that would affect the entire country.

The legislation would allow their injunctions to affect the individuals that come before their court. Do you know about this legislation? What do you think about it? I do know about it. The concern is we can always there’s always a way you can construct an argument where or a case where a universal injunction is appropriate, where someone comes in and sues over a federal government program or decision and the judge says, I need to shut this whole thing down across the board. But the problem is there’s been what many people, both the left and the right, see to be abuses.

You know, Biden’s people complained about universal injunctions. Trump’s been subject to more universal injunctions than any other president in history. And the thinking is that if someone goes and sues, that the person who’s suing should be given the relief. Like for instance, in this Venezuelan deportation problem over the Alien Enemies act, you had five people go in and sue, and the judge immediately granted a class action and essentially said, no one can be removed throughout the entire country under this proclamation. And in theory, everyone who’s subject to be removal has to come before my court. You know, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

So there are a few ways this can be checked. You can pass legislation to limit the scope of the injunction power. I think the Supreme Court and I didn’t get a chance to go back and look at the there was a few media analyses of this. The Supreme Court can change the federal court rules in a way that would restrict the use of the injunction power. And of course, another thing that Congress could do is support the president by making by kind of not ratifying what he’s done by, but by furthering what he’s already talked about.

If he wants to shut down usaid, well, defund it. If he wants to shut down Department of Education and there’s a fight about that scope of his power in terms of restricting it to its bare statutory minimum, Congress should defund it. And my frustration is Congress has kind of been slow on the ball in defending and protecting the taxpayer interest in President Trump’s efforts to curtail waste, fraud and abuse. Why would a Republican House and Senate be slow on the ball on that for a Republican in the White House? That’s the reason you think? Oh, you know, the Republican leadership will tell you all sorts of reasons why they can’t get things done.

I think it’s close. I think in the House it’s very close. And there might be more support for this wasteful spending among Republicans than some Republicans would care to admit to. Tom Fenton with us, always happy to take your phone calls. And we will start in Florida. Brian, Republican line. Brian, go ahead. Brian, you with us? Yeah. Just turn down your television so we can hear you clearly. Turn down the television. Okay. And go ahead with your question or comment there, Brian. Okay, my question is overreach by local judges is, I think, unconstitutional because they’re district judges are not the judges for the whole country.

And that should be contained to just one specific incident. But they can’t make a ruling for the whole country as far as deporting illegal criminals that are obviously belong in this country. Something, I mean, that’s the heart of the debate, right. And there was a decision last, yesterday, I believe it was, by a Obama appointee in California that reversed the President’s efforts to reverse President Biden’s outrageous decision, in my view, to grant temporary protective status to over 600,000 Venezuelans. So now the president can’t deport any Venezuelans if this tps this temporary protective status applies to them.

One judge is taking over our immigration policies, substituting his views on national security and what is many people consider to be the unreviewable discretion of the president to remove illegal aliens in most circumstances, and only because I have a headline on the topic. 350,000 is the number at least according to the Washington Times story. Right. Yeah, there’s the immediate. The immediate issue is 350. The long term issue is gotcha is I think makes it up to 600 to mark here in D.C. line for Democrats. Good morning. Good morning. How are you all doing? Thanks for taking my call.

Good morning. I think that Congress really has a role in all of this and just doesn’t seem to be stepping into what they’re, what they need to be doing. But maybe more importantly, when this process creates a mistake, as it has with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a gentleman who is, it appears incorrectly deported to El Salvador, I believe the administration needs to take immediate steps today. This should be their one mission this morning to getting this man back, or at least if not getting him back, immediately understanding what the process is for getting him back. And I think the judges have a role in this because there needs to be some sort of gatekeeping device so things like this don’t occur.

Illegal or immigrants who should not be here, people who are violating our law should be lawfully deported. Correct. But when there’s a mistake made, how do we fix that and fix it today to get this man back where he belongs with his family? I don’t know the person he’s referencing, so I don’t have any way to comment on it. This is Martha in Rankin, Texas Independent. Good morning. Good morning. I’ve followed Mr. Fenton for a few years along with Mike Davis, and it’s funny because I always thought Mr. Fenton was an attorney. And I want to ask about his previous appointment in Trump’s first term where he was appointed to actually judge the judges.

