➡ This week, Judicial Watch discussed several topics including new information about the Ashley Babbitt case, government censorship, and mass deportations confirmed by President Trump. The main focus was on President Trump’s cabinet appointments, particularly the nomination of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, which was withdrawn due to personal conduct issues. Trump then nominated former Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi. Judicial Watch also criticized the Senate’s confirmation process, suggesting it’s used to smear and destroy reputations, and encouraged the public to voice their opinions to their senators.
➡ The text discusses concerns about the continuation of Biden’s policies under the Trump administration due to Congress’s inaction. It also mentions a social media post about Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency and use military assets to reverse the Biden administration’s immigration policies, which sparked national and international attention. The text ends with a call for the removal of illegal immigrants and the enforcement of federal law.
➡ The article discusses allegations of FEMA withholding aid from Trump supporters and the ongoing legal case against former President Trump. It suggests that FEMA may have been biased against Trump supporters during emergencies, which is a serious concern. The article also talks about the legal case against Trump, where Alvin Bragg, a politically connected individual, is accused of using lawfare to harass Trump. The article ends with a discussion about the shooting of Ashli Babbitt during the January 6th incident and the subsequent promotion of the officer involved, despite his questionable disciplinary record.
➡ The House Administration Committee has been investigating incidents involving Captain Byrd, a U.S. Capitol Police officer. In 2004, Byrd was involved in an incident where he fired his service weapon at a vehicle, but the investigation found that he may have fired after the vehicle had passed him, not as it was coming towards him. In 2015, Byrd was suspended for seven days for using abusive language during a verbal altercation at a high school football game. In 2019, Byrd left his loaded service weapon unattended in a public restroom at the Capitol Visitor Center for nearly an hour before it was found by another officer.
➡ A US Capitol Police officer, Byrd, was suspended twice for misconduct and was involved in a controversial shooting. Despite this, he received a large retention bonus, was given housing, and was helped to raise money through GoFundMe. The Capitol Police also planned to pay him from a memorial fund meant for injured or killed officers, and spent money on security upgrades for his home. Despite not working for nearly a year, he was not disciplined and was even encouraged to receive donated leave from other officers.
➡ This text discusses the controversy surrounding the death of Ashley Byrd during the January 6th events and the subsequent investigation. It also criticizes the handling of Lieutenant Byrd, who was involved in the incident, and suggests political corruption may have played a role. The text also discusses a lawsuit related to the case, set for trial in 2026. Lastly, it talks about a Supreme Court petition filed by Judicial Watch challenging the counting of ballots after Election Day in Illinois, arguing it undermines fair and clean elections.
➡ The article discusses a legal case where candidates challenged the counting of late-arriving ballots in federal elections. The court dismissed the case, stating that the candidates didn’t need to monitor these ballots and any costs incurred were self-inflicted. The article argues that candidates should have the right to challenge election laws and that federal courts should be open to hearing these challenges. It also mentions the work of Judicial Watch in ensuring fair and clean elections and their efforts to combat censorship of conservative social media during the 2020 election.
➡ The article discusses the alleged involvement of the Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Homeland Security in censoring content on social media platforms. It suggests that these government agencies were working with tech companies to remove content they deemed as misinformation. The article also mentions a controversial military intelligence operation called Able Danger, which used data mining techniques to identify potential threats to the U.S. The author calls for transparency and accountability from the government regarding these issues.
➡ The text discusses how Bin Laden trained Arab fundamentalists and how drug trafficking, particularly heroin, funded terrorist threats. It criticizes the long delay in releasing documents about a military investigation that could have prevented 9/11. The author praises Judicial Watch for its work in uncovering these issues and encourages support for the organization. The author also expresses gratitude for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

Hey, everyone. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton here with our social media update. Thank you for joining us. A lot going on this week. Of course, that’s probably going to be the headline every week. A lot going on this week, especially as we come into the new Trump administration. We have obviously the breaking news related to his cabinet appointments, but we have new startling information on the Ashley Babbitt shooting death, the unjustified shooting death for which Judicial Watch is suing the federal government on Ashley Babbitt’s family behalf for $30 million. We have a new disclosures or new disclosures about the censorship of American citizens by the government.

Much more detail, more than we have ever known before. Plus we have new documents that the government waited 20 years nearly to give to us about issues related to 9 11. And on top of that, mass deportations are in the offing. It’s been at least confirmed by Donald Trump, President Trump, through yours truly and Judicial Watch. So some interesting developments this week. First up, though, is the developing story around President Trump’s efforts to bring reform to the Justice Department. He first nominated, in a really shocking way, Matt Gaetz. No one saw it coming to be the Attorney General.

And I thought it was a good pick and I think he would have made a great attorney general. But he had issues related to his personal conduct and none of which were new. But for Gates was going to, for Gates, in terms of the challenges he faced in the Senate, were going to be new to most of the American people and to the senators, including Republican senators, who were always looking for an opportunity to dig at Trump. And so this was Matt Gaetz’s decision tweet to drop out from this position of or his nomination from Attorney General.

He had excellent meetings with the senators yesterday. This all happened, I guess this is Friday. This was yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback and the incredible support of so many. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot missing in that. Not everyone supported him. While the momentum was strong, it’s clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump vans transition. There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle. So he’s gone. He withdrew his name from consideration. He’s not going back to Congress, even though technically he probably could have at least next term.

And so President Trump quickly, later that day, nominated the former Florida Attorney general who served two terms there, Pam Bondi. B O N D I and I thought it was another good pick. I worked with Pam slightly in back during the Trump administration. And here was my initial tweet. She’s well qualified and has direct experience battling the corrupt DC Swamp, which has tried to destroy Trump. And that is true. She was his representative, his lawyer during one of the sham coup impeachments targeting him. She did a great job and she knows just how bad the other side is.

And I don’t mean the other side being, oh, politically, I mean those on the other side of the law who were abusing the rule of law and positions of power, certainly in the Justice Department, to try to smear and target Trump. And I’m convinced, and I want to take a step back about how all of this worked. You know, this confirmation process is an abomination, at least the modern version of it in the Senate. And the idea that you have hearings and hearings and investigations and investigations are designed to cull and conservatives from those, from the types of people who might be nominated, strong, powerful reformers.

Because what happens is the left uses the confirmation process in the Senate to smear them, destroy their reputations, and even if they can’t defeat them, tar them forever. If they get intointo whatever position they get into, whether they be a judicial appointment, which is a lifetime position at the federal level in most cases, or cabinet appointments. And Gates shows, really, you don’t really need confirmation hearings for the process of advice and consent to work. You know, the modern day confirmation hearing is just that it’s a modern day development in the Senate. The Senate used to handle confirmations in the ordinary course, and it would take days, weeks, rarely months to provide advice and consent for the president.

But now these hearings are, as I said, nothing more than search and destroy missions by the left. So to the degree this nomination process can be short circuited or Republicans kind of reform them in the next few weeks, that would be good. And of course, the old bulls of the Senate, the conservatives, and I don’t use that word in a, well, I shouldn’t say pejorative way or positive way, just conservative. They don’t want the institution changed. Include people like Mitch McConnell, the former majority leader who’s still a senator. And as I tweeted out yesterday, I have no doubt Senator Mitch McConnell is responsible for the Gates confirmation failure in the Senate.

So let me be clear. The reports are that there were senators in the Republican caucus that were not going to vote for Gates. They don’t believe that. They were concerned about any of his personal issues. No, they saw this. Those personal issues gave them an opportunity to undermine President Trump, who they oppose and whose supporters they have contempt for. I mean, Mitch McConnell generally is a conservative guy, but he doesn’t like Trump and he doesn’t like this sort of aggressive, proactive approach from Trump supporters in dealing with the crisis that’s facing our country. And so the question that Trump has to deal with is, is this core group of senators centered around McConnell going to continue to obstruct his efforts to get Cabinet officials appointed? One way around that, the constitutional option is to have the president and working with Senate Majority Leader Thune and Mike Johnson, essentially construct a situation where he is able to basically call the Congress into recess or demand that it go into the recess as is allowed under the Constitution.

