➡ Judicial Watch, a legal group, filed a lawsuit in Oregon due to concerns about the state’s voting rolls. The lawsuit led to an agreement to review and remove up to 800,000 names from the rolls. The new Secretary of State acknowledged the issue and agreed to the cleanup, which will take several years. This action is part of a larger effort by Judicial Watch to ensure election integrity across the country.
➡ Judicial Watch, a legal advocacy group, recently presented its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that federal law requires all election ballots to be received by Election Day. The group is challenging practices in several states that allow ballots to be counted if they arrive days or weeks after Election Day. The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision on this matter in June. The U.S. Government, represented by the Solicitor General, supports Judicial Watch’s position.
➡ The article discusses the importance of ballots being received by election officials by Election Day. It highlights the historical context of mail-in voting and how it has evolved since the Civil War. The article also mentions the debate on whether dropping a ballot in the mail is equivalent to it being officially received. Lastly, it discusses the Supreme Court’s role in upholding the rule of law in elections and the potential impact of its decisions on future elections.
➡ The Secretary of State in Nevada, Aguilar, is preparing for potential changes to election laws that may disallow counting of mail ballots arriving after Election Day. This follows a Supreme Court hearing where conservative justices seemed skeptical about the practice. Aguilar and other state officials are working to inform voters about these possible changes, which could impact hundreds of thousands of ballots. The final decision from the Supreme Court is expected in June.
➡ The FBI has discovered a hidden room containing up to 1.9 million documents related to various investigations, including those of historical significance and active cases. These documents were kept secret from new leadership and are now being digitized for potential release, a process that could take up to a year. The records include older files and more recent ones related to special counsel investigations and other government agencies. This revelation came to light due to the efforts of Judicial Watch in federal court.
➡ Judicial Watch, an organization that promotes transparency, is fighting for the release of government records, including those related to potential corruption and conflicts of interest. They have been involved in several major cases and have exposed various abuses. They are currently in a legal battle to obtain information about royalty payments made to government employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their inventions. Despite the resistance from the government, Judicial Watch continues to push for transparency to ensure public trust in government operations.
➡ Judicial Watch is fighting in court to get information about royalty fees received by government employees from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH argues that revealing these payments could expose confidential commercial information, but Judicial Watch believes this is a way to hide how much taxpayer-funded employees earn. The case also questions whether these payments could influence the direction of scientific research. Over $2.685 billion was paid to NIH institutes or scientists from 2010 to 2023, raising concerns about potential evasion of annual statutory limits.

I have tremendous breaking news about a federal lawsuit that Judicial Watch filed in Oregon on behalf of the Constitution Party and others over their dirty voting rolls. Oregon settled the lawsuit. It became. That lawsuit settlement became official this week. And as part of the settlement, there’s an agreement to review and remove up to 800,000 names from the voting rolls in Oregon. Now, what happened is that Judicial Watch uncovered that Oregon’s voting rolls were a mess. The National Voter Registration act requires states to take reasonable steps to clean up the voting rolls. And if they don’t, groups like Judicial Watch and other grief parties can sue and sue.

We did, and a new secretary of state was elected. I think last year. He came to town, he saw, obviously, Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, and he realized that Judicial Watch was right, that Oregon hasn’t cleaned up its election rolls since 2017. In its complaint, Judicial Watch argued that this is our lawsuit. When I say complaint. Judicial Watch argued that Oregon’s voter rolls contain large numbers of old and active registrations and that 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties removed few or no registrations as required by federal election law. Think about that. Think about all the people that move in and out of a jurisdiction at any year, in any year, and none of them get removed over years.

In fact, we found that Oregon, the state, and 35 of its counties had overall registration rates exceeding 100% and that Oregon had the highest known inactive registration rate of any state in the nation. So there are two points there. When you get the registration rate over 100%, it’s a pretty good indication that they’re not cleaning the rolls. They’ve got more people living there or registered to vote than there are living there. And on top of that, the inactive rate is the rate of people who quite obviously should be removed, meaning they haven’t voted in years and years and years.

In this case in Oregon, at least 10 years. So to the credit of the Oregon Secretary of State, a Democrat, he agreed to settle the case. We’re removing the 800,000 names. We’re going to confirm the removals. We’re going to provide reports to Judicial Watch, as required, about our other steps to maintain the rolls, make sure they’re cleaner. And we’re going to do it for years. And if things don’t, we don’t. If they don’t keep their promises, we can go back to court. As we say in our press release, Oregon Secretary of State Toby Tobias Reid, R E A D announced earlier this year that Oregon has about 800,000 inactive registrations.

So as I Meant to say earlier is that that rate is, I think it’s like 20, 25%. You can look up Oregon’s population and run the numbers, but it’s a significant portion of the state of Oregon are registered improperly. You know, there are names there that are registered improperly that should be removed. So of the roughly 800,000 names, 160,000 or so already met criteria to be removed. They should be removed immediately. So they’re gone. The remaining 640,000 inactive names are going to be removed over time. It could be a few years before they’re all removed, but they’re on their way out.

And if we hadn’t taken these steps, they’d be on forever in a day. And what’s also good about this settlement, as I read it, is that the process will continue. So it’s not just the 800,000 names that are going to be removed. The process is going to be fixed in a way that when dirty names arise again because people move or die and they need to be removed, there’s the process in place to take care of that so it doesn’t happen again, at least over the term of this settlement agreement. In its press release caused by Judicial Watch, this admission, Oregon acknowledged that routine removal of outdated records effectively stalled in 2017.

So they haven’t been cleaning the rolls since, since 2017, leaving a large pool of long dormant registrations on the rolls without being fully processed for removal. And this is what the Secretary of State said, again, a Democrat. These directives that he issued to kind of get the ball rolling are about cleaning up old data that’s no longer in use. So Oregonians can be confident that, that our election voter records are up to date. Right on. That’s the purpose of the law. That’s the purpose of doing the process to provide assurance to voters and citizens that there’s no, there’s going to be fewer opportunities for fraud because you have old and dead names on the rolls.