Wouldn’t he have to be a lawyer to in order to be qualified to judge judges? I’m just kind of curious how that position worked for him and what he found in that position. Any judges were picked off the bench or anything like that. Thank you. Talk about your career. So I was appointed by President Trump to the D.C. commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure in 2020. And you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a member of the commission. There are several non lawyers on the commission. And it essentially provides oversight over judges here in the District of Columbia who, for want of a better way of putting it, are municipal or state court judges who are appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate.

And so in theory, the power allows us to remove judges on the account of ethical misconduct or disability. Did anybody get removed? It happens from time to time. Yeah. What is the ethical misconduct that most often comes up in these sort of cases? It’s usually a failure to do their job. My impression is, you know, you break ethics rules if you’re not being a good judge, if you’re not adjudicating cases in a timely way, if you’re, you know, not doing your job. And that’s, you know, people rely on judges to do their job in order to get timely justice.

And in some cases, not getting timely justice can be dangerous. Timely justice? Yes. Explain more. If I have a brief on a matter of importance or a matter of importance generally, and I just don’t want to adjudicate it, keep on delaying and delaying and delaying. And it’s not only that case, but many other cases. What’s an egregious example that You’ve seen of that happening. Well, I don’t want to go on memory because, you know, I’m in a sensitive position. But it’s happened where judges just haven’t done their job and we’ve had to step in. Marcia is in Georgia.

Republican. You’re on with Tom Fenton. Go ahead. Marcia, you with us? Go ahead. You’re on with Tom Fenton. I’m Mr. Clinton. I’m not understanding because actually we do have three executive branches and Trump is overreaching. Actually, I don’t understand why he’s in the office anyway. He’s a felon and we don’t vote felons. They can’t even vote. And you sound like you’re a sticker fan of Trump. All right, that’s Marcia. You know, if the president overreaches, you can be sued. Right. And that’s the, you know, there’s not a dispute about him being sued or his administration being sued.

And you know, on the felon thing, that’s just a political smear. Most Americans, I think, have rejected the lawfare against Trump and think any convictions are garbage. On the legal side of this, there have been concerns raised as these cases have made their way through the federal courts that President Trump and his administration would not abide by a legal judicial ruling and are concerned that even if it got up to the Supreme Court that he might not abide by that. Calling it that would be a constitutional crisis. Do you see that happening? Are those concerns overblown? What are your thoughts on that? I don’t see one instance of it happening.

And I think there might be an argument to push back on some of these rulings more aggressively than they have. But we’ve been very careful to follow the judicial rulings to the letter. And some judges have been unhappy because there were workarounds or passed to get where they wanted to go that wasn’t impeded by the judicial ruling. And the judges are frustrated. Well, they didn’t make it more expansive or more broad in terms of trying to stop the policy they were trying to stop. But I mean, the most apparent, the case that’s often pointed to is the issue of removing those terrorists and or designated terrorists by Trump.

And you know, the headlines initially don’t really haven’t been borne out by the facts that the planes were on the move in a way that didn’t, didn’t violate the judge’s ruling and there’s going to be hearing on it. But I don’t see much there there. So, and no one can point to any other case where he’s not abiding by the rulings. Have Trump administration officials been too quick to call for the impeachment of federal judges? We both know that it was Supreme Court Justice John Roberts who put out that statement. Here’s the wording of it. For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.

The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. An unusual statement out of the Supreme Court justice, Chief Justice. It was unusual. I think it was unfortunate, and I think it was political. And to a degree it can be read, the chief justice was being political. Yeah, to the degree it can be read to suggest that impeachment’s not constitutional, which I think it’s fairly implied there. It’s wrong, simply wrong. And the unprecedented interference with the president’s powers under the executive branch, that should be troubling to the chief. He’s responsible for the judiciary. Imagine if he said a statement, said, you know, we’ve got an unprecedented move by the president to assert his authorities and we have to be careful just because he’s doing things we’re not used to, to give him the deference under the Constitution.

