In my experience, the term “BOLO” is a law enforcement term short for “be on the lookout” for criminals and suspects on the run.  But for the Obama IRS, BOLO meant, literally, “be on the lookout” for citizen groups who might be opposed to the Obama agenda.

Here are the facts as we know them today.

First, we know that the “independent” IRS purposely stonewalled the approval of non-profit applications from “Tea Party” and other conservative groups that were seeking tax exempt status. As reported by CNN:

Among the criteria used by IRS officials to flag applications was a “Be On the Look Out” list, or a BOLO, which was discontinued in 2012, according to the report. The criteria on the BOLO included:

• Whether “Tea Party,” “Patriots” or “9/12 Project” was referenced in the case file.

• Whether the issues outlined in the application included government spending, government debt or taxes.

• Whether there was advocating or lobbying to “make America a better place to live.”

• Whether a statement in the case file criticized how the country is being run.

• Whether it advocated education about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And how bad was the stonewalling? Epic. Over the course of 27 months, not a single Tea Party type organization received tax exempt status. This was no political witch hunt, says the IRS. So why is it that liberal groups had their applications approved in as little as nine months?

And it was not simply a matter of lengthy bureaucratic delays. Conservative groups were subjected to an unprecedented amount of scrutiny, draining both time and resources. Politico explains:

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

They were asking for a “U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” one conservative organization the Waco Tea Party told Politico.

We also know that the IRS targeted conservative donors with painful audits. For example, consider the case of Frank VanderSloot, who made a sizable donation to a Romney-connected organization. Shortly thereafter, after an opposition research firm dug through Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records, the IRS subjected the conservative donor to three audits in four months. Mr. VanderSloot had never been audited previously and now faces $80,000 in legal fees.

The IRS also reportedly “leaked” confidential tax information on conservative benefactors, such as Charles and David Koch, of Koch Industries, who are important donors to a number of constitutional government groups. And they did the same to conservative organizations as well.  For example, as reported by Breitbart.com, one of Obama’s campaign co-chairmen leaked the tax records of our pro-traditional marriage friends at the National Organization of Marriage to a homosexual activist who also happened to be an Obama campaign supporter.  There were also illegal leaks of taxpayer information (of conservatives) to the leftist publication Pro Publica.

And what was the purpose of this all-out assault? Was this simply a case of retribution against enemies? No, this was much bigger than political payback. This was a systemic, and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement, the most organic and powerful political movement in recent memory, during election season. This was about campaign politics.

This is a scandal for the ages.  Reports are that nearly 500 groups were targeted.  The Obama IRS jihad against conservatives had the effect of suppressing the First Amendment-protected activity of virtually the entire Tea Party movement as Obama was seeking reelection.  If you want to know how an election is stolen in plain sight, this is how.

Of course, per usual, the finger pointing has begun. But there is no question in my mind that all fingers should be pointing to the top of the White House food chain. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel points out: “Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.”

The president took to the airwaves this week to feign angry indignation about the IRS targeting his enemies, while denying any knowledge whatsoever of what his administration had been up to.  I am not surprised that Obama is pretending, in careful language, not to know about the worst abuse of power by a presidential administration in a generation.  Let’s call it Obama’s Nixonian “I’m not a crook” moment.

Why do I believe that Obama knew exactly what his Internal Revenue Service was up to (besides it being in the news for the last two years)?  Because of the record of Steven T. Miller – the man Obama first hired and has now pretended to fire as acting commissioner of the IRS.

Make no mistake about it. When Obama appointed Miller head of the IRS, the president should have known what he was getting. Before becoming acting commissioner, he had been the commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division of the IRS, where, according to the IRS faux folksy website, “Steve oversaw the administration of tax law relating to employee plans, tax-exempt organizations and various government entities.”

Perhaps the description should more accurately have read “oversaw and undermined the administration of tax law relating to … tax exempt organizations.” At Judicial Watch we know this well because, very early on, we were one of the many conservative organizations and Clinton critics that Miller’s tax exempt branch subjected to politically-inspired audits.

As the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported in his “Washington Secrets” column, “Steven T. Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who managed the division that has admitted targeting anti-Obama Tea Party groups, was one of several agents who investigated anti-Clinton organizations including Judicial Watch during that Democrat’s administration, according to court documents and interviews.”

As I relate in my book, The Corruption Chronicles, when Judicial Watch complained about the audit and its political nature, an IRS official told us, “What do you expect when you sue the President?”

Miller was one of the IRS officials who oversaw the invasive audit of Judicial Watch even while conceding that the audit “had created at least the appearance of a problem.” It seemed every time we complained about the audit, Miller’s bureaucrats expanded its scope until it covered seven years’ worth of records!

So, now we find that Miller, despite this record of being a top official partly responsible for the last wave of IRS abuse during the Clinton years, was rewarded by Barack Obama with the top position at the IRS. Given our well-publicized experience with him, it is no surprise to me that Miller was content to allow this illegal IRS harassment of Obama’s hit list – and the subsequent cover-up.

As I say, Obama pretended to “fire” Miller this week, an empty gesture considering the fact that Miller had already planned to leave – and, in fact, will be running the IRS for several more weeks. It was an attempt by the president to show command of a situation that continues to spiral out of control.

In fact, Thursday night we learn courtesy of ABC News that the woman in charge of the IRS office during the Tea Party attacks is now running the Obamacare IRS office!

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

These IRS abuses are one more example of how the Obama administration is off the rails and out of control.  Judicial Watch is your watchdog in Washington and is mobilizing its investigative and legal resources to protect the American people from the crisis caused by Obama’s corrupted IRS.

Stay tuned as news is breaking by the moment. As Democratic Senator Max Baucus said during an interview with Bloomberg’s Capital Gain, “I have a hunch that a lot more is going to come out.”

This is true – especially if we have anything to do with it.

Big Media Gets Pass from Criminal Accountability?

If there is one lesson I have learned over my decade and a half at Judicial Watch, it is this: you must never overestimate the hypocrisy of the Left – especially in covering for their own. Lest you have even the slightest doubt, cast an eye to the outrageous behavior of District of Columbia Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan when he allowed NBC-TV’s David Gregory to walk away scot free for a firearm offense, even while openly acknowledging “the clarity of the violation of the law.”

We don’t know for certain what prompted Nathan to decline to prosecute Gregory. We do know that, according to the Washington Post, until the Republican sweep in 2010, he had been the House Democrats’ top lawyer. We also know that he was appointed attorney general by D.C. Democrat Mayor Vincent Gray. And we know that some legal experts have questioned why Nathan did not recuse himself from the case when it was discovered that he had a personal relationship with David Gregory’s wife. Clearly more information was required. So, Judicial Watch began investigating.

On January 14, 2013, acting on behalf of William A. Jacobson, founder and author of the outstanding blog website, Legal Insurrection, we submitted a District of Columbia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and Office of the Attorney General (OAG) seeking access to the following records:

1.  The January 9, 2013 letter from Lee Levine on behalf of David Gregory,                        referenced in the letter dated January 11, 2013 from Attorney General Irvin B.                Nathan to Mr. Levine which was publicly disclosed on that date.

2.  All communications between the District of Columbia Office of Attorney                         General and/or Metropolitan Police Department, on the one hand, and legal counsel                for David Gregory and/or NBC News, on the other hand, with regard to the incident                   involving the display on television by Mr. Gregory of an alleged high-capacity                             ammunition clip (the “Gregory incident”).

3.  All documents in the possession of the MPD and OAG regarding the Gregory                   Incident, to the extent not exempted from disclosure under applicable law,                      including but not limited to witness statements, evidence review and possession                records, interview notes, and forensic testing.

On February 20, 2013, OAG informed Jacobson that it was withholding certain requested records, including the January 9, 2013, letter from NBC attorney Lee Levine, as well as responsive emails between OAG and MPD. (We just learned the letter from Levine was made available to the media, but is being withheld from us!)

The OAG also withheld in their entirety an affidavit and a warrant responsive to the Jacobson FOIA request. On April 17, 2013, MPD informed Jacobson that it was withholding responsive records as well. This past week, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit on Jacobson’s behalf asking that the Court to declare OAG and MDP in violation of the law and to order them to produce the records without further delay.

The known facts in the Gregory case are simple. On Sunday December 23, 2012, the “Meet the Press” host interviewed the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre concerning firearms policy in the United States. During the course of the interview, Gregory exhibited a high-capacity ammunition clip.  The possession of such an ammunition clip is in violation of the law of the District of Columbia.

Gregory displayed the ammunition clip despite the fact that, according to the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, “NBC was clearly and timely advised by an MPD (Metropolitan Police Department) employee that its plans to exhibit on the broadcast a high capacity magazine would violate D.C. law, and there was no contrary advice from any other federal official.”

Some argued that, in accordance with D.C. law, Gregory should have been charged with a weapons violation and taken into custody, as other alleged offenders have been. The MPD failed to do so, however, and in early January announced that it had completed its two-week investigation and presented the case to the OAG “for a determination of the prosecutorial merit of the case.”

On January 11, 2013, after just two days of deliberation, Attorney General Nathan sent a letter to NBC saying that his office would not prosecute Gregory, “despite the clarity of the violation of this important law.” The Attorney General added, “There is no doubt of the gravity of the illegal conduct in this matter…”

Yet, in what surely must be one of the most glaring non sequiturs I’ve seen, Nathan then refused to prosecute Gregory. And the Washington Times’ outstanding editorialist Emily Miller well summed up the absurdity of the situation when Gregory first committed his violation:

The District came up with its overly restrictive laws in response to the Supreme Court overturning the capital city’s 30-year gun ban. The statutes shouldn’t apply just to regular people but to the rich and powerful as well. The District should either repeal its over-the-top restrictions or send a squad car to take David Gregory into custody.