As I say in our release, this is another historic election integrity success. Judicial Watch’s lawsuit caused Oregon to finally clean up 800,000 outdated voter names, adding to the more than 6 million ineligible voters removed by Judicial Watch lawsuits and legal actions nationwide. Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections. Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Reid is to be commended for. For responding to our lawsuit with a massive voter roll cleanup and a commitment to continued voterless maintenance, which will only increase voter confidence. This is just a fantastic development. So we had 800,000 being removed in Oregon. We got word just two weeks ago that there’s a total of nearly 400,000 names.

I think it was 372, if I recall correctly, dirty names being removed from the rolls in Colorado. So now it’s over a million names in just the last month or two have been added to our cleanup totals now, which are at 6 million. It’s just remarkable. Justice Department hasn’t gotten these numbers removed ever. I mean, they’re taking some steps to examine the rolls and help states clean up the rolls. But of course, they’re being sued for even doing that by the left. So Judicial Watch has been able just to be persistent, like, you know, the, you know, slow and steady wins the race.

And we’ve been slow and steady and aggressive, though you can expect more litigation in California. We have ongoing litigation in Illinois. So we’ll see if we can get the rolls cleaned in Illinois. And you’ll be surprised because, as I said, these settlements aren’t with Republicans necessarily. People think, well, you’re a conservative group. You’re set. It’s all some sort of rat. No. New York City, we settled. You think we settled with Republicans in New York City to clean up nearly a million names up there in the District of Columbia. We ended the lawsuit after they removed 138,000 names, as I recall.

But there’s more that needs to be done because there are upwards of 24 million outdated names in the rolls nationally. But Judicial Watch is going to keep on pushing. As I said, we’ve got ongoing litigation, litigation in the offing. Plus other states are under our, under investigation by our team. And I expect there will be more legal actions and lawsuits to get those other states to clean up the rolls. But this is, again, just another remarkable victory for Judicial Watch. And, you know, it’s a settlement. Now, Oregon didn’t admit that they did anything wrong. That’s what settlements are.

But it’s clear we got this 800,000 number of dirty names up for removal thanks to our litigation. And this is on top of our work to ensure that candidates have the right to sue, to stop dirty elections from happening and make sure the rules are fair and honest. A Supreme Court victory just a few months ago in that regard. And we are on the cusp of another Supreme Court victory, if all the analysts are right, in our lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party in Mississippi to ensure that states don’t violate the federal Election Day statute or statutes by counting ballots that arrive late after Election Day.

And that decision from the court is due. It could be any day. It will likely be coming out next month. So if there’s anyone doing any more heavy lifting on election integrity than Judicial Watch, as I often say, I’d like to meet them. Just great work by our team. And of course, we’re only able to get this work done with your support. And it doesn’t come cheap. And I can’t tell you how the legions of patriot Americans who are Judicial Watch members who support us day after day, we, week after week, month after month, year after year, make our work so much easier because we know we’ve got their backing, that we can move forward on these cases, and we have the resources to move forward on these cases.

And there’s going to be more cases. I mean, I’ll talk about the gerrymandering issue in a little bit, but let’s say the Supreme Court, we win in the Supreme Court over these Election Day issues. Well, there’s going to be other litigation to enforce that decision. Then, of course, we’ve got other opportunities or requirements to sue. In my view, we can’t help but sue over voter roll cleanups. And there are other issues on our, you know, related to election integrity. And not enough, I don’t have enough detail to make any promises yet as to whether we can sue over them, but other election integrity controversies that we’re looking at legally.

It’s just great work by Judicial Watch. And I mean, getting 800,000 names cleaned from a state the size of Oregon is just a remarkable, remarkable development. A very important week for Judicial Watch and for America, as the Judicial Watch legal team was able to make its plea in person to the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the federal law that sets an election Day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, as the day that ballots are supposed to be received. Many states or too many states have allowed the counting or the receipt of ballots to occur days and weeks after Election Day.

And we had a court ruling in the lower courts, the Fitzgerald Court of Appeals, that found that to be unlawful. Now the Supreme Court has taken the case up and is expected to rule in June. Judicial Watch led the way in the challenges to late election ballot counting. We filed lawsuit in Illinois. We filed a lawsuit in Mississippi. Similarly, the RNC filed a lawsuit in Mississippi. So both Judicial Watch for the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and the RNC were before the court. We were also joined in court by the Solicitor General of the United States on behalf of the US Government who agrees with Judicial Watch’s analysis that counting or allowing the receipt of ballots after Election Day is contrary to to federal law.

The lawyer who made the key argument for Judicial Watch. Our clients, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, was Paul Clement. He did a wonderful job. And I can tell you, and let me give you some background, what it’s like to go into the Supreme Court and watch these arguments in person. It’s pretty intense. The justices, all of them, all nine of them, were very interested in the case. The oral argument went on for well over two hours, which is a pretty lengthy argument. And as I said, the justices were paying close attention to both the lawyer from Mississippi that was seeking to uphold the Mississippi law that was at issue that allows the counting of ballots that arrive for up to five days after Election Day.

And Paul Clement, on behalf of our client and in partnership with Judicial Watts, made an excellent presentation. And the way it looked. Well, I’ll tell you how it seemed to come out a little bit later, but let’s look to see what Paul Clement’s argument was. So what happens is the Mississippi attorney, I think, Solicitor General, or was it the Attorney General or Solicitor General? Now I’m confused. The Solicitor General, he made his argument, followed by our argument made by Paul Clement. And the argument began with a statement by Paul laying out the nature of what the issue is.

And you’ll see this clip from C Span, which incorrectly labels him as lawyer for the rnc. In fact, he was lawyer for our client, the Mississippi Libertarian Party. So let’s listen to Paul’s opening statement. Mr. Chief justice, and may it please the court. All agree that elections for federal office have to end on the day of the election specified by Congress. And all agree that you can’t have an election unless you receive ballots and there must be some deadline for ballot receipt. Nonetheless, Mississippi insists that ballots can trickle in days or even weeks after election Day.

That position is wrong as a matter of text, precedent, history, and common sense. Mississippi all but concedes that the original public meaning of election included both offering to vote and the receipt of that vote or ballot by election officials. And of course, the key distinction between voting and an election is that an election involves the combined action of voters and election officials, as this court underscored in its decision against Foster, against Love. And of course, Mississippi insists that at the time these statutes were passed, ballot receipt and the casting of the ballot were so inextricably intertwined, no one would have thought of one without the other.