And if that happens, the theory is he can start appointing people after at least 10 days to the Cabinet that he wants. This is all assuming there’s this, there becomes roadblocks to keep positions getting through. So that’s what’s facing Trump. That, you know, that a objections from Mitch McConnell to reformers that could sink key nominees that the president wants on his team and the possibility of getting into a bigger fight through recess appointments and that constitutional action that again, that is in the Constitution. But the left will object to because President Trump is isn’t allowed to exercise his prerogatives as president.

I mean, that’s what we’ve learned, that he’s not allowed to do what other presidents are allowed to do because they hate him. And this is an opportunity for you to participate in the process as well. Because as far as I’m concerned, these confirmations really should be done by Inauguration Day. And I did a quick video explaining what you can do there. You have the U.S. capitol, a lot going on. President Trump putting together what looks to be a powerful Cabinet. And of course, the Senate doesn’t want to move too quickly on them. I think they should, whether it be Matt Gaetz or Tulsi Gabbard or Pete Hegseth, Bobby Kennedy, Marco Rubio.

There’s no good reason to deny any of them a quick confirmation. Frankly, the Senate should have the president’s entire Cabinet ready to go and confirmed by Inauguration Day. What do you think? You need to share your views with the Senate. 2022-2431-2122-2224-3121. Call your senators. Let them know what you think. Should it be business as usual with stalling and delaying and abusing appointees, or should they just get going? Because this country needs saving and we need team in place to begin saving the republic immediately under President Trump? Yeah, and I think Gates just dropped out like a minute after we did that video.

But it still applies. If you think Pam, as I noted earlier on social media, Pam Bondi can be confirmed in minutes, practically speaking. So this whole process, as I said, it’s designed to punish appointees and nominees, especially those who are conservative. And so you should call your senators every chance you get, every time it occurs to you at 2022-243123-12224-3121 and then ask them or tell them respectfully. Remember, they’re just regular folks answering the phones. They’re not the senators asking the phones. So don’t punish them. Be respectful, even if they’re not even respectful to you sometimes. I know that’s the case.

And share your views about it. I mean, if you want Pete Hegseff in there, you need the call. If you want Pam Bondi in there, you need the call. If you want Tulsi in there, you need the call. If you want Robert Kennedy Jr. In there, you need the call. This is not a time for wasting. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, you know, the work’s got to be done now. And the Gates nomination proves that the Senate can move quickly to consider a nomination just through regular meetings and internal deliberations. And Gates got the message he wasn’t going to get through without significant pain to the Trump team, and he probably wouldn’t get through at all.

So that was the end of the nomination. So why can’t we get that same process accelerated for nominees that are clearly going to get through? And Congress has got to get going on everything. I mean, right now they’re talking about continuing resolutions through March. Some want continuing resolutions through the end of the fiscal year, which would be October, which would mean, practically speaking, everything that Biden has been spending continues to be fully funded through the first year of the Trump administration. How would you like that? Right now, there’s going to be a continuing resolution, and they just want to let it go through even through March with no real significant policy amendments.

So they’re going to keep on funding the invasion, they’re going to keep on funding the abuse of Trump, they’re going to keep on funding this First Amendment censorship, you know, everything else that they hate about the Biden administration they promised to change once they got into office. Well, they won the election and they still don’t want to change it. Now. That’s not to say there won’t be changes next year, but why in the meantime, would they fund it? I’M sorry, it’s November, December, January, February, March. So four months of Bidenomics, four months of funding all this climate scam money that’s going out the door.

So again, call your members of Congress and let them know what you think about this. Because I tell you, I’ve had enough meetings on the Hill, I’ve talked to enough members to know that they have a much different approach than voters do to cleaning up Washington even after the election. Elon Musk and that Department of Government efficiency. Boy, Congress is going to be their enemy unless the voters reinforce what they said on Election Day. That’s for sure. So the other big news that was really national news and international news was sparked by a social media post by me.

And President Trump saw it and retruthed it on Truth Social. Here I talk about it. Well, here’s the social media post. Let’s go right here. I posted it on November 8th and I wrote good news reports. Are the incoming Donald Trump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program. And he retruthed it on True Social and said true. Three exclamation points. So then, so that November 18th truth post by President Trump created a media firestorm because they’re not used to politicians promising or keeping their campaign promises.

There’s nothing new in that truth post that I put out there. In fact, it was based on a media report that essentially said what I reported. I read it in the Wall Street Journal, and the Journal was trying to characterize it as something negative. And I just characterized it in a more positive way because I think most Americans agree with my characterization. And so the national media picked up on it, obviously, because he’s the president and so did international media. And I think we have a little compilation of just how much news my innocent post garnered.

Well, today we learned a little bit more about how this is going to happen and liberals acting totally stunned. It involves using the military. Trump made this known via a Truth Social post. Here’s what happened today. He reposted a post from Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch. Here it is. Fitton, you can see, wrote good news reports are incoming at real Donald Trump. His administration is prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program. And then you can see President Elect Trump, he commented on it.

True. Now, Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, taking to Truth Social. Trump made the statement on Truth Social responding true to Tom Fitton President Trump just reposting this from a conservative political watch dog group. The head of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton. Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, taking this to Truth Social. As you see, Trump here was responding to someone from Judicial Watch, Tom Finton. Back on November 8, a member of the conservative group Judicial Watch wrote on social media that Trump is reportedly planning on declaring a national emergency and using military assets to carry out mass deportations.

Now, Trump shared the post this morning and responded, quote, true. President Elect Trump confirms on social media today that he plans to declare a national emergency over immigration and use military assets for mass deportations on his Truth Social platform. Trump wrote true in his retweet of a Nov. 8 post from Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative foundation Judicial Watch. So big news. And it ought to be unsurprising that the military would be used in some fashion to reverse an invasion by foreign nationals enabled by President Biden and his appointees. And the plan is, according to press reports.

And Tom Holman further explained it afterwards in response to President Trump’s repost of My true social post is that the military has assets here in the United States that can be used in terms of providing administrative support personnel space, meaning places to put people who are in line to be deported. Completely, in my view, non uncontroversial use of our national security apparatus to defend our national security. And you don’t think it’s a national emergency? Left media? Well, the American people dare to differ with you and that’s why they put Trump in office. So I’m honored. And we’re excited here at Judicial Watch who have played a role in telling Americans, even though it was an unplanned role, I didn’t know he was going to post that, that Trump aims to maintain and keep his campaign promise and reverse the Biden invasion.

If you’re here illegally, you gotta go home. No cuts. I don’t know what is controversial about that. And you know, the left at least is honest about what their plan is. They want to provide amnesty and citizenship. And accorded with citizenship, obviously are voting rights to every illegal alien here in the United States. And there’s a certain logic to it because if they’re here, they just can’t remain here illegally. You have to do something. You either legalize them or send them home. And the idea that we would keep tens of millions of people here who are not supposed to be here and just let them stay, of course they’re eventually going to get amnesty.

That’s why the left wants them to stay. So you got to get them home. And I tell you these. And I talked about this previously on our weekly updates here, for the leftist mayors and governors to say they’re going to get in the way and obstruct justice and obstruct the removal of illegal aliens, that’s unlawful, what they’re proposing. And I hope law enforcement comes down on them like a ton of bricks if indeed they pursue this insurrectionist type activity. It’s really treacherous. You’re going to side with foreign nationals illegally here that threaten our national security, public safety, you name it, contrary to federal law, the law of the land.