The way Gregory’s prosecution decision was handled undermines confidence in the fair administration of justice.  If Gregory shouldn’t be prosecuted then no one should be – and the law should be rescinded.  Our client Prof. Jacobsen also is seeking justice in the public interest:

“The documents being withheld will help shed light on the details of this highly publicized non-prosecution, which raised issues as to whether well-connected and famous D.C. insiders were treated as any other citizen in a similar situation.  I appreciate Judicial Watch assisting in this search for the truth.”

Let’s hope the courts put an end to this cover-up.

Judicial Watch Sues U.S. Secret Service for Obama’s Hawaiian Vacation Documents

With approximately one-third of congressional committees preoccupied with investigating Obama corruption – from Benghazi-gate, to the IRS scandal, to Obamacare propaganda – the First Family might be tempted to escape to some far away location for vacation.

As Judicial Watch knows all too well, this is something the Obamas have done with some frequency since taking office in 2009, and largely on the taxpayers’ dime.  JW has been the leading investigative force on the Obama’s taxpayer-funded luxury trips, using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get ahold of records about the costs of this abuse of the perks of the presidency.

Our feeling is that, especially considering the massive budget crisis in Washington, the president must be completely transparent to the American people regarding the cost of these vacations. Instead, however, all we’ve received is more stonewalling. The pattern, by now, should be familiar to you. We file a FOIA. The Obama administration ignores it. We sue to get the records. And often we are successful.

JW was back at it again on May 6, when we were forced to file a FOIA lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Secret Service in order to obtain records concerning use of U.S. Government funds to provide “security and/or any other services to President Obama and any companions on their January 1 and 2, 2013, trip to Honolulu, Hawaii.”

On January 2, 2013, Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA request about taxpayer funds used to pay for President Obama and his entourage to travel to Hawaii, seeking access to:  All records concerning use of U.S. Government funds to provide security and/or other services to President Obama and any companions on their January 1 and 2, 2013 trip to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Per usual, we are getting the runaround. By a letter dated January 31, 2013, the Secret Service acknowledged that they received the request. By law the agency was required to determine whether to comply with the FOIA request within 20 days and provide Judicial Watch with the requisite notifications by February 11, 2013 at the latest.  But as of May 6, the Secret Service had yet to produce a single record.

So now onto step three: file a lawsuit.

Veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler provided the public with important information about these Hawaiian trips when he wrote on January 4, 2013, that the “total cost to taxpayers of Obama’s vacations to Hawaii since becoming president is likely in excess of $20 million, and possibly much, much more.”  Evidently, this is based on estimates for the trips taken by the Obama family during the Christmas holiday season in four consecutive years.

“According to a detailed breakdown by the Hawaii Reporter, the annual excursions in 2009, 2010, and 2011 cost about $4 million, much of it attributable to the expense of taking Air Force One, at an hour rate of about $180,000, on an eighteen-hour roundtrip journey to Honolulu and back,” Koffler writes.

These trips to Hawaii are just one example of the Obamas jet-setting lifestyle. According to records obtained by Judicial Watch, First Family vacations since Obama took office have come at great costs to taxpayers. Those costs have included:

• In August 2010, when Michelle Obama traveled to Spain with multiple friends and one of her daughters, the total cost to taxpayers was at least $467,555.

• From June 21 – 27, 2011, when Michelle Obama along with her daughters and staff traveled to South Africa and Botswana, charges to the taxpayers for the aircraft and crew alone were $424,142.

• During President’s Day weekend of February 2012, when Michelle Obama and her two daughters vacationed in Aspen, Colorado, charges to the taxpayers were $83,182.99.

As I say, the Obamas’ opulent vacation lifestyle is particularly objectionable during a time when government debt is out of control. President Obama is not king and his administration should stop ignoring the FOIA open records law and account to the American people for the spending on his luxury vacations.

These vacations may seem but a drop in the bucket when compared to other examples of Obama’s spending-gone-wild, but waste is waste. And these trips are adding up.

Until next week…

If you are a regular reader of the Weekly Update, you know that Judicial Watch has been the leading force in uncovering the unethical and dangerous connections between the Obama administration and a wide swath of radical leftwing special interest groups.  These groups are helping to create and to advance in secret illicit government policies ranging from stealth amnesty to reverse discrimination to attacks on election integrity.

On April 30, 2013, we continued our effort to expose these unholy alliances when we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) for “all records of communications” between the DOJ and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) relating to a 2012 lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund.

Not surprisingly, the ACLU/Mi Familia Vota lawsuit was aimed at preventing the state of Florida from taking some reasonable steps to remove ineligible voters from registration lists. That’s right: Florida wanted to clean up its voter registration lists – and the ACLU wanted to keep them dirty.

Please understand, there is no doubt about ACLU/DOJ collusion in the matter of corrupting voter integrity. As far back as June 20, 2011, the ACLU, acting in conjunction with Project Vote, sent a letter to the DOJ complaining about a new Florida election integrity law that sought to avoid the massive voter registration fraud caused by Project Vote and its partner ACORN in 2008. Now Judicial Watch wants to know just how how far the DOJ has gone in its collusion with the ACLU.

On June 14, 2012, we submitted a FOIA request to the DOJ requesting the following information:

All records of communications between the Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concerning, regarding, or relating to Mi Familia Vota Education Fund v. Detzner, 12-cv-1294, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida (Tampa)

By a letter dated June 18, 2012, the DOJ acknowledged receiving the Judicial Watch FOIA request and was required by law to respond by July 17, 2012. It failed to do so.

Our lawsuit asks the District Court to order the Obama DOJ to “conduct a search for any and all responsive records” and to “produce, by a certain date, any and all non-exempt records,” along with an index of any records the department continues to declare exempt.

To most Americans, it would seem to go without saying that the role of the DOJ should be to protect voter integrity, not join with radical leftwing groups in trying to undermine it. But, remember, this is the Obama Justice Department, with Eric Holder as its chief – a man so disdainful of basic security measures and legal protection to ensure free and fair elections that he has become a regular on Judicial Watch’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list.

The effort by the state of Florida to clean its registration lists of ineligible voters came in response to a February 2012 letter of inquiry sent by Judicial Watch to Florida election officials. Judicial Watch alerted the State of Florida that failure to maintain clean voter registration lists violates Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

In response to Florida’s resulting efforts to comply with the NVRA, the ACLU, on behalf of the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, on June 8, 2012, filed its suit against the state. The DOJ then followed with its own lawsuit on June 12, 2012, asking a federal court to enjoin the state from taking steps to inquire about the presence of non-eligible aliens on voting rolls.

Judicial Watch moved to intervene in the case to defend Florida’s voter list maintenance efforts; the court subsequently sided with Florida and Judicial Watch and denied the DOJ’s attempt to stop Florida from removing non-citizens from the voter rolls.

This latest FOIA lawsuit is not the first time Judicial Watch has filed suit against the Obama DOJ to obtain information about its relationship with the ACLU. On June 1, 2012, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ to obtain records detailing the agency’s communications with the ACLU involving Pennsylvania House Bill 934, commonly referred to as Pennsylvania’s voter ID law. Judicial Watch previously obtained documents from the DOJ showing that the agency worked with the ACLU to mount their respective legal challenges to SB 1070, Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement law.

When we added Eric Holder to JW’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list, we noted, “Every day that Eric Holder remains at the helm, the Department of Justice sinks further into the abyss of cronyism, corruption, and deceit.” Now you have another one of the reasons why.

JW Continues to Press Benghazi Lawsuits against Obama Administration in Wake of Stunning Whistleblower Testimony

If there was any remaining doubt about the systematic effort by the Obama administration to keep the American people from learning the full truth about the tragedy that unfolded in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, it was thoroughly removed at this past Wednesday’s House committee hearings.

Perhaps, FrontPage Magazine summed it up best in its lead article the following morning:

Wednesday on Capitol Hill, three impeccable witnesses offered the clearest evidence to date that the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi before, during and after the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen A. Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, was a deadly combination of ineptitude, political calculations, and outright lying.

The testimony – by whistleblowers Eric Nordstrom (a former regional security officer of the U.S. Mission to Libya), Mark Thompson (the acting deputy assistant secretary of state for counterterrorism), and Gregory Hicks (the second in command in Libya during the fatal attack) – was as revealing as it was riveting. In the end, it painted a grim picture of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton first blocking the efforts by courageous soldiers to come to the aid of their fellow Americans under fire, and then weaving a deliberate web of outrageous lies to cover not only their own trail, but that of Islamic terrorists as well.

This is where Judicial Watch is focusing its attention.  JW has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests – and three lawsuits as well – against the Obama State Department to gain access to records that could shed light on what really happened in Benghazi, who responded, and how.  All three of the lawsuits are still active, and we will continue to press each one to help the American people get to the bottom of this deadly cover-up. Let me give you an update on where we stand in each suit.

Benghazi Lawsuit No. 1: JW Seeks U.S. Consulate Videos at Time of Attack

On February 25, 2013, Judicial Watch sued the State Department seeking “all videos and photographs” depicting the Benghazi, Libya Consulate between September 10 and September 13, 2012, the period leading up to, during, and immediately following the deadly attack.