That seems to me to be a damning admission. But it also ignores the advent of field and proxy voting in the Civil War and in the enormous efforts that states went to to ensure that all of the ballots, whether by proxy or by field vote, were received by Election Day. In the state’s view, all of those Herculean efforts were for naught or were entirely gratuitous. Now the state’s position actually works even worse as a matter of common sense. If somebody in Gulfport the day after the election asks, is the election over? The common sense answer is, no, it’s not.

The ballots are still coming in. And if somebody asks who won, the truthful answer is, we don’t know yet. The ballots are still coming in, and they may trickle in for weeks or months, and in fact, they may trickle in for weeks or months, with or without a postmark, in differing ways in differing states. That reality gives the lie to the idea that we have a uniform national Election Day. So a great summary of the argument, and what’s even better, you imagine the intense preparations both sides make when prepping for a Supreme Court argument of such importance.

You can’t dismiss the fact that you’ve got, generally speaking, nine pretty darn smart people with a lot of smart lawyers working for them who also bring something to the table. And I got a hand at the Justice Alito, who kind of summed up the argument in a very accessible way to pretty much any American in his commentary as to what Election Day means. Listen to Justice Alito muse on what it is Election day means. We have lots of phrases that involve two words, the last of which, the second of which is day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, George Washington’s birthday, Independence, Independence Day, birthday, and Election Day.

And they’re all particular days. So if we start with that, if I have nothing more to look at than the phrase Election Day, I think this is the day in which everything is going to take place and. Or almost everything. And then we have three points in time, 1844, 1872, 1914. And we can ask what would people. So you have a birthday, right? No one thinks that when you get greetings after the birthday, the person’s on time. That’s why it’s a late birthday greeting. Right. So kind of a brilliant insight by. Although a simple insight, but a brilliant one nevertheless.

And you know, what’s going on here is that Mississippi and those defenders of the late arrival of ballots say, well, you know, the voting takes place prior to Election Day, and that should be enough, even though the ballots aren’t received until after Election Day. And the key response to that is putting your ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting your ballot in the ballot box. And the powerful language of the Straightforward law that federal election day is the date that is set by federal law raises all sorts of other interesting issues about early voting and such.

And Justice Thomas asked our partner in this argument, Paul Clement, about that, and here’s that dialogue. How would you define the day of election? I would say that the day of the election is the day. It’s the last day in which all the ballots are cast and. And they are received into official custody. So how would you treat early voting as compared to late reception of votes? So I would say, I mean, you know, I think the best place to look for a treatment of early voting is the Kreisling decision by Judge Kleinfeld in the Ninth Circuit, because after Foster Against Love, there was a suggestion in Foster Against Love that maybe early voting is a problem.

He rejected that claim based on two things. One is the distinct history of early voting, and the second is the idea that was explicit in this court’s decision in Foster Against Love that election day is the date of consummation. So I would say under our theory, early voting is permissible largely because it has a different history. And because of this idea that the election day is the date where the election is consummate. Would you spend a few more minutes on, or at least a little bit more time on the voting? During Civil War, there was some suggestion that that’s an example of late reception of votes.

And I think in your intro, and was my thinking that it was not that proxy voting was a way to make sure that the. The vote occurred on election day as opposed to afterwards? Well, not surprisingly, Justice Thomas, you were exactly right. So proxy voting is the thing that happened in the Civil War that is most analogous to absentee voting. And the thing that is most striking is I think five states had proxy voting. Every one of those five states required the votes, the ballots to be received by election officials back home by election day. Now, that’s an incredibly inconvenient thing that was done in the Civil War to ensure the ballots were received by election day.

And under the state’s view, they didn’t need to do that. Now, it’s really no different in the context of field voting because there were like maybe a dozen states, if you’re not going to count the Confederate states, there are about a dozen states that did field voting. Again, every one of those ensured that the ballots were received into official custody by election day. And of course, most of the states went to enormous efforts to replicate the machinery of the ballot box and everything else in the field and some variation in that. But the one thing that didn’t vary at all was the ballots had to be received into official custody by election Day.

So it’s an important historical point, and it’s a fascinating issue because we didn’t have mail in balloting essentially until, or as Paul Clement highlighted a version of it, until the Civil War and immediately after the Civil War, I think it was in 1872, was the first election. Federal election day statute and, you know, other statutes similarly have set election day for first the House, then the presidency, and then the Senate, with the direct election of senators in the early part of the last century as the election day. We all know the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

And there’s really no historic record that states thought otherwise until essentially Covid, there have been exceptions, like Washington state has that 21 day rule that goes back a ways, and a state here or there, that’s an outlier. But the idea that, you know, there’s been this long tradition of states allowing counting of ballots in large numbers after election day that arrive late after election day is just ahistorical. And even though, even if it was, quote, historical, the law says otherwise. So there are all sorts of things that had gone on for a long time that were unlawful under federal law or unconstitutional that the Supreme Court says, well, you know, too bad.

So sad. Too bad, right? You got to follow the law. And then there’s the issue, as I said earlier, of whether just dropping something in the mail is the equivalent of receipt. And I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. But if you’re trying to justify, in my view, the indefensible, you pretend that dropping in the mail therefore allows you as a state to receive that ballot anytime after election day, which is in effect, what they’re saying. Because if it’s not five days, should it be 21 days, should it be 100 days? And here’s a discussion about that issue again with Paul Clement, who’s the lawyer, despite what the C SPAN graphic says for our Joint Judicial Watch clients, the Mississippi Libertarian Party.

The reason I’m focused on ballot receipt is A, it’s what’s directly at issue here, but also B, it’s the thing that to this day, every state considers indispensable. No state Washington is the one that lets 21 days go by. But no state says that you don’t have to have a receipt ballot receipt deadline at all. And under Mississippi law, it’s not. Despite what they want to tell you, the ballot is not for final when it’s submitted. The Ballot is final when it’s received by election officials within five days. And you can have all the certifications that this was before election day.

