➡ The text discusses Judicial Watch’s ongoing lawsuit against the Congress, specifically U.S. Capitol Police for access to information related to the January 6th incidents. Despite certain exceptions to the Freedom of Information Act, the text states that Congress argued sovereign immunity and the lack of public interest, among others, to oppose the release of the sought-after information. Nancy Pelosi and Speaker McCarthy allegedly didn’t yield any changes of stance, maintaining the records, particularly security-related material, can’t be disclosed.
➡ Judicial Watch’s lawsuit requesting the release of over 14,000 hours of video footage and a series of emails concerning the events of January 6 has been met with resistance from both Democratic and Republican parties, asserting exemption due to security concerns. Despite strong opposition and chances of the lawsuit’s dismissal, Judicial Watch continues to advocate for public access to this information.

You literally had the Biden Justice Department working with the McCarthy Congress to oppose Judicial Watches quest for the Full Truth on January 6. One of our key lawsuits has been against Congress. Yes, Congress. Specifically the US. Capitol Police. We had sued for records the January 6 videos. We want them. We want emails of the police board in and around January 6. And when we first sued, and the suit has been going on for it’s at least two years.

I’m looking at the case number. It says 21. So that’s an indication. It was filed in the year 2021. It’s been going on for some time. And of course, Nancy Pelosi’s Congress said, no, we can’t have anything under law. Now, Congress isn’t covered by the Freedom of Information Act. That law only applies to the executive branch agencies, not even to the White House, just the executive branch agencies like Department of justice and Homeland Security and agencies like that.

But Congress is exempt from FOIA, but we allege they’re not exempt from the common law right that citizens have to access to information about what the government’s up to. And so we sued under that for these January 6 videos. Now, in response, Nancy Pelosi argued three things. They argued sovereign immunity, which means that Congress has to kind of give permission to sue in these circumstances, allow themselves to be sued in these circumstances, and they didn’t.

So therefore, they’re immune from the lawsuit as a sovereign. I think that’s the best way I can put it. It may not make sense to you, but that’s the reality of it. They have, quote, sovereign immunity from this litigation. But even if they don’t, they allege that the records aren’t public records as defined by the common law. And even if they were, the public interest in getting them isn’t good enough to warrant their release.

So that’s the Pelosi congress. Did it change when Speaker McCarthy came in. Now, the legal position of Congress or the police board is guided in part by McCarthy because he shares leadership or oversight indirectly through appointees with the leader of the Senate, in this case, Schumer and McCarthy. There’s no evidence the position changed under McCarthy because they’re still fighting us. In fact, they became even more aggressive in fighting us and expanded this argument to suggest that there’s no way any of this are public records because it’s all security information and exempt from disclosure under law.

So every email, more or less is in a public record, but more importantly, every video is in a public record because every second of every minute of every of those 14,000 hours of videos is security information that can’t be disclosed to the American people. So the McCarthy Congress filed that brief, and it was one of McCarthy’s last, I would say last acts as speaker, which was a brazen act of secrecy and contempt for the right to know for the American people, because that filing happened a week or two before he was well fired as speaker by his colleagues in Congress.

But what was interesting about this case is the fact that we had to argue about the emails. And some emails we kind of said, well, it doesn’t look like under the law we can get them based on the government’s descriptions of what they are. But other emails, we didn’t have enough information to know whether or not we’d be able to get them. And the government’s essentially saying or the Capitol Police are saying, well, they don’t document final government decisions or government decisions or policies or something.

So they’re not public records in the traditional sense that would allow you common law right of public access. So they’re basically saying that the records aren’t important enough for us to get to them, but the court required them to give us a better description of them so we could figure out whether what they were saying about them was true or not. But we can’t get them, but they have to describe them better.

And that resulted in the lawyer for the US. Capitol Police filing a declaration, which is a document filed in the court under oath describing these emails. And the emails are shocking as described. Well, they’re not shocking to those of you who’ve been following the Judicial Watch in these January 6 issues pretty closely because they show that the officials were aware of the potential for a significant disturbance on January 6.

So we see this from the description of the emails. We’re not even getting a view of the emails themselves. S after an August 15, 2023 hearing in which US. District Judge Anna C. Reyes ordered the Capitol Police to provide Judicial Watch more detailed descriptions of certain emails that had been withheld, the US. Capitol Police filed a seven page second declaration. They had already filed a declaration trying to persuade the court to keep them away from us, which describes the email discussions of evacuations and relocations of people from certain buildings, arrests, and other security matters.

The Capital Police describe a set of what they call Situational Security Update emails as follows I’m going to go through because the media is not going to tell you about this. Only Judicia Watch A was able to extract this information through this process, and then we’ll actually tell you what we found, even though the media has access to this, because we put it out in a press release.

Have you seen reports in it? No, of course not. And this is a quote from the declaration a January 3, 2021 email with attachment from the USCP US. Capitol Police deputy chief to a board member. A board member. So the board is the now I forget what the name of the board is. Is it this Capitol Police board? I think that’s what it is. And that has the appointees.

It’s the architect of the US. Capitol, which is a presidential appointee, and the Sergeant of arms for the Senate, which is obviously a Schumer appointee, and the Sergeant of arms for the House, which is a McCarthy appointee. I think it’s just the three of them and maybe the police chief who is a hire is on that board as well. So they supposedly govern the Capitol Police. So a January 3, 2021 email with attachment from the US capitol Police Deputy Chief to a board member and others at US capitol Police in Congress, providing a detailed special event assessment of anticipated protest activity in advance of the January 6, 2021 joint session at Congress.