And I hope it’s all just bluster because every citizen deserves to be safe. I mean, the Reilly case was just adjudicated this week. That guy, the murderer of that young girl was here essentially and fully funded by the Biden administration. Rather than helping illegal aliens stay here and murder and rape innocent Americans, the federal government should enforce federal law, remove them. It’s a simple campaign promise and I hope Trump does it. And I’m glad that we were able to provide a vehicle for him to further confirm he’s going to keep his campaign promise. Also, we had some good news this week.

We had. Well, I don’t know if it’s good news. I talked about it. Now I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you see whether it was good news or not, and then I’ll talk about it a little bit more. I was on Fox News earlier this week talking about the FEMA scandal where it looks like FEMA was treating all Trump supporters as terrorists and the ongoing lawfare against President Trump. So let’s play that. Let’s take a deeper dive into the biggest legal question of the day with Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Listen, I’m frustrated. I think for the people there, it is an outrage that people would be skipped just because they had a sign supporting one candidate or another.

I just can’t believe that’s actually happening. They have to answer questions for this. Tom. This is an outrage. Let me share this from the Washington Times. It’s an op ed from Anna Paulina Luna. It says this. Families that should have received critical resources are still waiting for help. For those affected, this is not about politics, but survival. The idea that aid was withheld because of political affiliation is a slap in the face to every American who believes in fairness and equality under the law. What say you? Well, you know, for years, the Biden administration and even before then, have equated Trump support with terrorism.

And the media has been pushing it. And you see it with the FBI, you see it with military training. And so it’s no surprise that a major government agency like FEMA would incorporate that into its decisions on who to give aid to. And they have this, they had this narrative, oh, it’s dangerous for Trump supporters to question fema. So therefore, let’s not have FEMA provide any aid and comfort to alleged Trump supporters in their time of dire need. I mean, these are emergency life or death situations. And it’s clear, based on the woman who was initially fired, the new whistleblower coming forward.

And of course, it makes sense that there was this agency wide directive or understanding that Trump supporters are violent. So therefore, let’s not even offer them aid. I just, I’m still stunned because at the end of the day, you have a responsibility to all Americans. They’re taxpayers, too, whether you like who they voted for or not. I don’t think this is the end of this story, Tom. Speaking of, I don’t think this is the end of this story as well. Alvin Bragg wants to make, he wants to make President Trump wait for years before he decides whether or not to go through with the end of this particular case or sentencing.

Let me share one of your great colleagues, Jonathan Turley’s, thoughts on it and get your reaction on the other side. You cannot have a local district attorney treat a sitting president like a freak on a leash where he just is able to say that, I will finish this work once you’re out of office. It elevates the district attorney to a grotesque level. A grotesque level. And my concern is, and has been for quite some time, and you and I have talked about this off camera. Turnabout becomes fair play. And I don’t want to see some DA in Texas, for example, saying about the border, well, I think we’re going to run in another former president.

This is, I think, a bridge too far. And yet this is where we are. Do you think this goes forward? I hope not. I hope at least the federal courts intervene here. Bragg is ignoring the immunity issue. The big issue is whether this case should exist at all. Given the Supreme Court immunity ruling and the idea that Bragg and Judge Murchon would hold, you know, over a sitting president’s head. The possibility of going to jail would obviously impair the presidency and designed to intimidate him and harass him while he’s president. So the fact that Alvin Bragg is still playing this game shows and he’s a politically connected Guy shows the Democrats are still committed to lawfare to harass President Trump.

Right now, for instance, Jack Smith is busily typing away misusing taxpayer resources to put out a smear report on Trump. Everything should stop, everything in terms of the law fare targeting Trump, because now it’s impairing our national security. Right. And an incoming president and miraculously a hacker suddenly ends up with a House report. Wonder how that all happened. There’ll be more questions about that as well. Tom, great to see you, my friend. Thank you. Good to be with you. Appreciate your time. Yeah. And now Judge Merson just issued a ruling. When did he issue it? Was it Today? Today, the 22nd? Yeah.

That he’s going to delay the sentencing until really, who knows when ordered that the joint application, this is the ruling just issued today for a stay of sentencing, is granted to the extent that the November 26th date is adjourned. And that means, as I understand it, if I can trust my lying eyes, that they are going to defer the sentencing until who knows what, until who knows when. And the court also granted President Trump’s desire to file a motion to dismiss the charges outright based on a variety of reasons, the least of which is he can’t be harassed as president by keeping this over his head for four years.

That’s just no way to run a railroad. The whole process has been corrupted by Bragg, been corrupted by the judge who’s conflicted, compromised and shouldn’t even be on the case. And the charges themselves are really fanciful and abusive on their face. On top of that, you’ve had it. You’ve had significant evidence of collusion with the Biden administration and targeting Trump. So what’s the holdup here in terms of just getting this done? Now, the hope is, in terms of having this law fair end. Now, the hope is probably from the Trump team, is Mershon’s giving himself some breathing room and he’s going to let the process play out and hopefully the case ultimately will be ended by the courts, as it should have happened long ago.

But in the meantime, he’s coming in under this cloud. He’s trying to set up his national security team. He’s trying to prepare to become president of the United States again. And we’ve got this, these, what I would call these outlaw prosecutors in New York harassing him still. And the judge is still dangling over his head the possibility that he will go to jail. I don’t think merchants should be given any time to consider this. The federal court should step in. I don’t know what the president’s lawyers are doing in this regard. But this process is the punishment.

And the Supreme Court has already highlighted why it can’t be this way. You can’t allow these questions about presidential immunity just to. I mean, if that’s the standard, he’ll be in court every day while he’s in president as attorney general, as district attorneys or state attorney generals say, oh, he did this wrong and it’s outside his purview as president. And therefore we want to litigate whether he’s immune or not, he won’t have time to be president, which, of course, is the point. So this is a big, this is in many ways a victory for Trump, but they’re just going to try to bleed him through this illicit court process.

I’m making sure my phone’s off. So I’ve talked about how previously Judicial Watch is the leader, or not previously is the leader when it comes to disclosing government misconduct in Congress, often follows our lead. And to the degree they are able to uncover certain information, it’s usually because they follow our lead, if not specifically on the issue, but our approach, meaning they’ve gotten much more aggressive in recent years. Certainly the Republicans have, because the Judicial Watch shows there are many documents to be had, but you’ve got to be insistent about getting them. And that’s what we do effectively through our Freedom of Information act and our other investigations.

And on one of these important issues, the Ashley Babbitt killing, Judicial Watch has been the leader. There’s been no one who’s been able to uncover more about the Ashli Babbitt shooting than Judicial Watch. And sure enough, we have a lawsuit we filed at the beginning of this year for Ashley Babbitt’s estate, family, a $30 billion wrongful death action against the federal government. And this comes after several years of exposing more details of the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt. That was wildlyit was so wild in terms of what happened that day. I see that video, and it just makes me so upset to see that Lieutenant Byrd popped out, ambushed and shot her.

Let’s play that video of there’s not a law enforcement officer who’s honest in the land who would look at that shooting and think that was a good shooting. He fired blindly at Ashley into a crowd. Other law enforcement personnel were around her, civilians were around her. And the idea that a shooting like that would go by without any serious investigation, let alone prosecution, remains one of the outrages of January 6th. That’s the key outrage of January 6th. Despite what you hear about insurrection and Donald Trump and all the left wing garbage about it. That’s the outrage.

And finally, years after Judicial Watch got key information, and almost a year after we’d sued over this, Congress started this week releasing some more information about the shooter, Lieutenant Byrd, who, by the way, has been promoted to captain. And our friends at Just the News broke the story of a letter by Congressman Loudermilk. The headline from the Just the News piece is, cop who fatally shot January 6th protester has lengthy disciplinary Record. That includes gun incidents. And the story is based on a letter written by Barry Loudermilk, who was investigating January 6th for the Republicans in Congress.