Why didn’t he say that, do you think? Chief Justice Justice John Roberts, did he put out statements like this and you know the courts better than I do during the Biden administration when they had disagreements with the courts. No, no, I don’t think when the left was calling for the impeachment of his colleagues, he even put out a statement like that. Chris Tallahassee, Florida Republican, good morning. Hey, good morning, guys. Hope all is well. Hi. Hey, Tom, it’s Chris from Tallahassee, Florida. Thanks for everything you do with Judicial Watch. We really appreciate it. Been a long time supporter.

Thank you. I would just like, I would just like to share with you a. And don’t worry. I just retweeted your, I just retweeted your tweet. Washington Journal from C Span just a second ago. I appreciate that, Chris. What’s the question you have? Here’s, here’s the quick, here’s the quick question. And I just went back and retweeted one of the tweets that I tweeted, which is, it’s not a question, it’s just a statement. And I would like to stay. And that’s this. I tweeted this just a couple of days ago, four weeks ago. The President of the United States.

And here’s how I feel about it. The President of the United States should be able to fire any federal employee if they are not up to standard or have found to be corrupt or treasonous as the commander in chief of this great country. So that’s just a quick thought and I think, yes, we might have a, we might have an issue that might go to the Supreme Court here real soon and that might help Trump with his authority to be able to fire and hire federal employees. He’s been, thanks for everything you do. I have not called you in years.

I got to get back to what I’m doing. But blessings and peace be with you. Thank you. Any thoughts? Yeah, that’s going to be a big, you know, of all the issues that’s going to come before the Supreme Court because there’s been this long standing court precedent at the Supreme Court level that gave Congress the authority to set up so called independent agencies. And the President is like, hold on a second, they’re exercising executive authority. They have to be answerable to me. So he’s taken steps to make that happen by firing employees of those agencies or appointees.

And that’s going to go up to the Supreme Court in some fashion for sure. And, and I’m sure the White House team would acknowledge this is something they’re challenging specifically to reassert presidential authority that they think the Constitution supports. The callers seem familiar with Judicial Watch and your work. For viewers, again, who might not know Judicial Watch, you were talking about filing FOIA Freedom of Information act requests. What is a FOIA discovery that you’re probably best known for that viewers may remember? Well, we uncovered the Clinton emails. Explain. We had were investigating the Benghazi law, the Benghazi attack, remember the attack that happened just before the election of on September 11, 2012.

There was, they said it was a protest. So we said, well, that’s obviously not true, but investigate it. And we started getting documents and we noticed there were no Hillary Clinton emails. So we started pushing and pushing and pushing and they finally admitted, well, there’s this other universe of documents. Guess what the other universe of documents was Hillary’s emails. What is the story about the Biden dogs that is the subject of this headline in the Washington Times today? We’ll show it to viewers as you explain. So Joe Biden had several German shepherds when he was president and we had information that they were attacking agents.

And it turned out they the two dogs had attacked 25 agents and white House staff. And not just a nip, not just a bark or a growl, an attack to the forearm or someone had their back bitten, which is just outrageous and incredible to me. I can’t believe that these agents were attacked. The president didn’t care, the first lady didn’t care. Secret Service leadership didn’t care. And we’re all supposed to pretend it’s a joke of a story and they tried to cover it up. And then we just uncovered records that it was happening when he was in the Obama White House as vice president and so he was notorious for allowing his dogs to attack.

Can you imagine having a dog and attacking two people it was attacking happening all over the White House. All over the White House. The documents are pretty darn shocking. And what were the documents? Medical reports, emails about it. A few people were like trying to get their suits paid for because there were holes in them. Medical, you know, references to the incidents happening in Secret Service documents. And it’s pretty serious. Imagine being on the wrong end of a German shepherd biting you. And I was concerned about the safety of the protectee, the safety of the President.