The attached document is marked on each page, quote, for official use only. Law enforcement, sensitive, and others at USCP ending Congress. Who in Congress got those emails? What did they know and when? On January well, we know when on January 3. A January 5 email with map attachment from the Chief to two board members detailing a proposed bike rack security perimeter for January 6, 2021 and proposing further discussion.

So that bike rack perimeter, you may recall from some of the January 6 videos of some of the protesters outside the Capitol grounds, or at least the area where the security was set up. Those were bike racks, typically. You may have seen how easily they were overcome because of the lack of security there as a result of poor decision making by the leadership of the US Capitol Police Nancy Pelosi, and by the way, Mitch McConnell, who then was the Senate Majority Leader, responsible for this.

Another email dated January 5 detailing a proposed security perimeter for January 6. A January 5 email with social media posts and map attachments from the deputy chief to a board member and others, again in Congress and at the US Capitol Police reporting, quote, a significant uptick in new visitors to a historical website containing information on Capitol system tunnels. The deputy chief described proposed attempts by unauthorized individuals to block members of Congress from entering the Capitol building through tunnels or otherwise.

So they were worried about that the day before January 6. And still nothing seemingly was done to secure the Capitol better. A January 5 email from the Deputy chief to a board member and others at USCP and in Congress. Again. Who in Congress? We don’t know because McCarthy is hiding this from us. So Pelosi first hid this from us, and now McCarthy doubled down on the secrecy instead of just releasing this and just waiving these privileges that aren’t necessary for the functioning of the police department, they could have given us these emails, but they don’t want to.

This email alerting them to an online website soliciting information on high level government officials and their expected whereabouts on January 6, and linking to the website’s article entitled Why the Second American Revolution Starts January 6. Boy, that sounds like a warning. Something big is coming, right? A January 6 email from the Chief of the Police to board members and others at the US. Capitol Police and in Congress.

Again, they won’t tell us relaying that the President had completed a speech, and that means President Trump at the time at the Ellipse, and that a large group was preparing to approach the Capitol. Now, we had uncovered in other documents that they knew tens of thousands were coming days and days beforehand. They didn’t have adequate security. A series of four emails dated January 6 from the deputy chief to a board members and others at the US.

Capitol Police and Congress, providing four updates throughout the course of the day. There three updates contain intelligence assessments, information on events, coordination with other law enforcement agencies, crowd estimates, scheduling of high level government officials, threat and incident reports, medical responses, and officer deployment status. Boy, I’d love to see those emails, but they don’t want to give any of that to us. A January 7 email the day after with a photo attachment providing an update on the arrests and subsequent charging of an armed individual found in a suspicious vehicle on January 6, 2021.

I think I remember that. I think he was arrested on the grounds. And if I recall, they found his video. I mean, his vehicle parked a block or two away, and it had some weapons in it. And then there were updates on police personnel issues that they also refused to give us as well. On September 29, this is the McCarthy Congress, the Capitol Police filed a motion to dismiss Judicial Watch’s common law right of access lawsuit that asked for over 14,000 hours of video footage, arguing that the US capitol Police has a sovereign immunity exemption from lawsuits asserting the common law right of access to public information.

That’s Speaker McCarthy’s position. You have no rights to this information at all. The latest filing goes further than prior Pelosi Congress secrecy arguments in this litigation by newly asserting, even if a lawsuit were allowed to go forward, all January 6 videos and emails would be exempt from disclosure as security information. It is urgent that the January 6 videos and related US. Capitol Police emails be released to the American people.

I would hope the next House Speaker takes a different approach than Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy and affirms the public’s right to know and stops working with the Biden Justice Department to hide the January 6 evidence. I told you about a hearing we had a month or two ago. I guess it was shortly before these filings were made. When was the hearing? I just said when the hearing was August, back in August.

So I’m there as client. Michael Pikesha was there as our attorney, senior attorney. I think we have a picture of Michael in another case. And sitting across at the other table were three Justice Department attorneys and the lawyer for the Capitol Police. So you literally had the Biden Justice Department working with the McCarthy Congress to oppose judicial watch’s quest for the full truth on January 6, if that’s not an indictment of the way this town works.

And they say they argue with each other on the same side when it comes to government secrecy, republicans and Democrats often are on the same side as each other. This is only one of many lawsuits we have on January 6, but we’re not giving up on it. And I don’t know if we’re ever going to get any of these videos. I mean, these exemptions the government is asserting, the police are asserting here.

They’re tough to overcome in a court. And I don’t think this judge in particular is terribly interested in our arguments and the public’s interest and disclosure. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t know if she’s going to rule in our favor. So it’s going to be tough. But what’s interesting about it is how we’re even able to get information, even as they say no to us. So we have these new emails that suggest that there’s a lot more to be found and understood about January 6.

We know they’re there because they were described to us, right? So I’m hoping, as I said in the statement, that the new speaker reverses course and just releases this material. Now. They say, well, there’s security information and maybe there’s a video somehow that reveals like a secret passageway they don’t want anyone to see. We’re not arguing over that. We’re like, okay, that’s fine, if that’s what you say and we have no reason to disbelieve you, that’s fine.

But they know what we want and they know what would be necessary for transparency on January 6, and they have zero interest in complying with it. And I want to remind you that we’re not fighting Democrats on this. We’re fighting Republicans. Or actually, in this case, both. This is why you need an independent group like Judicial Watch, because the parties, they control Congress or they control the presidency.

They’re often going at each other for political reasons, but oftentimes don’t go after each other and stand with each other against the public. On transparency issues and government corruption issues, we see that time and time again. I could go on transparency, on impeachment, on I mean, think of all the Republicans explicitly and silently rooting for the abuse of the civil rights of Donald Trump and election interference by Democrats.

I mean, it’s some people call it the uniparty. You betch it is. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below. WAM. .