And he uncovered some pretty astonishing stuff, some of which Judicial Watch has already uncovered, but they provide additional details about related to Byrd’s disciplinary record and prior conduct. And when you hear about this letter, and I’m going to read it in some detail, you’re going to wonder, why is he even allowed in the Capitol, given how dangerous a person he seems to be? The letter is dated November 20th. So it was just filed later. Earlier this week, it was sent to the chief of police for the United States Capitol Police by Lauer Milk Chief J. Thomas Manger.

You can see there manger or Manger, I don’t know how it’s pronounced. So I’m going to get into the heart of the letter. So Congressman Loudermelk is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the Committee on House Administration. Now, that may sound like a boring committee, but the House Administration Committee is kind of like the town council for, for the, for Congress. It helps with the operations and managing the operations of the U.S. capitol and the House. And so they were looking at some of these January 6th issues. And I’m not saying they looked at it enough.

I’m not saying they acted quickly enough, but at least they got some additional information. So for that we’re grateful even it is, even if it is just following up on some of the material the Judicial Watch already uncovered. The subcommittee has learned that Captain Byrd was referred to the United States Capitol Police Office of professional responsibility in 2004 for a prince George’s County, Maryland, for an incident in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in which then Sergeant Byrd discharged a service weapon at a fleeing vehicle. Now, that was first uncovered and disclosed by Judicial Watch in our lawsuit earlier this year.

So six was it, nine, ten months later? Congress is confirming it with some additional details. On April 5, 2004. This is, I guess, 20 years ago now. Right. Byrd and his wife were awoken at their home by A loud banging noise coming from outside their residence. According to Byrd, he observed two vans parked outside his neighbor’s house. Byrd then retrieved his U.S. capitol Police credentials and service weapon and went outside to investigate further. So far, sane. According to Byrd, the first van accelerated toward him in an apparent attempt to hit him. Byrd claimed he shouted stop.

And fired two rounds at the oncoming vehicle, which is important in terms of having a basis to shoot. It’s a self defense move, right? According to the OPR investigation, Byrd’s neighbor, who was also present, said he was in the line of fire when Byrd discharged his service weapon. Does that remind you of something he subsequently did on January 6th? All sorts of people being innocent and being in the line of fire, let alone Ashley being innocent and being in the line of fire. Byrd claimed that after firing at the oncoming vehicle, he jumped out of the way, but that the second vehicle then drove toward Byrd in another attempt to hit him.

According to Byrd, he then fired a single round into the driver’s side windshield and then jumped out of the way. So one witness says it was a negligent discharge. I mean, that’s the way I read it. Now Bird says he was firing at these cars coming at him in self defense. But listen to this. After this encounter, Prince George’s county police found both vans and conducted a search of the vehicles. There was no bullet holes in either van’s windshield. Police did find, however, a bullet hole near the gas cap of the second van. Police determined the bullet entered the van from a rear angle, indicating the van was shot at from behind.

One of the investigating officers observed that based on where the bullet was found, where’s the threat? Because it was in the driver’s side, rear quarter panel. So according to this police review and the Office of Professional Responsibility review, it looks like based on the forensic evidence, Byrd was wrong. I mean, maybe he misremembered it. I’m being fair, maybe I shouldn’t be fair. But the evidence doesn’t show he shot at the vehicles when they were coming towards him. OPR noted that based on the location of the shell casings and the angle that Sergeant Byrd alleged, he discharged a service weapon.

Byrd’s testimony that he fired at the vans as they attempted to hit him is inaccurate, right? That’s the most charitable way to put it. OPR concluded that the evidence suggests Byrd discharged a service weapon at the vans after they passed him by. Despite this, the United States Capitol Police noted that the investigation found insufficient evidence to determine Byrd violated their truthfulness policy. So there’s the first possible pass that the Capitol Police gave Bird. At the conclusion of the investigation, OPR determined that Byrd violated the use of force policy at the Capitol Police and the use of weapon policy by discharging his weapon in a careless and imprudent manner.

Specifically, they concluded that Byrd improperly discharged a service weapon while his neighbor was in the line of fire and after both stolen vehicles had passed by him. Well, I’m worried. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not litigating the case, although we’re representing Ashley Babbitt. Judicial Watch lawyers, you can imagine how important and interesting this might be in terms of what happened to Ashley Babbitt. You don’t have to be a lawyer to figure that out. This guy, according to the opr, their own internal watchdog, that the Capitol Police found that he negligently discharged his weapon in a way that put someone at risk and gave inaccurate testimony about what happened.

OPR also noted that the Maryland State prosecutor assigned to the incident determined Byrd to use, quote, bad judgment, unquote, again, important in his actions responding to the carjacking. Additionally, following the review, Inspector Yancy Garner sent a memo to Chief Terrence Garner Gaynor, who was the US Capitol Police chief at the time, concurring with OPR’s findings. Despite both OPR and Inspector Garner concluding Byrd violated policy, an appeal to the Disciplinary Review Board subsequently overruled the findings and ruled that Byrd did not violate policy. As a result, this incident is reflected as not sustained in Byrd’s OPR record in 2015.

This is another troubling incident. Then Lieutenant Byrd, so he’s gotten promoted from sergeant to lieutenant since 2004 through 2015, was referred to OPR for an incident involving a verbal altercation in a high school football game in Montgomery County, Maryland. In Montgomery county, if you think of D.C. as a little bit of a diamond, right? Montgomery county is up in the northwest quadrant, the big county, north of the district, biggest county, and I think it’s the biggest county, population wise, outside Baltimore. Maybe bigger than Baltimore, I don’t know, but it’s a big county. Montgomery County Police Department assigned at least two officers to provide security at that game to prevent spectators from walking onto the field and ensure visitors remained in the stands.

Shortly after the start of the game, Bird approached one of the officers and asked if there was another officer stationed on the other side of the field stopping spectators from walking onto the field. What business of it is his how the police are being deployed? Wait till you see what he did or is alleged to have done. Right after the officer informed Byrd of his responsibility to keep spectators off the track, Byrd reportedly became argumentative with the officer and began yelling profanities at the officer, calling him a piece of sugar. He didn’t say sugar though. A hole and racist.

Byrd then accused the officer of targeting the black side of the field and then jumped the fence, came onto the track and confronted the officer. I mean, he’s lucky that officer kept his head about him. Around this time, another Montgomery county police officer heard Byrd yelling at his partner, approached Byrd and attempted to de escalate the situation. Even after separating from the officer, Byrd continued to scream obscenities. After he calmed down, Byrd spoke to the police officer’s partner, identified himself as a lieutenant with the Capitol Police, and gave the officer his business card. Based on statements received from Byrd and the two MCPD officers, the Montgomery county police officers, OPR determined that Byrd called one of the officers a racist, a hole, and repeatedly used vulgar and abusive language.

OPR found Byrd’s charge of conduct unbecoming to be sustained. And as a result, he was suspended for seven days without pay. So Byrd acted, in a way to put it charitably, that was, quote, unbecoming and was basically told to stay home without pay for seven days. So a significant, significant issue. And there are more details about something else that Byrd did that’s very concerning, which is him leaving a gun in a bathroom at the capitol center in 2019. This is just two years or less than two years before he shot and killed our client, poor Ashley Babbitt, a 14 year veteran of the Air Force.

Then Lt. Byrd was referred to OPR for leaving his loaded service weapon in a bathroom in the Capitol Visitor Center. So the Capitol Visitor center was a wasteful monstrosity built by Congress to basically funnel visitors into the Capitol through this big hall and visitor center. It was built under the east face of the Capitol. So it starts. The entrance is almost a full block away from the Capitol building itself. So it’s. And it’s a big, big space, but everyone’s walking around there. If you’re visiting the Capitol as a tourist, you enter through that area and all those restrooms are widely available to the public.