And I have it notarized. And if it comes in on the sixth business day, this is the November 11th problem. What the state does is they treat it as a nullity. And under the state statute, they direct it to be destroyed so the ballot doesn’t become final just when it’s submitted. The ballot becomes final when it is submitted. And under Mississippi law, it is received into official custody by the registrar within five business days. That’s finality under Mississippi law. And our humble submission is finality should take place on election day. Pretty simple, right? And now the three justices of the Supreme Court who were appointed by Democratic presidents, you know, took the opposition view and aggressively questioned in a way that I didn’t find persuasive at all, or even making me nervous that they had a case that would be persuasive to their fellow conservative justices.

And here’s my initial reaction outside the Supreme Court to the oral arguments. Everyone just walked out of the Supreme Court, where the Judicial Watch team was making historic legal arguments. To preserve the idea of election day. The other side wants to allow the counting of ballots that arrive after election day. Our team made the argument to the court that it’s contrary to federal law. It creates the issue of voter fraud and generally undermines voter confidence. Look, putting your ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting your ballot in the the ballot box. And federal law sets an election day, not an election month.

And we’re hopeful the Supreme Court will agree and bring back the rule of law to our elections in a way that restores confidence. So a really interesting debate. I don’t think the fact that this potential election day law raises issues about early voting is going to stop the court from saying in the least, election day means the ballots have to be received by election day. I think the early voting issue is a bit more interesting. You know, Paul made the argument that perhaps it’s legal. Others may make the argument that perhaps it’s not under the election day statute, and that may come up later, or the court may address it indirectly.

So, you know, as I’m sitting there, remember, it’s only the oral argument. So no one’s promising any vote at the oral argument. They don’t take a vote at the oral argument about how they’re going to vote. What literally happens is after the argument is over, they go back and have into their Supreme Court conference room with the nine Justices and they meet with each other and they take a vote then. And then after that, or contemporaneous with that, they start writing the decisions, either the majority or minority decisions or dissenting decisions. And I couldn’t tell whether we had the majority of the votes.

Now, I could guess that we could, but I wasn’t sure because I could count based on the questioning. And you can look at the full hearing and draw your own conclusions. This is what I love about the Supreme Court. It’s designed in many ways to be accessible to the American people. You can watch the video below. We have a full link to the C SPAN video. I think the transcript is available now. I think we can find that transcript link and provide it to you as well. So you can just read through it and you can see there are seemingly four conservative votes to uphold the notion of Election Day.

The two votes that I had questions about were Justice Chief Justice Roberts, because he didn’t really ask any questions, and then Justice Barrett, who asked tough questions of both sides. But I wasn’t quite sure where she was coming from or on what she wanted, assurance. So I walked out of the court thinking, oh, you know, I think we’re, I think things are looking good. We got at least four votes and obviously we just need one more to win. But I wasn’t prepared to say, oh, it looks like the voting is going to go our way. The funny thing is the media thought we won.

I mean, when you see these media headlines from, what is it, cnn? And there’ swhich one is that, that’s New York Times. Oh, wait, we’ll talk about that later. But there were several other stories. There’s the Associated Press or NBC News. Supreme Court Conservatives Appear Skeptical of Mail in Ballots that Arrive After Election Day. Let’s go to the other headline. Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Counting Mail in Ballots that Arrive After Election Day. So, and the other headlines I read about the hearing that I saw, these are people who don’t agree with Judicial Watch on anything and they think we’re going to win.

So I’m not going to second guess that. Right. But the next day I felt a lot more confident because I thought about the hearing because I was there watching it. And you know, it occurred to me that the three left wing justices provided no safe harbor for any sensible conservative justice to kind of vote with them. Because as you can see from the arguments, it’s either we have Election Day set by federal law, or we have chaos where there is no set Election Day. The states can choose and pick and choose when they have Election Day, essentially, or what the deadline is for mail in balloting.

And I just don’t think any of those judges or justices, even the ones who I’m not sure about, are going to go on that side. So I’m increasingly confident that we are going to win in the Supreme Court and get an historic victory that will restore the rule of law on this key area of elections to upwards of 30 states. Ballots are going to have to get there on time if things go as I suspect they will go before the Supreme Court. Now. One reason I’m in even moreone more reason to even be even more optimistic is this story in the New York Times, which I thought was pretty incredible.

And here it is, some states already preparing for a potential Supreme Court ban on late ballots, and they highlight the skepticism of the conservatives. And this is how the story opens up. Francisco Aguilar, the Secretary of State in Nevada, stepped out of the Supreme Court on Monday, where justices had just heard arguments about the legality of counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. He immediately called his top deputy. The court’s conservative majority had appeared deeply skeptical of the arguments for continuing the practice. So his message was urgent, he later said in an interview. He began listing things we need to start working on and answering.

And in the middle of midterm election season, they couldn’t wait for a decision to land, perhaps as late as June. We have to provide a roadmap for county clerks. Mr. Aguilar, a Democrat, is one of 18 top state election officials in states and territories across the country bracing for the possibility that the Supreme Court will require major changes to election law just months before the midterm elections. Part of the urgency, getting the message out to voters that late arriving ballots may no longer be counted. Such decisions could affect hundreds of thousands of voters. So boy oh boy.

New York Times says these left wing politicians in the various states that wanted to keep on counting ballots late, that arrived late, they see the writing on the wall too. According to the New York times, at least 725,000 ballots arrived in the time period after election Day. So that is a lot of ballots. And what’s the solution as these politicians are kind of prepping, which is what they’re supposed to do to be fair to them. Hey, we got to make sure that the public knows that they need to get their ballots there on time. And so there’s increased pressure to frankly vote in person and not rely on mail in balloting.

I think that should be part of the pressure as opposed to you know, making it even riskier to vote through mail in balloting. But it’s a strong indication that I’m correct in assessing that. Hey, it looks like we’re going to win before the Supreme Court. So this has been really a big week for the rule law on elections. This is the most important election law case in a generation. Kudos to Paul Clement, who argued for the Judicial Watch legal team. Kudos to the Judicial Watch legal team. Russ Nobile, Bob Popper, Eric Lee Polar Finides, who leads the entire legal team here at Judicial Watch.