Specifically, Judicial Watch seeks the following records pursuant to its December 19, 2012, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request:

“Any and all videos and photographs depicting U.S. Consulate facilities in Benghazi, Libya (including the Special Mission Compound and the Annex) between September 10, 2012, and September 13, 2012, that were provided to the Accountability Review Board (ARB) for Benghazi and/or to any individual member of the ARB.”

The State Department acknowledged receiving the Judicial Watch FOIA request on January 4, 2013, and was required by law to respond by February 4, 2013.  Now, more than three months later, no documents have been produced. The Obama administration cannot claim it came up empty in trying to locate the records.  The records exist for certain because they are referenced by the Accountability Review Board (ARB), convened by then – Secretary of State Clinton last December, in its final report.

In fact, according to ARB Chairman Ambassador Tom Pickering, the Board “reviewed thousands of documents and watched hours of video” (emphasis added) during the course of its investigation. Pickering, it should be noted, refused to testify in the House Benghazi hearings. The Obama administration also reportedly shared Benghazi video with certain members of Congress. The State Department, however, has refused to comply with JW’s FOIA seeking access to these materials on behalf of the American people.

I said at the time we filed our fist FOIA lawsuit, “It’s an easy guess as to why the Obama administration is refusing to turn these records over. Any video or photos will tell us more about Benghazi – in contrast to the lies and spin coming out of Obama administration officials.” With Wednesday’s whistleblower revelations, that statement is proving to be more accurate than ever.

Benghazi Lawsuit Number 2: JW Seeks Details Regarding Contract with Foreign Security Company

In a second FOIA lawsuit against the Obama State Department, Judicial Watch seeks access to records concerning a contract totaling nearly $400,000 that was awarded to a foreign firm for “Security Guards and Patrol Services” at the Benghazi Consulate prior to the Benghazi attacks. This contract was signed on February 17, 2012, and May 3, 2012, and at the time was identified only as “Award ID SAQMMA12COO92.”  Judicial Watch filed its lawsuit on February 25, 2013.

Specifically, Judicial Watch seeks the following pursuant to a November 7, 2012, FOIA request:

Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to the $387,413.68 contract awarded by the Department of State to an unidentified foreign awardee for “Security Guards and Patrol Services.”  According to the record of this expenditure on USASpending.gov, the contract was signed on February 17, 2012, and May 3, 2012, and is identified by Award ID SAQMMA12COO92.

The State Department acknowledged receiving the November 7, 2012, Judicial Watch FOIA request on November 12, 2012, and was required by law to respond by December 20, 2012, at the latest.  Yet again, as of the date of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, JW has not received a meaningful response.

And what is suspicious about this contract?

According to Breitbart.com, when first questioned about foreign Benghazi security guards on Friday, September 14, 2012, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland emphatically denied that State had hired any private firm to provide security at the American mission in Benghazi:

QUESTION: (Inaudible) the claim was made yesterday that a company that is a spinoff of Blackwater, in fact, proposed or contracted the United States Government for this particular kind of eventuality, and it was caught up in some sort of bureaucratic –

MS. NULAND: Completely untrue with regard to Libya.  I checked that this morning.  At no time did we plan to hire a private security company for Libya.

QUESTION: Toria [stet], I just want to make sure I understood that, because I didn’t understand your first question. You said – your first answer.  You said that at no time did you have contracts with private security companies in Libya?

MS. NULAND: Correct.

However, on September 17, 2012, WIRED magazine broke the story that Nuland had provided false information in her September 14 press conference, saying:  “Contrary to Friday’s claim by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland that ‘at no time did we contract with a private security firm in Libya,’ the department inked a contract for ‘security guards and patrol services’ on May 3, 2012, for $387,413.68.  An extension option brought the tab for protecting the consulate to $783,000.  The contract lists only ‘foreign security awardees’ as its recipient.”

In her daily press briefing on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, Nuland admitted that she had made an “error” concerning the State Department’s hiring of foreign security firms in Benghazi. “There was a group called Blue Mountain Group, which is a private security company with permits to operate in Libya,” Nuland said.  “They were hired to provide local Libyan guards who operated inside the gate doing things like operating the security access equipment, screening cars, that kind of thing.”

Nuland’s belated admission that Blue Mountain was chosen by the Clinton State Department because it hired “local Libyan guards” takes on a new, sinister meaning in view of Nordstrom’s House committee testimony that, “Benghazi and Tripoli were not located in a country where the Department of State could count on effective support or response from the host nation — a fact that was clearly and repeatedly reported to policy makers in Washington, DC.”

Add to that the Breitbart.com report that Blue Mountain was specifically selected for the Benghazi security operation because it was willing to sign the State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya prohibiting guards from carrying weapons with live ammunition, and it becomes all the more obvious why the Obama administration is stonewalling JW’s second Benghazi FOIA. And why we will not let them get away with it.

Benghazi Lawsuit Number 3: JW Seeks “Doctored” Talking Points Memo

Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit on February 14, 2013, against the Obama Administration’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking access to a controversial “speaking points” memo that seems to suggest that intelligence officials believed from the outset that al Qaeda was behind the attack despite public statements to the contrary issued by Obama administration officials, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

JW’s FOIA skepticism about the “speaking points” was confirmed in early May, when an explosive story in the Weekly Standard revealed that, contrary to the Obama administration’s denials, the State Department’s own internal emails explicitly pointed to al Qaeda involvement in the deadly attack:

Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists

As reported by the New York Post, the need for the JW FOIA was further backed up by Gregory Hicks in his House committee testimony:

Gregory Hicks, the first person to testify to Congress who was on the ground in Libya during the fateful night of the Sept. 11, 2012 siege, told a House committee that he was incredulous just five days later when UN Ambassador Susan Rice said on Sunday talk shows that the assault was not a terrorist attack.

“My jaw dropped,” Hicks said. “I was embarrassed.”

Specifically, the Judicial Watch FOIA seeks:

Any and all memoranda, assessments, analyses, and/or talking points regarding the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and/or the killing of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence between September 11, 2012, and September 20, 2012.  This request includes, but is not limited to, the “speaking points” memorandum referred to by Senator Dianne Feinstein during a televised interview on October 17, 2012….

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged receiving JW’s request on October 19, 2012, and was required by law to respond by November 26, 2012.  However, as of the date of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the agency failed to produce any records responsive to the request, indicate when any responsive records will be produced, or demonstrated that responsive records are exempt from production.

In mid-November 2012, former CIA Director General David Petraeus reportedly testified before Congress that the initial speaking points produced by the CIA indicated the attack was an act of terrorism committed by al Qaeda-linked militants and suggested the terrorism reference was removed sometime during an interagency review process. In the days and weeks following the Benghazi attacks, the Obama administration blamed the incident on a rudimentary Internet video deemed offensive to Muslims.  This false claim was repeated by both Ambassador Rice and Secretary Clinton in multiple public statements and press interviews.

At a September 14, 2012, event honoring the four victims of the Benghazi attack, then-Secretary of State Clinton made the following statement:  “We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men.  We’ve seen the rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful video that we had nothing to do with.”

Did Hillary Clinton know this was a lie when she said it?  She certainly was in no mood to talk about it during her testimony before Congress on January 23, 2013.  When asked about the alleged discrepancy between the intelligence community’s assessment and the Obama administration’s public statements during congressional testimony, Ms. Clinton shouted, “What difference does it make at this point? … I personally was not focused on talking points.”

According to Investor.com, at the House committee testimony on May 8, Eric Nordstrom answered Ms. Clinton’s question succinctly and emotionally:

What difference at this point does the truth about Benghazi make? In an emotional opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Eric Nordstrom, a regional security officer of the U.S. Mission to Libya from September 2011 to July 2012, answered that question with voice cracking and a simple declarative sentence:

“It matters to the friends and family of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who were murdered on September 11th, 2012.”

Separately, I was struck by the failure of the hearings to get into the security issues raised by Judicial Watch’s independent interim report on Benghazi, “The Benghazi Attack of September 11, 2012: Analysis and Further Questions from a Diplomatic Security Service Regional Security Officer and Special Agent.”  We prepared this special report relying on the expertise of Mr. Raymond Fournier, a recently retired Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent with more than 30 years of extraordinary experience managing security for a host U.S. Embassies, including our posts in Israel and Afghanistan.

Our report has questions that remain unanswered to this day:

Who at the State Department was responsible for opening up and continuing the operation of the “Special Mission Compound” in the unstable environment of Benghazi, overriding physical security standards for diplomatic facilities?

According to Fournier, “The Department’s unexplained decision to create a new category of diplomatic structure, i.e. the ‘Special Mission Compound,’” for the purpose of “skirting the established physical security standards” for embassies and consulates was the “critical error” leading to the deadly attack.

Did the Director of Diplomatic Security or his immediate subordinates have authority to countermand the Department’s desire to open “SMC Benghazi?”

In the Judicial Watch report, Fournier cautions that, “Frequently, security policy and standards are set aside as inconvenient, restraining, time consuming or simply less important relative to loftier goals foreign policy goals prosecuted by the Department’s elite. One need go no further than Benghazi to see an example of the aforementioned managerial arrogance with the Department.”

Why did Ambassador Stevens travel to Benghazi, so close to the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks?