I was just there a few weeks ago. You know, there are thousands of people milling about on busy days there. At the time then, Lieutenant Byrd was the commander of the House Chamber section of the U.S. capitol Police, responsible for ensuring the House Chamber was adequately patrolled. His weapon was left unattended in a public restroom for approximately 55 minutes before it was discovered. By another officer. After OPR’s finding that sustained the charge for, quote, violating. Excuse me, for violating, quote, compliance with directives and issued weapons and ammunition, Byrd was suspended for another 33 days without pay.

So Byrd, as of 2019, had been suspended twice from the US Capitol Police Department, once for seven days without paying, for essentially assaulting a police officer who was doing his duty, verbally assaulting them. Although I would read some of what he did to be potentially physical assault, he probably got a pass because the cops knew he was a cop. In the end, if he were a regular parent, I bet you he would have been arrested. And then he was again suspended 33 days. So now that’s 40 days in total. This guy had been kept off the force, suspended without pay.

And if that doesn’t make you think that maybe he shouldn’t have been even in the position to shoot Ashli Babbitt, I don’t know. What would. I mean, those of you who are in law enforcement or even in the military, I mean, to be punished like that, it’s pretty unusual. You know that. But it gets worse because there were more issues. But the records are missing. According to Barry Loudermilk, Capitol Police records indicate three additional OPR referrals against Byrd. However, the records related to those investigations are reportedly missing. And Berg calls it disappointing. I would call it something else.

Of course they’ve been missing. You know, this is what’s frustrating about this. They were told those documents were missing on January 30, 2024, and we’re only finding out about it now. So it’s disappointing. It took 10 months to get this out? No, it’s 11 months. It’s November. I keep on thinking it’s October, it’s November. And then what happened after the shooting? You’re going to be infuriated. As Loudermick writes, in addition to the decision to promote Byrd despite his disciplinary history, I also have concerns about the decisions the Capitol Police made with respect to Byrd after January 6, 2021, when he needlessly shot and killed our client, Ashley Babbitt.

For example, following January 6, the Capitol Police provided Byrd with an unrestricted $36,000 bonus as part of a retention agreement in August of 20. It was almost like a reward, wasn’t it? But listen, it’s unclear if Byrd even signed the retention agreement. And the U.S. capitol Police offered all other officers, including those who suffered physical injuries on January 6, significantly smaller retention bonuses. The US Capitol Police bulletin obtained by the subcommittee indicates that around the same time Byrd received his retention bonus. Other officers were offered only $3,000. So this guy shoots an unarmed woman blindly who is in a crowd, and he gets a retention bonus of $36,000.

Other officers are significantly injured that day, and they get only $3,000. Who does he know over in the police Department or in Congress to allow this to go on? I bet you Nancy Pelosi had something to do with this. And it’s so egregious that only the speaker or someone around her got this done. That’s how I feel about it. I’m just speculating, but in June 2022, almost a year after Byrd received his retention bonus, U.S. capitol Police offered officers an additional 8,000 retention bonus. $8,000 retention bonus. And it’s not clear if he already got those bonuses.

So if he got those bonuses. So it’s possible, according to Laura Milk, he didn’t just get $36,000. He might have gotten as much as 36, and 3 is 39, and 8 is $47,000. The Capitol Police also plan to use the memorial fund to pay for Byrd’s expenses, including any lost overtime resulting from his missing work following January 6th. The memorial fund is a fund for officers injured or killed in the line of duty. According to internal police documents, the U.S. capitol Police plan to submit Byrd’s memorial fund proposal ahead of any other memorial fund payment, including ahead of 90 injured officers.

Now, did he have PTSD or some type of trauma as a result of killing unlawfully? In my view, Ashley Babbitt, maybe. So was he technically injured? Maybe, but pretty controversial move by the Capitol Police showing favoritism, it looks like, at least on the surface, for Lieutenant Byrd. Additionally, the Police Department helped Byrd set up a GoFundMe in November 2021, which raised over $164,000 for him. Capitol Police ultimately decided not to formally propose a payment to Byrd from the memorial fund after his GoFundMe raised significantly more money than Byrd would have received from the memorial fund. So, thankfully, well, the memorial fund didn’t give money to Byrd, even though they were going to, because the police Department was involved directly in getting the public to give bird money, despite his record of misconduct and his involvement in the shooting.

Are you aware of any other officer who is involved in a controversial shooting getting help from the Police Department to raise money through GoFundMe? I’m not. The Capitol Police also spent $21,000 on security upgrades on Byrd’s personal home. In addition, starting in July 2021, the Capitol Police provided Byrd with a total of six months of housing at local hotels and the distinguished visitors quarters at Joint Base Andrews. And of course that was first uncovered by Judicial Watch that he got, he basically got housing at the Pentagon’s base out in Maryland, Joint Base Andrews. It’s a major base here in D.C.

area. It’s where the President flies in and out of other VIPs. It’s where the President’s and the VIP Air Force Wing for other high level government officials is maintained. So it’s well known in the area and Byrd was set up down there. And we uncovered this. Pull up the press release when we uncovered this in October. Judicial Watch Tuesday uncovered details of Ashley Babbitt special housing at Joint Base Andrews. So we found out about this. Scroll down a little bit to the first paragraph. So we sued in October and we had, I guess we had received information as I recall, that Byrd was housed there in the immediate period after he killed Babbitt.

And so we subsequently sued and got more details on it. So it’s good to see that Congress two years later starts releasing details about it. We had uncovered it two years ago. In addition, Byrd also had a dignitary protection detail from the US Capitol Police. When he left the secure base on at least one occasion in September of 2021, the security detail escorted him to a cigar lounge where he stayed out until 1:30, necessitating extended DBD coverage. Security detail coverage. Additionally, the Capitol Police instructed Byrd not to sit for a fitness for duty evaluation following January 6, 2021.

The police were concerned that Byrd may fail the fitness for duty evaluation and that if Byrd failed, he would not be permitted to carry his service weapon. However, even though the police. The Capitol Police were concerned Byrd may fail his fitness for duty evaluation, they thought it would be more important for Byrd to have his weapon for personal protection. So the public was put at risk by the US Capitol Police doing another favor for Byrd. They thought he was not, he was not going to be fit to serve and they allowed him to keep a government weapon nevertheless and prevented him from having to go through what it looks like every other police officer and the U.S.

capitol Police has to go through in terms of fitness to serve evaluations. In September 2021, Byrd attempted to personally purchase a shotgun but failed to pass the background check required by federal law. Byrd subsequently sought the U.S. capitol Police’s help in resolving the issue with his background check. After learning that Byrd failed his background check, the U.S. capitol Police took steps to provide him with a U.S. capitol Police issued shotgun. So much for gun control laws. The Capitol Police were trying to evade gun control laws and intended to lend him a shotgun even if his background check did not come through.

But ultimately, Byrd failed his shotgun proficiency and was not provided the shotgun. So even they couldn’t get around. I mean, he couldn’t handle the weapon properly, so they didn’t give it to him, thank God. And then it looks like he was working or not working and still getting paid. Shortly after January 6, they placed Byrd on administrative leave and ultimately removed him from administrative leave at the end of June 2021. So he was on administrative leave from January after he killed Ashlie Babbitt. No benefits to the family from the government. Right? But the cop got benefits.

He got time off for six months. Byrd signed a telework agreement on July 2021, which allowed him to telework five days a week, but he did not return to work. Despite this, Byrd was not disciplined. Instead, the Capitol Police retroactively provided Byrd with administrative leave for the days he refused to work in July and August of 2021. Then they encouraged officers to donate their annual leave to Byrd in an internal bulletin. Byrd did not return to work until December 2020, one months after he signed the telework agreement and nearly a year after January 6th. Yet he was never referred to OPR discipline for not working.