You know, do you want your Secret Service agents to be worried about the protective’s dog attacking them? They’re lucky there wasn’t that the agents didn’t have to kill the dogs. It’s crazy town over there. It was crazy town in the Biden White House and this is a good indication of it. What is a Freedom of Information act suit that you’re pursuing right now that you’re pretty sure will bear fruit? Well, it’s an interesting one because it’s a test for the Trump administration. We’ve asked for records of Biden’s interview with special counsel her. So we did get the transcript.

We forced them to admit they edited the transcript of that interview. But there’s an audio tape or audio tapes of the interview and they’ve refused to release them, citing President Biden’s privacy interest in his own voice. And so the court asked the Trump Justice Department, hey, you’re new, you know, things are new. You know, we’ve got a new team. Do you have a different position? And incredibly, they came back and said, well, we need three months to figure it out. So I think in the end we’ll get the tapes. I can’t imagine they’ll be withheld. It’s frustrating.

It’s going to take three months for them to figure it out so we could get some more information there quickly. Have you found over the years that a new administration, even of a different party, is inclined to be more protective, not inclined to release information via FOIA requests? You know, there’s a kind of a government interest in secrecy that continues throughout administration after administration. I mean, Trump has a personal interest in transparency. I think, personally, he’s been the most transparent president in history, but when it comes to his agencies, it’s always been kind of a bear to get some of this information out.

And he’s taken some major, made some major moves on, in terms of executive orders, in pursuing transparency in some of these big issues like the JFK records and Epstein files. And he authorized the release of certain Russiagate documents. So I think it will be better than his first term, but it’s still going to be a challenge. And that’s why we have to go to court time after time to get basic information. When people talk about the swamp, how do you define the swamp? It’s an approach, right? It’s an approach. It’s not so much people. It’s the approach that Washington knows best, that outsiders or just new people who come in into office should be treated as temporary occupants and to be waded out.

And I remember telling folks in the Trump administration, the swamp has a lot of park rangers in this town, and there are people who are both Republican and Democrats who want to protect the swamp ways here. And draining the swamp is something I think the president is more committed to than ever based on his executive orders, you know, for the first time in 40, I would say, since the Reagan administration. And Reagan, I’m sure, would be excited about what Trump’s doing. We’re talking about waste, fraud and abuse in government in a kind of a broad way.

And what frustrates me about Doge is there’s not one thing they’re either uncovering generally or specifically that people knew or should have known was going on in terms of waste, fraud and abuse. And that. And supposedly no one would really support. Yet it’s been going on and no one’s been doing anything about it. So it’s a real remarkable effort to drain the swamp in terms of the Doge effort. I know we’re short on time. Time for a couple more calls. Sure, sure. Art is waiting. Colorado Springs Democrat line. Go ahead. Yes, I’d like to ask you specifically if Trump deserves to be impeached, and if not, why not? There’s no impeachable offense that I’m aware of that would require his impeachment or justify his impeachment.

I know the left wanted to impeach him as soon as he got into office and in 2017, and I guess they want to impeach him now for reasons I’m not familiar with. Michael Delray Beach, Florida Independent. Go ahead. You’re on with Tom Fitton. Good morning. Good morning. My understanding is that the designers of the Constitution had three sections of government, the judicial, the legislative, and the executive. And the judicial branch is supposed to be the oversight. Check about the legislative and the executive. And it seems like we’re assuming that judges are people with black robes that are political.

That’s my concern. Thank you. So it’s the concern that he’s concerned that people think that’s the case? Well, you know, the judges, to a degree, judges act political. They’re going to be treated like politicians. And I think that’s what judge Chief. To be fair to Chief Justice Roberts, he’s trying to avoid getting judges seen as political figures. But I think. Is he succeeding? No, because there are just too many judges who to me, are completely out of control. And this anti Trump animus is ruining the judiciary. Is it worse today in terms of judges acting political than 20 years ago, 30 years ago? And if so, what changed? Is it just Donald Trump? Yeah.