The Judicial Watch Special Report reveals State Department warnings in July, August, and September of 2012 advising against travel to the Mideast in general and Benghazi in particular.

Why were two unmanned aerial vehicles requested to record the deadly events as they unfolded in Benghazi while more lethal air support options were not on station?

We have over a dozen FOIA requests and three lawsuits to get at the truth.  I can tell you that the Obama administration has failed to respond substantively to any of our inquiries.  This level of stonewalling is unprecedented in my 15 years at Judicial Watch.  But we intend to keep pressing its Benghazi FOIA’s with goal of every American knowing the full truth about what really went on – in Libya and at the Obama White House – on September 11, 2012.

Menendez: What Happens When the Lawbreakers are also the Lawmakers

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez may not be the most corrupt member of the United States Senate – after all, the competition is pretty stiff – but, if he isn’t, it’s not for a lack of trying. He made Judicial Watch’s list of “Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” last year for good reason.

Senator Menendez has been investigated for steering lobbying business to his former chief of staff (and girlfriend). He helped sneak through an $8 million federal giveaway for a luxury condominiums complex that benefitted campaign donors and a former senior aide. Late last year he was alleged to have patronized underage prostitutes and to have employed an illegal alien sex offender on his staff.

On this last point, in response to a January 15, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Judicial Watch has obtained documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealing that Menendez may have been the chief beneficiary of a decision by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to delay the deportation of an illegal alien intern working for U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) until after the 2012 elections, despite the intern’s violation of probation stemming from an aggravated sexual assault conviction.

The 18-year-old illegal alien, Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, was allowed to work in the senator’s office even though he had an expired visa and a previous conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting an 8-year-old boy.

Records obtained through the JW FOIA request reveal that, in addition to working for the Senator, Sanchez Zavaleta volunteered at an organization where he worked with minors in violation of the terms of his probation. Hudson County prosecutors declined to act on these breaches after learning that Sanchez Zavaleta worked for Menendez. Immigration officials also delayed their ordinary deportation efforts in this case, reportedly deciding to delay action until after the November 2012 elections.

According to a December Associated Press (AP) news report that exposed the Menendez-Zavaleta story, “The Homeland Security Department instructed federal agents not to arrest him until after Election Day, a U.S. official involved in the case told the AP.” At the time, a DHS spokesman termed the story “categorically false.”

In January, however, the AP published a follow-up story citing documents obtained from the office of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) confirming its earlier report. According to the follow-up article: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Newark had arranged to arrest Sanchez at the local prosecutor’s office on Oct. 25. That was fewer than two weeks before the election. Noting that Sanchez was a volunteer in Menendez’s Senate office, ICE officials in New Jersey advised that the arrest ‘had the possibility of garnering significant congressional and media interest’ and were ‘advised to postpone the arrest’ until officials in Washington gave approval.”

Ultimately, following the re-elections of both President Obama and Robert Menendez, authorities finally arrested Sanchez on December 6, 2012. He is now scheduled for deportation.

In its January, 15, 2013, FOIA request to DHS concerning amnesty fraud committed by Sanchez Zavaleta while interning for Menendez, Judicial Watch requested the following:

1. Any and all records concerning or relating to the delayed arrest of Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, an intern with Senator Bob Menendez.

2. Any and all records of communication concerning or relating to the delayed arrest of Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta between ICE and the following entities:

a. The White House
b. The Executive Office of the President
c. The Office of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
d. The Office of Senator Bob Menendez
e. The Office of the Senate Majority Leader
f. The Office of Senator Harry Reid
g. The Office of Senator Patty Murray

The time frame specified in the request was October 1, 2012, to December 31, 2012. According to the documents provided Judicial Watch by ICE, the agency located 334 pages of information, but released only 302 in response to the FOIA.

The scandal around Sanchez-Zavaleta should come as no surprise. His track record for supporting illegal aliens speaks for itself. In 2007, he voted against denying legal status to illegal aliens convicted of domestic violence, crimes against children, and crimes relating to the illegal purchase or sale of firearms. He voted for giving federal funds to “sanctuary cities” harboring illegal aliens. He voted against building a fence along the Mexican border. And he voted for allowing illegal immigrants to participate in the Social Security program.

Nor is Menendez new to scandals involving his offshore ventures. Late last year, he was alleged to have patronized underage prostitutes. The Senate Ethics Committee is continuing to investigate two trips he took on the private jet of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a major campaign contributor, to the doctor’s “seaside mansion” in the Dominican Republic, trips Menendez failed to disclose properly in his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. And recently, Univision reported that Menendez used his connections and authority as a federal lawmaker to retaliate against an adviser to former Dominican President Hipólito Mejía because the advisor helped an ex-lover of Melgen’s.

And all the while, Senator Menendez, now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, continues to take the lead as part of the “Gang of Eight” pushing President Obama’s mass amnesty through Congress. This helps to place into context why our system is so badly broken. And why Judicial Watch is so badly needed to expose and end the corruption of the politicians writing our laws.

Until next week…

The Obama administration tends to take a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to the problem of Islamic radicalism and terrorism.

In November 2009, when  Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people and wounded dozens of others in a Fort Hood shooting spree, while repeatedly shouting “Allahu akbar,” most Americans realized at once that the faithful follower of the extremist imam Anwar al-Awlaki (the spiritual leader of a number of the 9/11 hijackers) was a radical Muslim. But not Barack Obama – whose administration misleadingly mislabeled the assault “workplace violence,” thereby depriving the victims of benefits commensurate with combat injuries.

On September 11, 2012, when al Qaeda terrorists stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the Obama administration covered for the Islamic terrorists by blaming the incident on spontaneous reactions to a rudimentary Internet video critical of Islam. This false claim was repeated by both Ambassador Rice and Secretary Clinton in multiple public statements.

Weeks later, the lie was fully exposed when former CIA Director General David Petraeus reportedly testified before Congress that the initial “speaking points” produced by the CIA “stated there were indications the attack was linked to al Qaeda,” and suggested the terrorism reference was removed sometime during an interagency review process. Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Obama’s Director of National Intelligence seeking access to records detailing the attack, including the speaking points Petraeus says were scrubbed. We’ll keep you posted.

More recently, on April 15, 2013, when Islamic terrorists attacked the Boston Marathon, killing three and maiming nearly 200 others, Obama refused to acknowledge their Muslim ties, instead admonishing the American people not to “rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals.” Even after evidence gathered by the FBI proved conclusively that the Tsarnaev brothers were radical Islamists, Obama steadfastly refused to admit what was brutally obvious to the rest of the world.

None of this clear-cut evidence of the Obama administration’s dishonesty about Islamic terrorism will come as a surprise to supporters of Judicial Watch. In fact, however, as it turns out, it may be only the tip of the iceberg – the depths of which reach all the way down into this administration’s actual collusion with known Islamic terrorist fronts.

Many Weekly Update readers will recall that in late January, we sounded the alarm about a top Obama State Department official, Mark Ward, participating in a December 2012, conference sponsored by two groups — the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) – both with chillingly close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known as the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.

At the conference, Ward conducted a seminar focused on career opportunities for Muslim youth. Here is how the event was billed: “Besides being a citizenship duty, there are benefits that Muslims can add to the American Muslim community and the global Muslim world by joining the US Foreign Services. This session will shed light on the different career opportunities for Muslim youth in the US Foreign Services Department. It will also clear any concerns that many people have feared about pursuing in this career.”

Ward was joined at the Chicago, Illinois, by a number of speakers well known for advocating violent jihad.  Among them was Kifah Mustapha, a fundraiser for the terrorist group the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).  In November 2008, HLF was convicted on 108 counts of supporting international terrorism. The charges included funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Also at the podium with Ward was MAS co-founder Jamal Badawi , who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the HLF and who praised the jihad of Gaza terrorists during a speech titled “Understanding Jihad and Martyrdom.” With Ward and Badawi were Ayman Hammous and Oussama Jammal.  Hammous is the Executive Director of the New York chapter of MAS and Jammal is the president of the Mosque Foundation, an extremist Islamist mosque in Bridgeview, Illinois, that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the HLF and other Islamic charities accused of financing terrorism.

As Deputy Special Coordinator of the State Department’s Middle East Transition office Ward apparently heads a secretive campaign, discovered in the course of a Judicial Watch investigation, to add Muslims to its foreign service roster. It appears to be part of the administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes a variety of controversial moves.

Among the moves are Department of Homeland Security (DHS) meetings with extremist Islamic organizations; sending mosque leader Feisal Abdul Rauf, who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks, on a Middle Eastern outreach mission; and revamping the way federal agents are trained to combat terrorism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even signed a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S.

So, it turns out that not only is the Obama administration providing cover, it is also working with known terrorists front groups to help them recruit their followers for key State Department positions. Judicial Watch is determined to get to the bottom of this unholy alliance. This past week, we filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking all records relating to a speech given by Ward, as well as all records of communication between any State Department employee and any representative of the Muslim American Society and/or the Islamic Council of North America regarding the Muslim recruitment conference.  The administration is in full stonewall on this issue and once again we have to go to court to get “the most transparent administration in history” to obey the federal government’s main transparency law, the Freedom of Information Act.

Again, we will keep you posted as events unfold.