Based on the above information, it appears US CP treated Byrd more favorably than other officers. However, it is unclear why they took these actions. This subcommittee is dedicated to ensuring, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So they want more questions. They want more answers, including how the heck he became a captain. Now, I normally don’t spend as much time as I did reading government letters like this, but you’re not going to hear this from the media. John reported it, and John Solomon reported it in just the news. But, you know, think of all the noise you’ve heard about January 6th.

Think of all the investigations. There’s been no investigation but for Judicial Watch and now follow on by Congress of the only official homicide victim and how that happened on January 6th. Ashley Byrd is the only official homicide victim, meaning the only victim that authorities have found died as a result of a homicide. I love that picture of Ashley. That’s another nice one. Her husband, Aaron is a widower there. He is there with her. Her mom is out all the time trying to help the January Sixers in prison while advocating for justice for Ashley. Nikki. So this is pretty horrible stuff.

And it’s important you understand what the U.S. capitol Police have done and the politicians. You know, this is not something they’ve done on their own. You can, I guarantee you there’s Democratic Party political machinations that protected Byrd from the get go here even before January 6, 2021, when Ashley was killed. So my guess is there’s political corruption and speculation, but I’m allowed to speculate, I’m allowed to guess based on this evidence. And the evidence to me is that he had an angel in the Democratic Party somewhere in the House, and they allowed him to skate repeatedly on these disciplinary issues.

And rather than being let go or being put in a less serious position or in a position where he wouldn’t be able to harm the public, he continued and continued to get better and better positions till eventually he was in charge of security at the House side on that day. And he killed Ashley. And if he had been handled properly according to their own disciplinary standards, he probably wouldn’t have been there. How did that happen? And this goes to the heart of much of our lawsuit, and we’re going to be fighting about this. A trial has been set for 2026.

But the issues related to, you know, the negligence here, there’s the government still fighting us tooth and nail on it. That may not even be part of the trial. So I think I’ve done a public service, and Judicial Watch has done a public service just by telling you about a letter from Congress. So the next time you hear about January 6th, think of Lieutenant Byrd firing wildly at fleeing cars. Think about Lieutenant Byrd using racial epithets against a police officer at a football game and getting punished without pay for seven days as a result. Think about him leaving a gun behind in a public restroom and getting punished 33 days without pay as a result.

And how the heck this guy was in a position to kill Lashley is just unbelievable to me. And thankfully, Judicial Watch has this case right now. And of course, the Biden people, they, you know, if it were anyone else, if the politics were different, because we’ve seen it in big cities, the victims of police shootings, and there’s controversy around the police shootings. The cities never even fight the cases here. This case is being fought tooth and nail by the Biden people, the Biden Justice Department. So the question is, will there be a different approach by the Trump administration? I hope so, because Ashley Babbitt deserves justice.

Her family deserves justice, and the truth needs to be indicated. And I think there’s a public safety issue related to Lt. Byrd’s activities on the Capitol Hill police. So I’ll let you know the case is proceeding. We’ve got hearings and other Matters coming up. So we’re going to be in discovery, meaning taking evidence and testimony soon. I think we already are in discovery. It’s just a question of when we get the documents and when we’re going to be able to take testimony. So stay tuned. So what do you think? Is it an important case? I think it is.

I think this, you know, I was just going to do the general look at the press release here and or look at John’s story and let’s just move it along. Then I read the letter. I’m like, I got to share this with our supporters. They’re not going to believe this. They’re not going to believe this. I encourage you specifically to share this video with your friends and your family about what really happened on January 6th and the man behind the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. So Judicial Watch had a major development or, you know, we engaged in a major piece of legal work this past week or so.

We filed a Supreme Court petition on post election day counting in Illinois. And I think we filed the case two years ago. And here’s a summary of the issue that I put out there when we first filed it. Everybody do you think they should be counting ballots for up to two weeks after Election Day? Well, of course you don’t. And Illinois, though, they count ballots that arrive for up to 14 days after election Day, including ballots that don’t have a postal mark on them. We’re in federal court now trying to stop that because federal law requires an election Day, not an election week, not an election month.

We got a federal appellate court hearing this week. Hopefully that court allows our case to proceed. In the meantime, we’re doing heavy lifting down there in Mississippi, where they count ballots for up to five days after election Day. Now, many other states, they also count ballots after election day or ballots that arrive after Election Day, which is anathema to the very notion of fair and clean elections. It creates a mess, it invites voter fraud, it undermines voter confidence, and it’s downright illegal. Yeah. And we had that big 5th Circuit ruling in the Mississippi case that and the circuit court agreed with us, the appellate court, that counting ballots after election day or received after election day is unlawful.

And just counting, in my view, counting ballots generally after Election day is unlawful, although no court specifically has agreed with me on that yet. But certainly counting ballots that arrive after election Day is something that is contrary to plain federal law. And we see the chaos caused by, generally speaking, the counting of ballots after election Day in California. What are the. I checked the numbers Just before I came on here, they have yet to count 315,000 ballots in California. Can you believe it? 315,000 ballots. Arizona, they went and counted ballots forever in a day after election Day it took over.

I think it took well over a week for Clara to be brought to the Senate race. And of course many people think the Senate race was compromised as a result of that past election day post election day counting. Illinois As I note 14 days after election day and what happened in Illinois was the courts there were afraid to let the case proceed. Really scandalously denied our clients the right to even bring the case by founding they didn’t have any standing. On what earth would a judge think frankly? And I have to be careful here because these are the judges and I don’t want to get them mad at me and mad at Judicial Watch.

Right. And our clients. But the idea that a congressman running for public office and electors who were involved in the presidential contest wouldn’t have the right to challenge illicit counting of ballots, it makes no sense. And of course it’s not the law. And that’s why we filed the petition with the Supreme Court. And I’m going to read you the first few paragraphs of said petition. It was filed earlier this week. Here it is. You go to page two of the beginning of the petition statement of the case. For over 130 years this court has heard claims brought by federal candidates challenging state time place for manner regulations affecting their federal elections.

Until recently it was axiomatic that the candidates had standing to challenge these regulations. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone who has a more particularized injury than a candidate has, we quote, that is because a candidate who pours money and sweat into a campaign, who spends time away from her job and family to traverse the campaign trail and who puts her name on a ballot has an undeniably different and more particularized interest in the lawfulness of the election than some random voter. In the aftermath of the 2020 elections. However, for a variety of reasons. This is my editorial comment.

Trump courts have limited candidates ability to challenge the electoral rules governing their campaigns. This case presents the latest and an extreme example of this trend. Petitioners are a sitting multi term congressman, Congressman Bost. Bost and two federal electors. They challenged an Illinois law that allows absentee ballots to be received and counted after the day specified in federal statutes for holding federal elections. They contend that Illinois receipt deadline the election law is preempted by the federal election day law standards. They asserted Article 3 standing which is standing before the federal courts on a number of grounds, including that they incur costs to run their campaigns for an additional two weeks to monitor ballot receipt and counting.

Straightforward standing analysis. They got to spend more money. They also claimed the particular interest as candidates in an accurate tally of validly received votes. A divided panel of the seventh Circuit, the seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs Illinois or has Illinois in its jurisdiction, affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the case for lack of standing. The majority held that the petitioners had not pleaded an injury, in fact because in the court’s opinion they did not need to conduct post election monitoring of late arriving ballots in 2022 and thus any expenses incurred for monitoring were self inflicted.