And kudos to you, dear Judicial Watch supporter, because we would not be here before the Supreme Court making these arguments that will go down in history in terms of preserving the very idea of Election Day. It looks like we’re on the cusp of victory. Of course, the fat lady has not sung yet. So pray that our hopes are well founded and are vindicated when the ruling comes out, likely in mid June. But it looks like we’re going to have a significant uplift, right, for election integrity, so that, you know, allowing ballots to come in after Election Day and still be counted, that will be no more.

If things go as it’s suggested, they will go after this historic Supreme Court argument. And I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, the only reason we’re here at this moment on the cusp of this victory is because of Judicial Watch’s heavy lifting. We were taking the lead on this Election Day fight with our litigation, with our legal strategy, with our legal theories, and everyone else followed our lead. And so we’re pleased the RNC stepped up as well, because the RNC used to kind of be AWOL on some of these election integrity issues. And so they played a role here.

And kudos to them for standing. It’s not because they’re, quote, Republicans. It’s because they’re standing with the rule of law. Heck, early. You know, getting the ballots there on time can impact Republicans, too. It will impact Democrats, rural voters. You know, the New York Times points out rural voters, you know, face more impacts with election delay or mail and ballot delays, and they tend to be Republican. But in Virginia, 73% of the ballots that arrived late in the last election went to the Democrat. So it cuts both ways. This is a nonpartisan issue. And I want to know why aren’t Democrats standing with us to uphold federal law, that Election Day means Election Day? And of course, the Trump administration, they’re standing with this as well.

President Trump had an executive order early on, and the Solicitor General of the United States filed an amicus brief, an important amicus brief. He made argument there on Monday or, you know, before the Supreme Court recently as well. He was there with Paul Clement arguing for our side. So it’s a team effort. But the biggest part of the team are you dear supporters, because we wouldn’t be here without you. None of this is free. You know, this litigation costs money. The education efforts around it costs money. And the only reason we’re able to do it is because we receive voluntary donations from our members, charitable donations.

So I encourage you to continue to support our work because I tell you, even if we win, there’s still going to be battles. And there are other election integrity battles that are underway right now with Judicial Watch and cleaning up the election rolls. We’ve cleaned 6 million names from the rolls thus far. There are 20 plus million more to be cleaned. And if, depending on how the ruling comes down, there may be additional litigation to ensure that the sanctity of Election Day is upheld under the law. But what a great day for Judicial Watch and the American people in the sense that it looks like victory may be at hand.

Knocking on wood on upholding the notion of Election day and balloting, making sure that the ballots are supposed to get there on Election Day if they’re to be counted. I mean, it’s to me a rather obvious issue, right? Election Day means what it means. You know, the ballot box closes on Election Day. And I think the Supreme Court’s been persuaded by Judicial Watch’s legal argument and it necessary, you know, it didn’t mean it was going to go our way. And I think it was our, our wonderful legal argument, ably and expertly presented by Paul Clement, that secured to the degree we do get a victory, it will be because of the excellent legal work by the Judicial Watch team.

So I’m taking credit for it. I’m president of Judicial Watch, but as an American, I’m thankful for our work, that’s for sure. You’re not going to believe what we just found. So you may have heard about the secret rooms and the burn bags and such that Dan Bongino, who was then FBI Deputy Director, and Cash Patel have disclosed. These were files that supposedly were hidden from the leadership and designed to be hidden from the leadership by the deep State, the Biden and Obama, FBI, the anti Trumpers, the Jack Smith people and all of that. And Dan disclosed last year material about or information about what they found.

We actually linked to this in the, in the lawsuit. We wanted the information about what Dan is about to say here on Fox News or said on Fox News back in looks like May of last year, stuff that’s coming out. But does he still have loyalists in the building? Because when I hear the FBI director saying, you guys are finding boxes that are hidden. Okay, how does that happen in the bureau? Well, we were there a couple of weeks and luckily there were a lot of people up there who grabbed us by the arm the minute we came in and said, thank you for being here, you know, we need to talk.

There are people there who are really horrified at what happened. And there was a room and we found stuff, a lot of stuff, a hidden room. I wouldn’t call it hidden, but hidden from us at least and not mentioned to us. And then we found stuff in there and a lot of it’s from the Comey era and we are working our damnedest right now to declassify. And just so you know, because I get the public, I totally understand people saying, well, do it now. The process is not all the information is ours to declassify some as other intelligence agencies.

It’s not. We literally can’t do it. Once that gets done and that gets out there and you read some of the stuff we found that by the way, was not processed through the normal procedure. Digitizing it, putting in FBI records. We found it in bags hiding under Jim Comey. Quickly, you’re going to be stuck. So Judicial Watch thought, oh, isn’t that interesting. So our team filed a Freedom of Information act request, literally just asking for the records. Dan Bongino referred there asking for the records. Kash Patel was referencing the boxes and things. And the FBI stalled, installed, installed.

But they finally confirmed to Judicial Watch, yes, there are files there. And not only there are files, but there are a lot of files. One point upwards of 1.9 million records have been found in that secret room that Dan Bongino disclosed records about Jack Smith and other anti Trump investigations and who knows what else. Here it is in black and white. And let’s go to the, let’s go to the this may date me. Let’s go to the videotaping for now. I’m not going to the videotaping if I’m going to the Internet here. So here you see our press Release.

Lawsuit uncovers FBI found up to 1.9 million Jack Smith and other records in hidden room. And I’ll read you this section. You probably can’t see it, so I’ll just read it to you. So they explained the documents were found in a skip. So at least they were kept in a secret facility, meaning a facility or room that has protections in terms of securing classified information. But as Dan Bongino disclosed, it was, they were, it was in a room designed to be hidden from the new incoming leadership. You have to remember over in the FBI they have maybe five or six, I literally don’t know how many.

But it’s a scary small number of people that are hired as quote, politicals. You’ve got the FBI director who’s appointed by the President, Dan Bongino even, I don’t think he was even technically a political appointment. I think he was a civil servant who was hired. So there are no typical political, few typical political appointments. It’s all just deep staters or to be fair to some who are trying to do their work, just civil service employees or FBI agents, etc. So they found their records and they told Judicial Watch in the court. So this is a court filing.