From Benghazi to Beyoncé, the Obama Cover-ups Continue

As we reported to you in a recent edition of the Corruption Chronicles, in late January, Judicial Watch launched an investigation into the Beyoncé presidential inauguration ceremony lip-sync “scandal.” The superstar delivered a powerful rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, but reports quickly surfaced that she was actually faking it on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. A military spokeswoman subsequently confirmed that the United States Marine Band played live for every song except Beyoncé’s national anthem. So, since the bash had likely cost the taxpayers well over $100 million, Judicial Watch decided to find out the truth behind the petty lies.

In the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we subsequently sent to the Pentagon, we asked for all recordings made in preparation for the 2013 Presidential Inauguration Ceremony, including those by Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson and James Taylor as well as the Marine Band. The request also asked for all documents relating to the use of recordings during the ceremony, including contingency plans for any of the singers to lip sync their performance. It was simple and to the point, no skullduggery or sleight of hand – except by the Obama administration.

Even with something as simple as a singing star’s lip-synching, Obama’s lieutenants couldn’t bring themselves to just tell the truth. It wasn’t a matter of national security and covert operations. It was simply a matter of technical issues and a sound track. Right? Wrong! To the “most open and transparent administration in history,” it was a matter of misdirection and obfuscation – beginning with the cover letter from the Department of Navy:

You will see that some information has been redacted. Specifically, names, telephone numbers, email address, and other personal data have been withheld pursuant to FOIA exemption (b)(6), which prohibits disclosure of personal information when an individual’s privacy interest in it outweighs any public interest.

To say that “some information has been redacted” is, perhaps, the understatement of the millennium. In the 172 pages of emails provided to Judicial Watch, there are approximately 10 to 20 redactions per page, bringing the grand total to well over 2,000 redactions in all, including absurd redactions of Beyoncé’s name!  You’re not going to believe this but we were told that the Pentagon consulted with Beyoncé’s lawyers about the documents before it released them to Judicial Watch.  So the government is now telling us that they can’t release the track recorded by the government by Beyoncé because it is not owned by the government!

The documents also show that members of the Marine Band were told to clam up if asked about the lip synch issue and that they were planning to lip synch weeks before Inauguration Day.  So the idea that it was a last minute thing is complete fiction.

Simply put, this is ridiculous. This Obama administration can’t help but play games on the minutest of issues. The cover-ups now go all the way from the deaths in Benghazi to the depths of Beyoncé.

Case Worker: Illegal Aliens Got Food Stamps by the “Vanload”

Please Note: We are reprinting the following article from our Corruption Chronicles blog as a timely update to the growing food stamp controversy ignited by Judicial Watch’s recent disclosure of documents documenting the Obama administration’s working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens. The blog post, by Judicial Watch’s Irene Garcia, gained even more headlines about corruption in the food stamp program, which has been corrupted for decades:

For decades the U.S. government has knowingly given illegal immigrants food stamps, according to a former certification case worker who denounced the costly practice back in the 1980s but was essentially ordered to keep a lid on it.

The retired assistant case manager, Craig McNees, was in charge of vetting food-stamp applicants in north Florida and Indiana in the ’80s and says the program was infested with fraud and corruption that was perpetually ignored by management. “Illegals would come in by the vanload and we were told to give them their stuff,” McNees said. “Management knew very well they were illegal. It was so rampant that some employees would tell their illegal relatives to come get food stamps.”

McNees contacted Judicial Watch after reading documents obtained by JW from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) detailing how the agency is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program. The effort includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA ensuring that Mexicans in the U.S. don’t need to declare their immigration status to get financial assistance from Uncle Sam.

The documents ignited outrage considering the nation’s food stamp program has exploded under President Obama, who claims there are too many “food insecure households” in America. To correct the problem the administration has spent millions on ad campaigns promoting food stamps and has rewarded states with multi-million-dollar bonuses for signing up recipients. It’s been quite effective because American taxpayers spent an astounding $80.4 billion on the program in 2012 and a record number of people—46 million and growing—get free groceries from Uncle Sam.

The retired case worker who contacted JW says in the three years he worked in a Sarasota food-stamp office, he found more than 500 cases of fraud but management ignored them all instead pushing a yearly quota. “They just said that if we don’t give out as many as last year, we don’t get our money,” McNees said. “It was crazy, like a three-ring circus; like the inmates were running the asylum.”

Decades later it seems little has changed as Obama promotes the program like there’s no tomorrow. In fact, last summer a federal audit revealed that many who don’t qualify for food stamps receive them under a special “broad-based” eligibility program that disregards income and asset requirements. That means American taxpayers are getting stuck with a multi-million-dollar tab to feed hundreds of thousands who can well afford to feed themselves.

Adding insult to injury, last spring the USDA Inspector General revealed that many food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors. Some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash, the USDA watchdog told Congress, disclosing that the fraud has cost taxpayers nearly $200 million. None of this surprises McNees, who claims he witnessed so much fraud as a food-stamp case worker that he “could write a book.”

Until next week…

From the beginning, the Obama administration has made the claim that the “selective deportation” scheme it initiated did not apply to dangerous criminals. Only peace-loving, law abiding illegal aliens would be allowed a “stay” of deportation proceedings, they explained. Just the good guys.

But how is this permissive deportation policy working “on the ground” in municipalities across the country? Let’s consider Cook County, Illinois.

JW this week filed a lawsuit in the Cook County Circuit Court challenging Sheriff Tom Dart’s refusal to honor ICE immigration detainers or cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in identifying deportable criminal aliens. Cook County jails have released as many as 1,000 criminal aliens sought by ICE in the past 18 months alone!

And are any of these individuals dangerous? You bet.

We filed our lawsuit, in partnership with Illinois counsel Christine Svenson, on behalf of lifetime Cook County resident Brian McCann, whose brother William “Denny” McCann, was run over and killed in June 2011 by an unlawfully present criminal alien who had just completed a two-year term of probation for a 2009 DUI conviction.

The illegal alien, Saul Chavez, was charged with felony aggravated driving under the influence, but was released by Dart from a Cook County jail in November 2011 despite an ICE immigration detainer. (ICE issues detainers when it learns that criminal aliens are being held by state or local law enforcement officials. The detainers require that criminal aliens be held for an additional 48 hours to enable ICE to take custody of them before they are released.)

But Chavez was not detained and turned over to authorities as instructed by law. He was instead released, and is believed to have fled to Mexico.

Federal and state laws are clear. They require Dart to honor immigration detainers and cooperate with ICE investigators. So how did this happen? Evidently, Dart, instead of following federal and state laws, chose to abide by a September 2011, Cook County ordinance directing him to refuse ICE detainers. He also denied federal agents access to Cook County facilities for investigative interviews.

You read that correctly. A county ordinance instructed Dart to ignore federal immigration laws, a move so egregious, even ICE Director John Morton, the “father” of selective deportation, was shocked to hear it!

In a January 2012 letter to Cook County Board of Commissioners President Toni Preckwinkle, ICE Director John Morton wrote, “Of great concern is the serious impediment the ordinance poses to ICE’s ability to promote public safety through the identification of criminal aliens.”

Too little, too late to save the life of Mr. McCann. But there is still an opportunity to hold Dart accountable, to make certain this sanctuary policy is stopped and to help protect other families from criminal aliens.

Our lawsuit argues that Dart’s “failure to carry out his legal duties under both federal and state law is not authorized, excused, or justified by the ordinance because that ordinance is preempted by federal law.”

(To see a sample of the significant news coverage of our Chicago press conference announcing the lawsuit, click here.)

Now, as I mentioned, the release of Chavez is one of more than 1,000 instances cited by Judicial Watch where Dart has “regularly and routinely refused to honor immigration detainers issued by ICE, citing the provisions of the Ordinance.” Here are some other details on this unlawful practice:

• “At a public hearing on February 9, 2012 before the Board of Commissioners of Cook County, Defendant testified that, in the five month period between the enactment of the Ordinance on September 7, 2011 and February 9, 2012, Defendant released 346 prisoners in his custody who were the subjects of immigration detainers issued by ICE, and 11 of these persons subsequently committed new offenses.”

• “By April 24, 2012 ICE had issued 432 immigration detainers to Defendant since the enactment of the Ordinance, but Defendant failed to honor any of the detainers.  According to a letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to [then-]U.S. Senator John Kyl on that date, Defendant’s failure to honor ICE’s immigration detainers had “prevented ICE from considering removal proceedings against all but 38 of these individuals whom ICE had to locate independently and arrest following their release into the community.”

• “Between April 24, 2012 and March 1, 2013, Defendant received approximately 503 additional immigration detainers issued by ICE, and, on information and belief, has declined to honor any of them, resulting in the release into the community of hundreds of additional prisoners sought by ICE.”

And there’s more.

The lawsuit also alleges that, despite Dart’s refusal to honor ICE immigration detainers or cooperate with ICE investigators, Cook County applied for and received nearly $2.3 million in State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) funds from the federal government in 2011 and over $1.7 million in SCAAP funds in 2012. Over the five-year period from 2008 to 2012, Cook County reportedly applied for and received nearly $15 million in SCAAP funds from the federal government. SCAPP funds are designed to fund the costs that state and local governments incur for holding criminal illegal aliens.

So, in other words, they got the funding specifically targeted for detaining illegal aliens, and then released 1,000 of them onto the streets. So what happened to the money?

In the lawsuit, McCann asks the Circuit Court to compel Dart to comply with his legal duties to honor ICE detainers and to cooperate with federal immigration officials.  It also asks the Circuit Court to declare the Cook County ordinance to be preempted by federal law.