I mean that’s just like Alice in Wonderland logic, Alice in Wonderland logic by the court to keep this case out. The court also declined the fine standing because the 2024 election was then two months away. So it was too soon. So afterwards it’s too late and beforehand it’s too soon. That’s what happened in 2020 with the anti trump rulings by judges who were afraid to deal with the election controversies. Until this ruling, the only non vacated circuit authorities to confront the question of candidate standing had held that candidates do have standing to contest violations of federal election law affecting their campaigns.

Straightforward analysis. Petitioners respectfully submit that it is important, and this is key, for the court to correct the serious errors infecting the seven circuits ruling, especially those tending to foster an arbitrary approach to jurisdictional issues involving federal candidates. Again, this anti Trump animus infecting other cases. They didn’t like Trump messing around challenging elections. That’s my perception. And so our clients here challenge an obviously illegal law post election day, counting the ballots received after election day and they come up with this idea that candidates can’t challenge that. If candidates can’t, who can? It is also important that lower courts, potential litigants and the public know that federal courts are open to hear timely, well pleaded challenges to state time, place and manner regulations.

Federal court rulings on the merits, regardless of outcome, promote public confidence that federal elections are being conducted fairly, with integrity and in accordance with the law. The petition presents an opportunity for the court to provide lower courts and litigants much needed guidance on candidate standing outside of the high stakes emergency post election litigation where these issues commonly arise. That’s why we ask them to grant cert basically take up the case. So it’s a good, good effort by our legal team. We had that major victory in the fifth Circuit and the seventh Circuit doesn’t want to deal with the merits, you know, taking on this.

As we highlight in the brief, this increasingly restrictive view that candidates can’t challenge elections, how they’re run and any illegalities associated with it. Now how is that supposed to deal? If we can’t use the law to resolve election disputes, then what do we do? And the court needs to step in, in our view, and fix it and make it clear candidates can challenge elections in this manner or the way elections are conducted. We’re not even challenging results. And now sometimes they say, well, you know, this is just too run and gun, it’s too close to the election.

You know, we’re not going to intervene after the election and start throwing out election results. There’s no excuse here. This is a straightforward case that at most would apply to 2024 at this stage. No, excuse me, 2026. We just had the 2024 election. So the two questions I have for you, dear listener and dear viewer, A, do you think that states should follow federal law and only count ballots received by election day? And B, if they’re not, should candidates have the standing to challenge it? And you don’t have to be a lawyer to answer yes to both.

Right? Just common sense. So this is what, again, what I love about Judicial Watch. It’s like we don’t stop. The election was done and we’re still fighting for election integrity. A colleague of mine, a friend of mine, he said that in public policy there are no intermissions. We’re back to work. We’re back to work for cleaner elections and the rule of law. And we’re trying to get the courts to pay attention rule and stop using this standing scheme argument to prevent people from raising these issues in court. What a great little case that we’re pursuing here.

And obviously we’re watching what’s going on in California very carefully and we may take some action there. In terms of the post election day counting. As I say in the release, it is a scandal that the courts would deny a federal candidate the ability to challenge an election provision that could lead to illegal votes being cast and counted. Illinois’s 14 day extension of election day thwarts federal law, violates the civil rights of voters and invites fraud. The Supreme Court should take up this case and reaffirm the right of federal candidates to challenge unlawful election schemes. So to bring you up to speed, in case you’re not familiar with Judicial Watch’s work, we have a numerous historic federal cases to clean up election rolls that in the last two years or so alone resulted in 4 million names being cleaned up.

We achieved a massive victory in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding as unlawful the counting of ballots, at least in Mississippi, that arrive after Election Day. We’ve got this major case in Illinois trying to defend the candidates who want to challenge laws like that in Illinois. And we have multiple lawsuits still to clean up millions of other dirty names from the voting rolls. In addition to all of our other work defending voter id, challenging the left’s attack on clean elections generally in courts across the land. There is no private entity out there doing more to secure fair and clean elections over the last two decades than Judicial Watch.

So you should support our work. Right? And I’m going to take this little commercial break to tell you how you can support our work by getting my latest Judicial Watch book, Rights and Freedoms in Peril. Hey everyone, be sure to get my new Judicial Watch book, Rights and Freedoms in Peril, in bookstores now. It’s your guidebook to the next Trump administration. It explains where we’ve been in terms of the threats to our freedoms and our rights and what President Trump and his team must do in the challenges they face. Elon Musk, Matt Gaetz, of course, the president himself, as our republic has been assaulted for so long by the leftist regime Democrats.

Now, Rights and Freedoms in Peril is available in bookstores now. Important reading, essential reading if you’re concerned about the future of America. Yeah, it’s a great book. I encourage you to buy it. I know I’m going to say it’s a great book because I’m the author of the book, but it is a great book and it’s essential reading for patriots who are concerned about the current crisis. It’s a long ballgame. There’s a current threat to our republic we’ve never seen before by the left. So we explain it all in a really easy to understand, devastatingly factual way in the new book.

And as I note, one of the big issues I talk about in the book and one of the big issues for Judicial Watch because of this increased dramatic threat that we’ve never seen before in American history to our First Amendment freedoms, is the censorship mania by the government and all these left wing and transnational interest groups and government activities, both at the federal level, the state level, and as I say, transnational, there’s this movement by the left and friendly governments to suppress free speech rights across the world. But here in the United States, we’ve got the First Amendment that’s supposed to protect us, and it hasn’t done that good of a job, at least in terms of being in force to stop this censorship.

And this is why Judicial Watch has been investigating and suing to get the censorship exposed, hopefully stopped. We sue to stop it where we can. And we just received new documents that are really quite extraordinary. And further detailing the extensive government censorship and monitoring of conservative social media during the 2020 election. This is a deep state operation out of the Department of Homeland Security. They set up these monitoring operations within the government, supposedly about Russia, Russia, Russia. In fact, it was about America, America, America. And censoring Americans who had concerns about the way elections were being conducted.

And they’re pretending they were trying to get just disinformation and misinformation, which is another word for information we don’t like or we think is inconvenient. And even if it’s wrong, they had no business trying to get it taken down and censored. That’s not what the government’s role is in our constitutional republic with a First Amendment that defends our right to petition our government and have freedom of speech. I mean, these documents are going to get you mad. We got them from the Department of Homeland Security. The records were uncovered thanks to, again, heavy lifting. Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit for communications between the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency cisa.

Boy, there’s an agency for putting on the chopping block by Doge and Elon Musk and company. Look at what they did to our freight freedoms. So cisa, which is the division of Department of Homeland Security, and this basically government cutout, the Election Integrity Partnership, that was supposedly private and they were out there trying to get us censored. Look at this one email. There’s a ton of emails here. It’s 247 pages. I can’t go through each one. I guess I could, but I think I might lose a few of you. So let’s go. Bring up this first email here is it the bottom.

So these are all government emails. So this isn’t a private entity. This is the government heavily involved in this conspiracy to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights. And this is a ticket. They’re creating tickets for social media companies to act upon and remove content with the help of the government. I’m adding Facebook and recommending they take action on this page. Our understanding this is a verified page, such as the Hood river county page, or could claim or request deletion of this page. So they wanted the government to try to take it down at the local level.

However, we recommend that Facebook take immediate action on this page due to its potential for spreading misinformation about voting processes in Hood River County. So it’s not false. It says its potential for spreading misinformation. Now let’s go up a little bit. So you read these emails from top to bottom. Go up further. Was that the first one we’re going to do? Where’s the January 29, 2021amessage from the first part of the release. A message on September 29, 2020 relates to absentee ballots and fraud in states. If you go to the first part of the press release, it’s the first document recited.