It was in a. I think it was in a joint status report filed in our lawsuit for these records. So this is the government talking in this part of the joint status report for item one, Plaintiff seek all documents referenced by Deputy Director Dan Bongino concerning a room located in FBI headquarters. So you just saw the video. The room references a sensitive Compartmented information facility which is the shorthand for that is scif, the acronym that houses records related to both closed and open investigations. The FBI continues to assess the contents of the room and the total volume of records in the room.

The FBI continues to determine what records, if any, are, are responsive to the request. Until all documents have been digitized and reviewed. The defendant, the FBI Justice Department cannot identify the anticipated number of documents responsive to the request or the anticipated dates for release of the requested documents. The FBI can provide the following update about the status of the process. Specifically, the FBI has assessed that the room presently contains the following records that require digitization, meaning I guess they get either moved over to an unsecure system digitally or if they’re printed records, they have to be scanned before they can be scoped for responsiveness and process for production.

Several five drawer filing cabinets, safes that the FBI estimates to include approximately between 950,000. There you have between 950,019 1.9 million pages which may fluctuate depending on whether there is material on both the front and back of the pages. So I guess they are. There are actual. I just noticed that they’re actual pages, they’re hard copies. So they literally kept the paper files in that secret area away from. As Dan alleged leadership for, I think, nefarious purposes. So they’re going to need at least 10 to 12 months to even process the records, meaning digitize them and review them for potential release.

So what are the records about? The records appear to include the following. You can see on the screen here, legacy files. These records consist of older legacy records, the majority of which refer to two closed historical investigations. These records belong to the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General and prior to release must be sent to the DOJ OIG for consultation on its equities in the records. I mean, this is like absurdity piled upon absurdity. The doj. So these are DOJ files, and the DOJ is going to send DOJ files to another DOJ agency. It’s like the DOJ is going to send files to itself.

So we can be told when we get the records. I mean, it’s outrageous enough when they use, oh, these could be CIA records, or these could be Department of Transportation records. We’re going to send them over there and wait forever and a day before we release them because it’s, you know, we have no control over them. I mean, it’s a way basically to ditch records effectively, because you can’t. The time frame is incredibly long, but I get distracted. Other files, these records consist of more record, more recent records related to various investigations, including, for example, active investigations and prior special counsel investigative records, many of which are likely to require consultation with other government agencies prior to release.

So these are Jack Smith records. They’re probably Mueller records, they’re probably Hillary records, they’re probably Russiagate records, They’re probably Durham records. Given the quantity of records, it’s multiple cases, legacy cases. I don’t know what that means, how far back it goes, I don’t know. Let’s go back to Kennedy. I mean, I say that half jokingly, but I have no way of knowing that. And they may not either because they haven’t looked at them long. So when I see numbers like 1.9 million records that have been hidden, I think. What do I think of. I think of the Epstein records, right? There were three and a half million records that were released.

I mean, this is comparable, and dare I say it, I think they’re probably more important than the Epstein records, given the lawfare against Trump that could have destroyed our republic, if indeed these records cover it. This is an astonishing piece of information from the Justice Department and the FBI. It would not have come out but for Judicial Watches, heavy lifting in federal court. You know, you see these news stories and there’s little to no follow up. The follow up from Congress is easily thwarted and ignored. It’s a political back and forth. I’m not saying Congress is wrong to ask the questions, but it’s relatively ham.

It’s relatively hapless in its ability to get the records, or at least all of them. And the value of the FOIA cases that Judicial Watch brings, we can’t necessarily get all the records either, but there’s a process for getting the records in a more timely way and understanding what’s being withheld and the ability to fight and challenge them in a way that’s much more direct than Congress. And in the best of circumstances, you have Congress asking for records, you have Judicial Watch asking for records, and then you see, what did Congress get? What did the Judicial Watch get? What did Congress get that Judicial Watch didn’t? And what did Judicial Watch get that the Congress didn’t? And that’s often what happens.

And often what happens is Judicial Watch gets all sorts of records that Congress doesn’t get. And it’s infuriating. And just so you know, over time, in recent years, Congress has noticed this. They say, Judicial Watch gets these records and Congress isn’t. We’re done with it. Let’s push harder. So our work has encouraged Congress to do more. It’s not enough, but to do more in terms of getting access to records. So you could be sure that our friends in Senator Grassley’s office and Senator Johnson’s office and Jim Jordan’s office and, and Congressman Comer’s office are going to look at this press release next week, say, wow, 1.9 million records.

We haven’t gotten half. I think they’ve gotten maybe 40,000 records at most. And I don’t even know those records came from that secret room. So again, the headline is the FBI admitted there was a secret room hidden from FBI leadership appointed by President of the United States that contains essentially secret records. 1.9 million pages, potentially on issues that are quite sensitive, related to special Counsel investigations and Office of Inspector General investigations and who knows what else. I mean, this is like why it’s crazy to work at Judicial Watch because we’re prepping for a Supreme Court hearing of historic proportions.

And concurrently, we get this disclosure from the FBI and Justice Department in a joint status report, which is usually, they’re pretty, I shouldn’t say boring, but they rarely have significant disclosures. This court filing that says they’ve been hiding 1.9 million records from the American people, it’s just crazy town sometimes here at Judicial Watch because of all the work that we’re doing. And it just comes in, boom, boom, boom of disclosure after disclosure, evidence of corruption after evidence of corruption as we continue our cases to save our elections, to preserve transparency and protect our constitutional republic. This is an astonishing and troubling revelation.

I note in our press release, the FBI and Justice Department must go all out to release the nearly 2 million secret FBI DOJ files on the lawfare against Trump and whatever else the Obama and Biden gangs want the American people to know about. And I have no doubt, as I said, that these records are far more important than the Epstein files. Now, you know, as Congress passed a law requiring the release of the Epstein files, so the FBI and Justice Department had to go to town, right? And they had hundreds of people looking through millions of records.

I think they should take the same approach here, and it shouldn’t take a law. In fact, there already is a law. It’s called foia. And they should take it seriously, given the nature of the records that are likely here, and review them as quickly as humanly possible. When did we file this lawsuit? Well, I’m sure we asked for the records last year. So we asked for the records in the summer of last year. We filed the lawsuit. I think it was in November, and now it’s March, and we still don’t have any records. And they want us to wait another year.