I do think the anti Trump animus has kind of made judges who might have otherwise made more sensible rulings engage in political decision making. Do you generally get along with judges? Yeah, you know, you got to be professional. And so I get to go into court as client. Right. I’m not. I’m not the lawyer, obviously. And so I have to sit there quietly and be polite. As I sometimes hear judges do things I don’t like. But judges respect Judicial Watch because we bring cases that are in good faith and are important. And certainly on foia, there’s really no one else who does FOIA better than Judicial Watch in terms of litigating it and understanding these issues about government records and what should be kept and what should be released under law.

Why do FOIA cases take so long to get the documents back? I mean, there are FOIA requests that come out that are. The original request was years or a decade ago that we’ve seen. Yeah. I mean, we just had a document request that was, I think, answered after 18 years. What was it about? It was about. It was a national security investigation into terrorist threats called Able Danger. There’s a big controversy around 911 because some folks thought that Able Danger had provided some warning lights about an impending terrorist attack that was ignored and it took forever and a day to get the records out.

But for all the time it takes to get material out through foia, it’s a better technique than getting material out through congressional. Through congressional subpoenas, because that’s a political process, and it’s rarely enforced at the judicial level. And with foia, we’re in federal court, and, you know, in my view, it takes too long, but better late than never. This comes back to your frustration about timeliness of cases. Yeah, well, yeah, I think that’s fair. I think the court has to. Well, to be fair, I don’t think the judges are doing anything unethical, but there’s too much deference to the federal agencies and letting them string out cases.

We have a case, for example, on the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Remember the FBI agents? That text message case began in 2000, the end of the Trump administration. Only now are they finally turning over all the remaining text messages to be reviewed. And we haven’t even gotten to the part of the fight where we say, okay, what are you withholding and why? So it shouldn’t take three presidential administrations to get a simple FOIA request answered. And if I were Doge, I’d be moving some of those employees over to the, what I would call the public interest section of the agency to answer FOIA requests.

Look at Judicial Watches, FOIAs. We have about 190 cases pending, most of which are FOIAs. One last call. David’s been waiting in Waynesboro, Georgia. Independent. David, go ahead. You’re on with Tom Fenton. Good morning, John. Tom, how you doing? Good morning. Look, I just want to make a quick comment and a question. Dipogus. He’s having about the same batting average as he had when he left office the last time. And I appreciate that the man tries. I mean, nobody else is pushing the ball as hard as he is. But my question is more back to on your foia.

And I learned a lot about for you from your day, what I didn’t already know. But. But the question is, who does the pro bono work for the folks who ain’t got the money to go into federal court and afford an attorney? I mean, it’s just that simple. That the we the people, we’re not with the we people who got the money. And so that’s my question, though. Thank you so much for coming on. And you make a lot of sense. Thank you. Well, that’s a good point. If you don’t get a record, you can sue, but it takes money to sue.

And Judicial Watch sues in the public interest. We often help journalists and just regular citizens. We educate them about what they can do, informally help them, sometimes formally represent them and go to court for others. But it’s a big challenge, you know, citizens should be able to find out what their government’s up to without having to file a federal lawsuit. And I tell you, these days, we have to file a federal lawsuit to find out the time of day, and it’s really not acceptable. Was there one case that was the reason you started Judicial Watch in the first place? Well, I didn’t start Judicial Watch.

It started a little bit before I came on, but it was started during the Clinton administration. And there was gamesmanship initially in the Clinton administration. So this kind of war on transparency or corrupt politicians trying to cover their tracks is nothing new. It’s been Clinton, Bush, Obama, you know, and then, and then the frustration with Trump is some of his people didn’t want to deal with the prior corruption. So I hope things change quickly here. Tom Fenton, we hope you come back and update us on some of your cases you’re working on. Judicial Watch.org is where you can go.

And Tom Fitton’s a good follow on X at TomFitton. Always appreciate the time. Thank you, John.
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