Analysts at the EIP look for cross platform spread of this post, including in local media, but it appears contained in Facebook at this point. This issue has been raised with Facebook to see if additional steps can be taken to the platform further down or up. The platforms may or not, may or may not take action and they sometimes take action without notifying us. So they’re basically tracking, sending this information, using government resources and partners to Facebook to get material censored and they’re nervous that they mistracked it. And then later, or I should say, there’s another set of documents related to Twitter and this is interesting.

Let’s bring that Twitter set up with Scully. So this is back before Twitter was bought by Elon Musk, government official. Twitter asked if we could have reports coming through, misinformation reports only to be reported to them via cisa. So Twitter was asking that censorship requests only be reported to them through the government. Cisa. CISA is the center for Information, whatever that. Now I’m forgetting what it’s called, the Censorship Information Specialist Association. I’m just making that up. But CISA was the big government entity that was getting us all censored. I know the eip, the partnership that they were working with in collusion, is sharing some of the reports with them as well and they are trying to cut back on duplicates.

Any issues with this approach? From a process standpoint, it would look like election official misinformation report. Cisa, eip, others CISA sends to Twitter rest the process the same. So here you have a senior government official in the Department of Homeland Security managing censorship communications with Twitter. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty astonishing. It’s not surprising given what we’ve heard already from prior reports on what was going on. But it’s still astonishing to see in black and white as Judicial Watch is uncovered here. There are many more emails like this in the material that we released.

Again, it was not voluntarily disclosed. It was disclosed to us as a result of a federal FOIA lawsuit. What else is in there? And I’m hoping when President Trump comes in and his appointees, he demands transparency on this censorship. I’m going to ask him to do that. Well, obviously there’ll be a vehicle to get this done. Christy Noem is going to be the. Assuming she gets confirmed, who knows, right? The head of dhs. She needs to clean house here, get this exposed. Everything they’ve been doing, I mean, all of these folks are Trump people who are being censored.

It looks like these new previously secret documents show that the Deep State worked full time to censor and monitor Americans inclusion with left wing interest groups and big Tech. The Trump administration should launch a criminal probe into this assault on the First Amendment civil rights of Americans. You hear that? I want Pam Bondi to launch a civil rights criminal investigation into this censorship of Americans. Big tech, big government equals big censorship. That’s the story of 2020 and that’s the story of the Biden administration. And there’s got to be accountability for it. This is one of many lawsuits and investigations we have going on about censorship by the government.

And the problem is, even if Trump comes in, some of the censorship is almost like automatic. And it may continue even under Trump unless the appointees know where to look and stop it. So I have one more interesting story for you. So we file FOIA sometimes and they just disappear, practically speaking. Meaning they’re never answered. Or. Or we sue, we never get the documents. And, you know, it’s kind of just left out there. This is a case of documents that came to us after 19 years from when we filed the FOIA request for them. And it relates to an issue called Operation Able Danger.

And if you know what Able Danger was, it essentially was a military intelligence operation that was using at the time kind of an innovative strategy to find connections through various sources to highlight potential terrorists and other threats to the United States. We got some documents after 19 years from the Defense Department, most of which are completely blacked out because they’re classified. And Able Danger was pretty controversial because it compiled publicly available information regarding Al Qaeda and other targets. And as I recall, Muhammad Atta’s name popped up on the Able Danger. And that Muhammad Atta was one of the 911 ringleaders.

It was. Who flew one. I think he was on one of the planes. I forget which plane he was on that was used to commit the terrorism on 9 11. So if able danger had been pursued properly, arguably 9, 11 could have been prevented. So it was pretty controversial when our friend Tony Schaefer, who was involved in the program, began talking about it. He wrote a book about it. As I recall. Even after the book was approved and you know, went through the declassification approval, the Pentagon got nervous about what was in it. And they shredded 10,000 books.

It was like a Fahrenheit 451. Just incredible story around Able Danger. And I encourage you to learn more about it and read Tony’s book about it. The Senate Intelligence Committee began its investigation of the program in August of 2005 and they conducted a hearing in 2005. However, members of the data mining team Data mining team were blocked from testifying. So In December of 2005, Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request to the Defense Department for Able Danger records. Essentially we wanted US Intelligence, law enforcement or other counterterrorism projects andor programs utilizing data mining software techniques to search open source records in the public domain.

The Defense Department responded to us a few months ago. We’re finally getting the release out on it from U.S. special Operations Command identified hundreds of pages of responsive records, but claims the overwhelming majority are still classified and over 20 years later remain exempted from disclosure. It’s really hard to get over assertions of classified material that the records are classified. It’s very hard to get over the assertion of that records are classified for FOIA requesters and litigants. We have a lot of experience with it. It’s just really hard. Sometimes we do if we got a good basis for doing so, but it’s difficult to do because the courts, as you might imagine, are deferential.

The records include though, an unredacted declassified top secret record, special compartmentalized information record which is really Secret, containing a 17 page listing of unclassified open source Internet resources, listing websites and URLs for topics such as terrorism, news stories, Office of Coordinator of Counterterrorism and Albanian terrorism in Kosovo, among many others. Across the bottom of the page three of the lists of open source records is a statement begin to understand the status of ongoing efforts. The author of the exclamation sentence is not identified. So they thought this was important. You know, data mining might seem like old hat now, but this is remember 20 plus years ago that it was really innovative at the time and this is why it was such a sensitive project, yet they ignored it.

Small passages of what seemed to be declassified analytical reports feature commentaries such as Arab countries in North Africa, especially Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Egypt and almost all other Arab countries have been annoyed by the high profile of Osama Bin Laden, first in Pakistan and later Afghanistan, especially when he publicly claims that he trains Arab fundamentalists to overthrow most of the Arab regimes in the Middle East. Again, more information about how dangerous and disruptive Bin Laden was. They talk about drug trafficking. Heroin is the major source of income for the Taliban. It’s a major source of income for the inter service intelligence of, excuse me, of Pakistan Freudian slip, which has been providing support and assistance to the Taliban.

So drug trade was fueling these terrorist threats. And we talk about opium in Afghanistan as well. So a very strange mix of documents and little clues, but much of it is redacted even after 20 years. And as I say in the note in our press release, it shouldn’t take two decades to decide that the American people can’t see documents about a military investigation and program that could have prevented 9 11. What an insult to the American people and the victims of 9 11. And you know, this is why it’s important to support Judicial Watch because they count on us to disappear and just go away.

Because if we weren’t around after 20 years, these documents and this scandal would never have been uncovered. I don’t know. I think it’s important about how 911 happened or was allowed to happen and why our vaunted intelligence, the billions spent on defending America, failed us that day. I’m not going to forget it. Those of you around you don’t forget 911 either. I tell you. So I’m proud of the work that we were able to do here, even if we had to wait 19 years to get some basic information, even if it is a big fat no.

Sometimes being told no tells you something. You can’t have something. Now we know they have something we don’t want, they don’t want us to have. And maybe we can push to get more of it out. So great work again by Judicial Watch, asking the Supreme Court for action on election integrity, exposing the censorship, pursuing justice for Ashley Babbitt, getting front and center in the debate about mass deportations and the defense of America from the illegal alien invasion that Biden enabled. All sorts of great work by Judicial Watch. And it’s only done because of the support of Americans just like you.

If we wouldn’t do it, who would? I encourage you to support judicial watch@judicalwatch.org and I tell you we have Thanksgiving next week. If I don’t see you between now and then online or elsewhere, I wish you a safe and happy Thanksgiving with your friends. And your families. And I know I’ll be thanking God for all of you who support Judicial Watch, because we wouldn’t be able to do any of this and help Ashli Babbitt’s family, help our clients, help our whistleblowers, help the American people without your support. And, of course, I’ll be thanking God for the US Constitution and our wonderful nation and the rule of law that allows us to do this work, because there’s nowhere else in the world that we’d be able to do it other than America.

So have a wonderful Thanksgiving. God bless you, God bless your family, 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.
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