Do you think that’s acceptable? If you don’t, you know who you should call? Call Pam Bondi. Call Kash Patel. Remember what I said about petitioning your government. Ask them to, hey, give these records to the Judicial Watch of the American people. These could be the keys to these scandals. Heck, they’re not prosecuting anyone. The least they can do is release records on the corruption. This is just great work by Judicial Watch. And you know, I was looking at the release and at the end of the release, sometimes we put, at, let’s say we do a press release on topic X, we put the material in the press release and at the end we say, by the way, on topic X and related issues, this is also what we’re doing.

And so when you look at that in our Release, you’ll see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. At least eight major cases and disclosures that Judicial Watch has filed and been part of the release of FISA warrants. The illegal lying FISA warrants. We exposed them, we got them public. First time ever FISA warrant applications have been made public thanks to Judicial Watch litigation. We’ve been suing for Hunter Biden records, shady FBI records, all the lawfare records. And we’ve been exposing so much of what we know about the abuses targeting Trump and American citizens. And I suspect we’ve hit the mother lode here with the 1.9 million records.

Potentially could be a little less or it could be a little more, depending on what goes on that we’re in this secret room. Really incredible development. And I do give credit to the Justice Department and FBI for being forthcoming in this regard. I mean, it wouldn’t be out of the realm possibility that they could come up with reasons not even to tell us the number. I mean, they have all sorts of reasons for not telling you information. They have all sorts of excuses, oh, we can’t tell you the number. We can’t tell you what it’s about.

So I don’t want to. I want them to do more. But I do applaud the transparency in this disclosure, however troubling it is, because it could have gone the other way. We may have been kept in the dark by a prior administration, even under a Republican president. I mean, during the Trump, first Trump administration, it was a disaster in terms of transparency. The DOJ was in some ways worse than Obama in terms of transparency. So very, very interesting development, to put it mildly. Another court hearing took place in a key Judicial Watch piece of litigation. It took place here in Washington, D.C.

before Judge Mehta, who is a U.S. district Court judge. I think he’s been on the bench a while now. I think he was appointed by President Obama. But we’ve got this case that’s been going on for five years. We sued on behalf of Open the Books. You may have heard about Open the Books. They publish government data and budgetary data, basic information about what the government’s spending on what. It’s just great work. Just great work. So they’re really a perfect group for Judicial Watch to work with because they want information about what the government’s spending and.

And we want the transparency, too. And so we represented them in a specific case, trying to get records about royalty payments to government employees at NIH for inventions they’d been involved in. Now, I’m going to summarize what the issue is here generally. So folks like Dr. Fauci and other experts at NIH sometimes invent working for the government. New vaccines, new medications, new. New inventions generally. And the NIH tries to license those inventions for use because what good is it to have a development to help people if other people aren’t being helped? If there’s no way of getting it out to the marketplace.

And what they do is they work with outside companies to license these inventions. They get licensing fees once those deals are set up. And a portion of those fees go to the inventors, and it’s a relatively modest portion when you look into it. And it doesn’t mean it’s not an important issue to talk about. But the numbers are limited, I think, to, in theory, $150,000 a year. That’s the total number of license fees that any NIH researcher can get. So in the greater schemes of things, is it a huge amount of money? No. But when you have the intersection of government employees with private sector companies, there’s opportunities for conflicts of interest and other ethics issues that pop up, which is why we want full disclosure about who and how much.

Who’s getting royalty fees and how much, like Dr. Fauci gets royalty fees. We don’t know how much. And I think he said. He said, I don’t object to releasing it, but the government objects to releasing it. So we’ve been in this case, it’s already covered and exposed pretty much everything you know about the issue. Senator Rand Paul’s been big on this issue, and you may have seen reports about it with open the books. And right now, their government’s taking the position that if they release the specific license fees that people get the royalties, then somehow we’ll be able to walk back and figure out what the license fees generally are that are being paid to the government.

And that information is supposedly confidential because it’s government business. It’s business information that’s confidential, which I don’t buy, but presumably, let’s say that’s the case. First of all, it’s impossible to walk back the numbers, practically speaking. So it’s not true. But Judge Mado wanted to have a hearing on it to figure out, well, what’s going on here? Is it true? What’s the thinking here? And so we had a hearing on just a few days ago. I think it was Tuesday. Was it Tuesday, Colby? I forget. And it was really something else. You know, I knew the government’s thinking was kind of washed, was completely at odds with reality or with logic.

But there was a witness for the government who’s a senior official at NIH who’s involved in contracting issues. And she told the court, she said, look, I took two licenses, two royalty payments, or a series of royalty payments, single royalty payments. And I easily walked it back to the actual licensing fee, which is supposed to be secret. Now, the only way she was able to do that supposedly was because she knew what the licensing fee was, so she could literally check her work. If you don’t know what the licensing fee is, you’re going to be guessing necessarily whether you got it right or not, assuming you followed her logic.

But she goes up and she testifies that she did this. And then our lawyer said, well, wait, did you see your math is wrong? So the expert goes up and says how easy it is to get to point C from point A, and the math from A to B to C is wrong. It was just an incredible, frankly, it was just incredible to see. And I was sitting there shaking my head and I’m sitting watching in the court audience, and, you know, the person seemed perfectly nice, but she got the math wrong and her testimony to me was not credible at all as a result.

And she’s the expert for the government, she testified at least a half a dozen times. I’m no expert, so I didn’t know what she was going to. I didn’t know what value she was to the court who’s trying to figure out whether or not to give us access to this information. And then a FOIA officer for NIH testified and, you know, she wasn’t all that much reassuring in terms of her knowledge of the way the FOIA process worked and such. And so I raised these issues because it’s important to know that Judicial Watch doesn’t just sue in court, but we’re having to fight in court, literally fight in court against Robert Kennedy’s nih.

I mean, it’s been years we’ve been asking about these records. And you would think Robert Kennedy, given his skepticism of some of the public health things and trying to restore, excuse me, restore confidence in the public, in nih, the way it operates. There’s no, you know, people think people are getting money on the side. Well, how is it you restore confidence? Well, you’re transparent about what money they get. I mean, the NIH official who testified said the number of people who get $150,000 in NIH as a result of royalty fees annually, she says it may be 20 or 30 people.