The federal government has determined that certain criminal aliens should not be let loose into the community and that releasing them undermines public safety. And there is no question Dart is thumbing his nose at the federal government and replacing federal immigration priorities with Cook County’s own immigration policy.  Releasing these criminal aliens before they can be taken into custody by ICE endangers the public and Dart is not above the law.

But while it would be tempting to lay all of the blame for this situation at Dart’s feet, the Obama administration must share it. First off, Obama administration officials have failed to sue Dart in the president’s backyard, leaving it to concerned citizens like Brian to bravely step up to the plate to protect the public.

And then there is this: Where in the world would a county Sheriff get the idea that it is permissible to ignore federal immigration laws and allow criminal illegal aliens back onto the streets?

Back in 2010, when the Obama administration’s “selective deportation” scheme first exploded into the news, it was reported that ICE Director Morton had authorized ICE attorneys via an internal memo to block deportation proceedings for illegal aliens who were deemed “low-risk.”

Of course, this turned out to be a lie. A spreadsheet obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) listed the specific violent crimes that immigration officials were prepared to overlook. They included: sexual assault, solicitation of murder, aggravated assault, assaulting a police officer, and kidnapping, as well as numerous drug charges.

The Obama administration set the example. And now the American people are paying for it, with their very lives – in Cook County and in other cities and counties across the country.  Politicians pushing amnesty here in Washington would rather avoid talking about how the sanctuary policies that they are promoting are threats to the public safety.  But politicians (whether in DC or in Cook County) must stop putting politics over the rule of law – or they may see us in court!

Missteps by Feds Exposed on Boston Marathon Bombings

Ten days into the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings, here is what we know – or at least what we think we know:  The terrorist attack was perpetrated by Chechen national Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dhokhar.  Tamerlan was killed during a gun battle with police, while Dhokhar lies in a hospital bed recovering from wounds sustained during a dramatic manhunt last week. Three people were killed during the blast and nearly 200 others wounded.  Many victims are now without limbs. One police officer was shot and killed on the campus of MIT by the terrorists.

We know both brothers self-identified as Muslims, and we know both were “radicalized” at some point over the last few years.

And we also know, as reported on our Corruption Chronicles blog, that Tamerlan could have been deported after a 2009 domestic violence arrest.

As to the rest of the story, there is much we don’t yet know for certain regarding how these brothers fit into the overall terrorist network.

But we are beginning to get a disturbing read on the depth of the U.S. national security failures that allowed the attacks to happen in the first place, a subject considered by a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing this week.  The narrative is emerging of willful blindness by Obama administration agencies to the warning signs leading up to this attack:

• The Boston Globe notes that Russian authorities alerted the U.S. government not once but “multiple times” over their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, “including a second time nearly a year after he was first interviewed by FBI agents in Boston.”

• Members of Congress were “particularly concerned that U.S. Customs generated an alert when Tamerlan Tsarnaev left for Russia in 2012 but no one was aware when he returned and he was not re-interviewed,” Reuters reports.

• According to The Washington Post, the CIA had its suspicions more than a year before the bombings and urged action: “The CIA pushed to have one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers placed on a U.S. counterterrorism watch list more than a year before the attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday…The disclosure of the CIA’s involvement suggests that the U.S. government may have had more reason than it has previously acknowledged to scrutinize Tsarnaev in the months leading up to the bombings in Boston. It also raises questions why U.S. authorities didn’t flag his return to the United States and investigate him further after a seven-month trip he took to Russia last year.”

Reuters also further noted that some of the accusations of “information hoarding” by intelligence agencies are cropping up again: “Some on Capitol Hill questioned whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. security agencies failed to share information about suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, even after reforms enacted to prevent information-hoarding following the September 11 hijacked plane attacks 12 years ago.”

And, of course, your Judicial Watch is the go-to source for details and analysis on this issue.  Today, we posted another Corruption Chronicles story highlighting documents dating from 1998 in that detail how Chechen terrorists Chechen terrorists use cell phones to detonate backpack bombs.  You can view this article, which is sure to make headlines, here.

Could intelligence agencies have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings?  We sure can’t rule that out. Yahoo reported that the surviving terrorist, Dhokhar, “told investigators from his hospital bed that the brothers grew radical from anti-U.S. material on the internet and acted without assistance from any foreign or domestic militant groups.”

So we’re supposed to believe the word of a terrorist? Not a chance, says Rep. Peter King: “That basically seems to be the story, but I don’t see how we can accept that,” King told CNN.

I couldn’t agree more. Authorities must investigate every shred of evidence and pursue every lead until they determine who else, if anyone, was involved in this terrorist attack on the United States.  But the Obama administration is blaming a federal magistrate for prematurely Mirandizing Dhokhar, and he has clammed up.  (The Obama administration had infamously “Mirandized” the would-be Christmas bomber.)

As you know, even before 9/11, JW launched a comprehensive investigation into terrorist networks, including the so-called moderate Muslim groups that fund acts of terror, and the rampant political correctness inside federal agencies that keep federal investigators blind to the “enemy within.”  You may be surprised to know, as The Washington Examiner editorializes, that:

It is quite possible, though, the FBI agents who interviewed Tsarnaev on both occasions failed to understand what they saw and heard because that’s what they were trained to do. As The Washington Examiner‘s Mark Flatten reported last year, FBI training manuals were systematically purged in 2011 of all references to Islam that were judged offensive by a specially created five-member panel. Three of the panel members were Muslim advocates from outside the FBI, which still refuses to make public their identities. Nearly 900 pages were removed from the manuals as a result of that review. Several congressmen were allowed to review the removed materials in 2012, on condition that they not disclose what they read to their staffs, the media, or the general public.

You can trust that Judicial Watch is on the case and is actively litigating and investigating this terrorist-front-inspired bowdlerization of our national security establishment’s counter-terrorism training materials.

We will have more for you on the Boston Marathon bombing next week or as news events warrant.

Judicial Watch Uncovers USDA Records Promoting US Food Stamp Program for Illegal Aliens

A few weeks ago, I was a guest on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity program to talk about food stamp fraud. The title of the show was “Boomtown 2: The Business of Food Stamps,” and it laid bare an Obama administration scheme to use the food stamp program to foster a massive redistribution of wealth.

(Click here to find out how Obama and his friends have actually found a way to meld corporate cronyism with food stamp abuse to line their pockets while undermining our election systems.)

Well, this week Judicial Watch released explosive new details regarding a new corruption of the food stamp program perpetrated by the Obama administration – this time involving illegal aliens

On Thursday, we released documents detailing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program.

The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance.

Emphasized in bold and underlined, the statement reads, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”

We got the records pursuant to a FOIA request made to USDA on July 20, 2012, seeking “Any and all records of communication relating to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, and migrant communities, including but not limited to, communications with the Mexican government.”

What we received in response was truly shocking.

According to the records, USDA officials are working closely with their counterparts at the Mexican Embassy to widely broaden the SNAP program in the Mexican immigrant community, with no effort to restrict aid to, identify, or apprehend illegal immigrants who may be on the food stamp rolls.

In an email to Borjon Lopez-Coterilla and Jose Vincente of the Mexican Embassy, dated January 26, 2012, Yibo Wood of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) sympathized with the plight of illegal aliens applying for food stamps, saying, “FNS understands that mixed status households may be particularly vulnerable. Many of these households contain a non-citizen parent and a citizen child.

The email from Wood to Lopez-Coterilla and Vincente came in response to a request from the Mexican Embassy that the USDA FNS step in to prevent the state of Kansas from changing its food stamp policy to restrict the amount of financial assistance provided to illegal aliens. In a January 22, 2012, article, the Kansas City Star had revealed that the state would no longer include illegal aliens in its calculations of the amount of assistance to be provided low-income Hispanic families in order to prevent discrimination against legal recipients.

Here are some other gems from the records:

• March 30, 2012 – The USDA seeks approval of the Mexican Embassy in drafting a letter addressed to consulates throughout the United States designed to encourage them to enroll in a webinar to train Mexican embassy staffers how to promote increased enrollment among “the needy families that the consulates serve.”

• August 1, 2011 – The USDA FNS initiates contact with the Mexican Embassy in New York to implement programs already underway in DC and Philadelphia for maximizing participation among Mexican citizens.The Mexican Embassy responds that the Consul General is eager to strengthen his ties to the USDA, with specific interest in promoting the nation’s food stamp program.

• February 25, 2011 – USDA and the Mexican Consulate exchange ideas about getting the First Ladies of Mexico and United States to visit a school for purposes of creating a photo opportunity that would promote free school lunches for low-income students in a predominantly Hispanic school. Though a notation in the margin of the email claims that the photo op never took place, UPI reported that it actually did.

• March 3, 2010 – A flyer advertises a webinar to teach nonprofits how to get reimbursed by USDA for serving free lunch over the summer. The course, funded by American taxpayers, is advertised as being “free for all participants.”

• February 9 , 2010 – USDA informs the Mexican Embassy that, based on an agreement reached between the State Department and the Immigration & Naturalization Service (now ICE), the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) food voucher program does not violate immigration laws prohibiting immigrants from becoming a “public charge.”

Now while these records might be news to many folks, Judicial Watch has been on this story since 2006, when our Corruption Chronicles blog revealed that the USDA was spending taxpayer money to run Spanish-language television ads encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for government-financed food stamps.