And it may be no big deal, or it may be a big deal, but we don’t know the detail who is getting the money. So we had our lawyers there. You know, we had three lawyers there. We had our witness, our witness from Open the Books client, and then the government had three or four lawyers, plus two federal employee witnesses. So your government, under Robert Kennedy’s Health and Human Services, just spent a boatload of Money fighting Judicial Watch in court to deny us basic information about who is getting royalty fees and how much. So that’s kind of my thumbnails.

I know it’s not a thumbnail, but my summary of the battle we had in court earlier this week. I want to make sure there’s nothing interesting I’m missing to help you better understand it. So this is the reason we had the hearing. He ordered the hearing after finding a genuine dispute material fact regarding the NIH’s claim that releasing the royalty payments made to individual employees would reveal confidential commercial information from third parties, licensing agreements or patents. The NIH argues that the outsiders could allegedly back calculate confidential royalty rates and payments made by licensees if the amount paid to the government inventors was disclosed.

And as I discussed, the witness got up there and she didn’t show that was the case. In fact, she highlighted that it would be nearly impossible to do so. We argue that disclosing the amounts paid to government employees does not reveal confidential commercial information and is required under foia, the Freedom of Information Act. The watchdog groups contend that NIH’s theory is speculative and improperly used to concealed to conceal how much taxpayer funded government employees receive in royalty income. This is compensation. So I’m calling them licensing fees or royalty fees. It’s compensation. I mean, they only get the royalty fees through the sufferance of the government.

It’s a compensation amount. It’s literally compensation. And NIH doesn’t want us to know. HHS and the Justice Department doesn’t want us to know what the full compensation is of NIH employees. And as I said, these numbers are not huge individually. It just doesn’t make any sense. They would be huge individually. Unless something else is happening, which I’ll tell you about later. Now it’s billions to the government because who gets the biggest cut of the NIH inventions? The nih. Your tax dollars. Right. But they’re trying to provide some incentive and recognition of the, you know, the expert NIH employees, doctors, scientists, et cetera, who are making these inventions.

In earlier rulings in the case, Judge Mehta rejected the NIH’s effort to broadly shield the royalty programs using employee privacy claims, writing that federal government employees have a limited privacy interest and information concerning their compensation. So this is what, this is the compensation. So Fauci’s name shows up a lot in these documents. He’s the most well known individual here. So in the end this is about, why can’t we know how much Fauci was making from royalty payments in nih? When he was working there. Why? And the court also emphasized a strong public interest in disclosure, noting that transparency regarding royalty payments could help the public assess whether inventors financial interest in licenses, excuse me, in licensed technologies, could potentially bias the design, conduct or reporting of clinical research.

Mehta further concluded that the public interest in understanding these financial arrangements is significant, particularly when government scientists involved in taxpayer funded biomedical research may receive payments tied to the commercialization of these technologies. I highlighted why there’s useful public interest reasons for allowing these royalty programs to take place. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist or an NIH scientist to recognize the negative consequences of such programs. It could direct, you know, for instance, if a scientist sees well, the money’s in topic A or invention A, even though the public health impact is limited, but the money is more likely there, that might direct their efforts as opposed to invention B.

That could save a whole bunch of people. But there isn’t the big money involved with it. I mean, we could go through all scenarios about how it could distort the process. And this isn’t a free market. So where the market decides this is government money that’s being deployed as a result of where these inventors, where these scientists choose to focus their research and development. It’s a really interesting issue. And the more you know, the better it’s your money issue here. I mean, NIH could take the position no one gets the royalty here. You’re working for us.

The public owns everything you invent. And to a degree there’s any money coming in, it’s coming in to help fund more inventions and more work here at nih. Or maybe NIH should get no money at all. Why? You know, the government did it in the public interest. Bid it out to a company and that’s the end of the relationship. Or you could take the more I would say principled position and say why is the NIH engaged in research at all? But just private companies do it. And there’d be no issue in who gets paid in the public from the public payroll in what essentially is work designed to bolster the bottom line of corporations who benefit from the licenses.

So it’s a real interesting case, but it’s frustrating that we’re fighting this administration over it. Again, we’ve been fighting it for five years. Over 2.685 billion was paid to NIH institutes or scientists, of which more than 1 billion was marked for investors, inventors. Excuse me. So those royalty payments total up over time to a lot of money. That was just for the period 2010 to 2023. So I’m wondering if the stated limit is what it is and so are our clients. Open the books. So they started asking questions about that issue subsequently because as I said, there are these annual statutory limits of supposedly 150,000.

But it looks like there may be ways to evade that limit by rolling over royalty payments and just building and building and building them. And the testimony last week or this week suggests that that’s not the case. But we wanted to test it by asking for records about these royalty payments or overpayments exceeding or payments exceeding 150 supposedly. If they get more than 150 in royalty licensing fees, the excess over 150 supposedly just goes to the government. Well, we think something else might be going on. So we asked for the records, we got the proverbial hand to the face and so we sued.

So, you know, I know we talk a lot about COVID and the accountability and the concerns about the public health issues and conflicts of interest and such and everyone else wants to forget about it, but Judicial Watch just doesn’t forget. And of course one of the reasons we don’t forget is because we never get all the documents that were due. So we’re stuck litigating them for years and years trying to get this core information about the way NIH operates. Like I said, royalty payments to NIH employees, maybe a non scandal, but the COVID up of the amounts of those employees that we’ve been fighting in court, including in a very expensive court battle just this week with a half a dozen lawyers plus arguing on your dime, that is a scandal.

And the fact that we can’t get the numbers, maybe there is something to hide. That’s what I conclude. Often if you can’t follow the law and come up with silly excuses to prevent public transparency, the first question I have is why are you hiding this? What are you concerned about? So we have to file a brief the middle of next month on this evidentiary case, of this evidentiary hearing. And then presumably Judge Mehta will decide shortly thereafter whether FOIA law requires the disclosure of this information to the American people through this Judicial Watch litigation on behalf of Open the books.

Open the books. That’s the least we can expect from our government. So I’ll let you know as things develop. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below.
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