The Mexico Consul in Santa Ana, California, at the time even starred in some of the U.S. Government-financed television commercials, which explained the program and provided a phone number to apply. In the widely viewed commercial, the Consul assured that receiving food stamps “won’t affect your immigration status.”

In 2012, Judicial Watch reported that in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions questioned the Obama administration’s partnership with Mexican consulates to encourage foreign nationals, migrant workers and non-citizen immigrants to apply for food stamps and other USDA administered welfare benefits. Sessions wrote, “It defies rational thinking for the United States – now dangerously $16 trillion in debt – to partner with foreign governments to help us place more foreign nationals on American welfare and it is contrary to good immigration policy in the United States.”

The revelation that the USDA is actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens should have a direct impact on the fate of the immigration bill now being debated in Congress. These disclosures further confirm the fact that the Obama administration cannot be trusted to protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. And the coordination with a foreign government to attack the policies of an American state is contemptible.

Our work on this issue earned national and _{interzznational headlines} educating untold numbers about this Obama corruption and abuse.  The documents will be seen this evening, Friday 26, on the Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” We aren’t letting go of this issue and have ramped up our investigations accordingly.  I will be sure to keep you apprised of what we find.

Until next week…

The breaking developments surrounding the Boston terrorist attack has the nation transfixed on events in Boston.  Judicial Watch is contributing to the public’s understanding by breaking news about the terrorist suspects and highlighting the results of past investigations on terrorism in Chechnya.  Our Corruption Chronicles blog post is making national headlines.  I’ll save the commentary on this story for another time and reprint our news post for you in full:

One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings could have been deported years ago after a criminal conviction and the other was granted American citizenship on the 11^th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently didn’t feel he represented a big enough threat.

Adding insult to injury, the other bomber, little brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was rewarded with American Citizenship on September 11, 2012, in Boston, according to JW’s source. The 19-year-old, who is still on the run, was granted asylum in Arlington, Virginia on September 27, 2002, JW’s source reveals.

Years before these Chechen terrorists carried out the Boston Marathon bombings Judicial Watch uncovered critical intelligence documents detailing al Qaeda’s activities in Chechnya, including the creation of a 1995 camp—ordered by Osama bin Laden—to train “international terrorists” to carry out plots against Americans and westerners.

The goal, according to the once-classified documents obtained by JW in 2011, was to “establish a worldwide Islamic state capable of directly challenging the U.S., China, Russia, and what it views as Judeo-Christian and Confucian domination.” Further, radical Islamic regimes were to be established and supported everywhere possible, from “sea to sea,” including Chechnya. “Terrorist activities are to be conducted against Americans and westerners…” according to the report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

In other words, it was only a matter of time before terrorists from the predominantly radical Islamic republic carried out an attack on U.S. soil. Chechnya declared independence from Russia in 1991 and Chechen militants are quite the savvy terrorists because they’ve successfully targeted Moscow with bombings and hostage plots for more than two decades.

In 2004 Chechen Islamic militants attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia and they murdered 380 children, parents, teachers and visitors after holding more than 1,000 captive for three days. Judicial Watch also obtained intelligence documents from the government detailing that terrorist attack. Jointly released by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the October 12, 2004, report analyzes the Beslan terrorist attack with a view toward gleaning lessons for potential attacks on schools in the United States.

There’s no telling how many of these Chechen terrorists have infiltrated the United States or how many opportunities the government has missed to protect the country by deporting them. Osama bin Laden specifically chose Chechnya as a terrorist training camp because it’s an “area unreachable by strikes from the west,” according to the intelligence report obtained by JW years ago.

Amnesty Plus, Plus

At first it was called “stealth amnesty,” back when the Obama administration circumvented Congress and began quietly (and unlawfully) releasing illegal aliens onto the streets. After the press outed the Homeland Security-led scheme, the Obama administration went public and started proudly “prioritizing” illegal alien deportations, allowing violent illegal alien criminals to stay in the country without repercussion.

And now, President Obama’s illegal alien amnesty program has been concretized in a mammoth 844-page bill endorsed by the so-called “Gang of 8” Senators, including key Republicans, who struck a deal on the bill behind closed doors.

(You can read the legislation for yourself here. But at 844 pages, be prepared to give up your entire weekend and then some – and that’s if you read nonstop! Credit to CNS News’ Craig Bannister for doing the math.)

But here’s the bottom line: this legislation provides amnesty for millions of illegal aliens – and their relatives – almost immediately with the possibility of permanent status for illegals after 10 years of “good behavior,” followed by citizenship three years later. (Some illegals are given a “streamlined path to citizenship” in half that time.)

Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican from the border state of Texas, did not mince words in his response to the illegal immigration overhaul:

“It’s hard to believe, but the Senate immigration bill is worse than we thought. Despite assurances, the border is not secured before almost everyone in the country illegally is given amnesty.  The bill guarantees there will be a rush across the border to take advantage of massive amnesty.”

“And the Senate proposal offers amnesty to far more illegal immigrants than we thought. In addition to most of the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country, the bill offers to legalize the relatives of illegal immigrants outside the U.S. and even others who have already been deported back home. So current immigration laws are shredded.”

As The Hill reports, the new bill, heavily criticized for its lack of attention to border security would, nonetheless, “bring a raft of new regulations and add more layers to the federal bureaucracy.” New federal agencies will be created, new rules devised, the visa system completely overhauled.

And if you take a look at some of the legislation’s key components, an inordinate amount of money and time are wrapped up in helping illegal aliens – who should lawfully be deported immediately – to transition into society.

How else do you explain the fact that the legislation calls for the creation of a task force of Cabinet-level officials to help with illegal alien integration issues?

Or the bill’s proposed pilot program which provides block grants to state and local governments to establish New Immigrant Councils to help illegal aliens successfully transition from illegal to legal. (The cost of these proposed grants – $100 million.)

Or the Agriculture Department’s charter to establish new housing and pay standards for sheep and goat herders?

And the special treatment is not simply limited to government coddling.  As the law is written, newly legalized aliens are even given a leg up on jobs over their citizen counterparts! According to an analysis by Investor’s Business Daily, under this proposed legislation businesses have a $3,000 incentive to hire a “newly legalized immigrant” over a U.S. citizen:

The bipartisan legislation released Wednesday dictates that those granted provisional legal immigrant status would be treated the same as those ‘not lawfully present’ are treated under the 2010 health law.

That means they would neither be eligible for ObamaCare tax credits nor required to pay an individual tax penalty for failing to obtain qualifying health coverage. It also means some employers would face no penalty for failing to provide such workers affordable health coverage.

As IBD points out, under Obamacare, if health insurance costs are above 9.5% of a full-time worker’s salary, that worker is eligible for the Obamacare exchange program. And employers who provide health insurance for their employees may be required to pay up to a $3,000 fine for each worker who receives Obamacare subsidies – but not if that worker is “newly legalized” and, therefore, exempt from provisions of Obamacare.

And, folks, pay attention to the language in this bill. It is important.

The legislation creates a brand new bureaucratic phrase: “registered provisional immigrant.” So if you’ve been paying attention to how things have unfolded to this point since President Obama took office, we have moved from the term “illegal alien” to “undocumented worker” to now “registered provisional immigrants.”

Guess what term comes next. According to the bill, the name of the chief federal agency responsible for overseeing immigration policy will be changed from “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” to the “Office of Citizenship and New Americans.”

From “illegal alien” to “New American.”

Yes, this is the largest overhaul of the immigration system in decades. So obviously, given the complexity and enormity of this legislation, Congress will allow for a protracted review process, right? Not if the “Gang of Eight” have their way. Bill supporter Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) seems to think two hearings, at most, should do the trick. The first is scheduled for April 22, 2013.  This hearing had originally been scheduled for this past Wednesday, but has been postponed due to the Boston terror attack (which, as you can see above, is directly related to this issue.)  Like Obamacare, the process is being perverted.  The bill is released in the middle of the night, a hearing with still-secret witnesses is held less than a few days later, and a key committee vote would take place by May 15.

So, here is how I see it.  This bill grants amnesty almost immediately to most of the illegal aliens here.  It also allows for amnesty for relatives of these illegal aliens.  And it allows certain illegal aliens who have been deported to be granted amnesty.  That, folks, is amnesty, plus, plus!  To be clear, the bill does not require the border to be secure for this nearly instant, massive amnesty to take place.

There’s still much to be unwrapped from this monstrous bill.  This comprehensive immigration reform is to immigration as Obamacare is to health care.

I strongly encourage you to contact your senators today.  Do not wait as this legislation is set to be rushed through the process without your voice being heard. The phone number for the Capitol Hill switchboard is 202-224-3121.  And here’s a link to a site where you can find the contact information for every U.S. Senator.

Judicial Watch Sues Department of Justice for Records on Controversial Voter Registration Effort in Massachusetts

As I’ve said before, Judicial Watch’s Election Integrity Project, launched in 2012, continues to be a major priority for the organization. The next election season is already almost upon us, believe it or not, with the mid-terms next year. Much remains to be learned from dissecting the Left’s attempts to lie, cheat and steal votes during the last go-around.

And so JW’s investigations continue, including our efforts to get to the bottom of a rather obvious effort to aid the campaign of Elizabeth Warren, now a Senator from Massachusetts.

On March 27, 2013, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain records revealing “any and all” communications between the DOJ Civil Rights Division and New England United for Justice (NEU4J), NEU4J President Maude Hurd, the NAACP, Demos, and Project Vote regarding the enforcement and implementation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in Massachusetts. (Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.)

The Judicial Watch lawsuit came in response to the failure of the DOJ to comply with two separate FOIA requests regarding voter registration activities in Massachusetts. In both cases, the DOJ not only failed to produce the records in the time period required under FOIA, it also failed to indicate when the records would be produced, as required by law. No surprises there, right?

Now here’s what we’re specifically after pursuant to our original May 24, 2012, FOIA request submitted to the DOJ Civil Rights Division seeking information dating back to January 1, 2011:

• Any and all records of communications between any official or employee of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and any officer, employee or representative of New England United for Justice (NEU4J), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and/or Demos, regarding, concerning, or related to the implementation and enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

• Any and all records of communications between any official of the Department of Justice and Ms. Maude Hurd, the President of New England United for Justice.

By a letter dated May 29, 2012, the DOJ Civil Rights Division acknowledged receiving the Judicial Watch FOIA on May 24, and was required by law to respond by June 21, 2012. It failed to do so.

Regarding the second FOIA, on August 20, 2012, we sent a request to the Civil Rights Division seeking the following information also dating back to January 1, 2011:

• Any and all records of communications between any official or employee of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and any officer, employee or representative of New England United for Justice (NEU4J), Demos, and/or Project Vote regarding, concerning, or related to voter registration in Massachusetts.

By a letter dated August 21, 2012, the Civil Rights Division acknowledged receiving the FOIA request on the same day, and was required by law to respond by September 19, 2012. Once again, it failed to do so.

The Judicial Watch lawsuit filed on March 27 asks that the District Court order the Obama DOJ to “conduct a search for any and all responsive records” to the FOIA and “produce, by a certain date, any and all non-exempt records,” along with an index of all records the department continues to declare exempt. It also asks the Court grant Judicial Watch attorney’s fees and additional litigation costs.

Now let’s get to the heart of why this information matters.

According to a Judicial Watch analysis of records, NEU4J is the reincarnation of the corrupt “community organization” ACORN in New England, the nationwide Obama-tied community organization famous for operating fraudulent voter registration drives during the 2008 presidential campaign. Judicial Watch research found that ACORN’s Boston office rebranded into New England United for Justice, headed by Maude Hurd, the former president of ACORN and ACORN Housing. (Click here to read JW’s special report on ACORN rebranding.)

And in 2012, the ACORN-connected organization was up to its old tricks.

In the final days of the senatorial election campaign between then-Sen. Scott Brown current and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, NE4J’s Hurd orchestrated a move by the state of Massachusetts to send out voter registration letters to some 500,000 welfare recipients. The mailing was forced through by the Department of Transitional Assistance after a lawsuit pushed by Hurd’s New England United for Justice. The mailings, which were seen to directly aid the Warren campaign, cost taxpayers nearly $275,000. The state also had to advertise on TV and radio stations, again targeting welfare recipients.

In March, the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General issued a report raising questions about inappropriate coordination and conduct on this election integrity issue by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and outside left-wing groups. Thomas Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Labor Secretary, had headed the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and has stonewalled the American people for nearly a year now. (Perez reportedly “breezed” through a Senate hearing this week on his nomination.)

Now, as you know by now, this latest lawsuit against the DOJ is part of the JW’s comprehensive Election Integrity Project, which seeks to force states to maintain accurate voter registration lists, while upholding voter integrity measures, such as Voter ID laws.

Judicial Watch has been a leading critic of the Obama DOJ’s efforts to abuse Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which seeks to expand the number of registered voters on public assistance, while failing to enforce Section 8 of the NVRA, which requires states to maintain clean voter registration lists. In fact, we’ve done more than criticize. We’ve gone to court over the matter and sued states directly to clean up the rolls.

And we’ve also taken actions to expose the rampant collusion between the DOJ and leftist special interest groups.

It seems clear from our investigations that leftist special interest groups are running the DOJ and we need to know the full extent of this corrupt partnership – especially on this matter of election integrity.

We aim to get to the bottom of this corrupt partnership.

Until next week…

Obamacare set a nasty precedent in Washington:  radical and unpopular legislation is developed behind closed doors and then passed quickly, without time for sufficient public scrutiny.

Tragically, this is exactly what is happening on Capitol Hill as the so-called “bi-partisan Gang of Eight” Senators (four Democrats and four Republicans) is working with the Obama White House to craft broad, sweeping changes to our immigration enforcement system with a shocking lack of transparency.

Some U.S. Senators don’t like the backroom dealing on this so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

In fact, on March 19, 2013, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee – sans two Senators from the so-called “Gang of Eight” (Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona) – sent a letter to Chairman Patrick Leahy issuing a simple request: “provide all members of the Senate, and, most importantly, the public, a full and fair opportunity to become adequately informed on illegal alien amnesty discussions and legislation.”

Here are a few excerpts from the letter I’d like to share with you:

• As you are aware, this [amnesty] bill potentially could be the most dramatic and consequential alteration of our immigration system in nearly 30 years, impacting nearly every aspect of our legal and economic structure, and increasing entitlement spending to historic levels.

• Accordingly, we respectfully request that the public be given adequate time, consistent with past practices in handling complex comprehensive immigration legislation, to read and analyze the contents of any such bill before it is listed on the Committee’s Executive Business Meeting agenda. We further request that during this time, the Committee hold hearings on the overarching issues integral to the legislation.

• We believe the process we have set forth is necessary not only to ensure that members are properly educated on this complex measure, but also to ensure a fair and open process so that the American people know what is in any such bill.

The letter also noted that, during debate over immigration reform in 1982, Congress held 100 hours of hearings and hosted 300 witnesses. Debate over the bill lasted for three years.

And this time around? Senator Leahy has one measly hearing on the calendar, scheduled for next week – despite the fact that the amnesty legislation has not been presented yet!  Not good enough say Senate Republicans. According to Fox News: “Republican senators complained…that plans to hold just one hearing on a yet-to-be-unveiled immigration overhaul are ‘unacceptable’ – as they continued to press for more details on how much the legislation could cost taxpayers…”

Senator Jeff Sessions, a vocal critic of the secretive nature of the amnesty negotiations issued a strong statement on Wednesday of this week rebuking Senator Leahy for “doubling down” on his plan to rush the bill through Congress:

The process that Chairman Leahy has described – a single hearing on a potentially 1,500 page bill – is unacceptable. It is an explicit rejection of the process demanded by Judiciary Committee Republicans and endorsed by Senator Rubio.

To acquiesce to such a process would be to accept the Majority’s plan to rush through this massive legislation before the American people know what’s in it. Now that the special interests have what they want, the deal has been made: force it through and set the public interest aside

Senator Sessions called for a hearing “on every component of reform, including the extraordinary potential costs to taxpayers, the impact on wages and job prospects for the unemployed, and the Administration’s continued refusal to enforce the laws previously enacted by Congress.”

Now it’s your turn. Contact your Senators today and tell them your views on whether amnesty should be rushed through Congress. The phone number for the Capitol Hill switchboard is 202-224-3121. And here’s a link to a site where you can find the contact information for every U.S. Senator.

Senate liberals, open border Republicans and their special interest illegal immigration allies want to shut you out of this debate. Don’t let them.

Corporate Cronyism and the Food Stamp Army

The massive $80 billion per year federal “food stamp” program was the focus of a special on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity program called “Boomtown 2: The Business of Food Stamps.” I was privileged to be a guest on the program, which exposed an Obama administration scheme to use the food stamp program to foster a massive redistribution of wealth.

As has been reported frequently, the Obama administration is proudly shattering welfare records with an astonishing number of people collecting public benefits long-term, especially food stamps. Obama and his friends have actually found a way to meld corporate cronyism with food stamp abuse to line their pockets while undermining our election systems.

Under Obama, the “food stamp” program has exploded with a record number of people—46 million and growing—getting free groceries from the American taxpayer. Adding insult to injury, a federal audit revealed last year that many who don’t qualify for food stamps now receive them under a new “broad-based” eligibility program that disregards income and asset requirements.

Obama says the food stamp extension is part of his intention of eradicate “food insecure households.” But, it’s really part of a massive redistribution of the wealth. Last year, taxpayers were forced to pay more than $80 billion, including an estimated $750 million a year in outright fraud.

The term “estimated” is used advisedly here, because, the fact is, the government is involved in a deliberate cover-up to prevent taxpayers from learning the full truth about who receives food stamps, how they are spent, and how much of it is going for illicit – and even nefarious – purchases. As a stunning study by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) recently revealed, “The USDA already collects such data. So far, however, the data have not been made available to the public.”

Now, you might be wondering why the federal government would want to withhold such vital information from those who are forced to pick up the food stamp tab. In particular, why would it be so reluctant to thoroughly investigate and expose food stamp fraud? Well, a large part of the answer lies in the title of the GAI study: “Profits from Poverty: How Food Stamps Benefit Corporations.”

According to the study, the current food stamp Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card industry is dominated by three main players: J.P. Morgan Electronic Financial Services, Affiliated Computer Services, and eFunds. Together they collect money from 49 states and three territories. In fact, since 2004, 18 of 24 states that contract with J.P. Morgan have paid more than $560 million to the financial monolith.

Little wonder then that those three companies appear to be perfectly content with the exploding food stamp rolls – and wholly unconcerned about rampant fraud and abuse. As the GAI study observed, “The more persons enrolled in the program, the more money the EBT industry makes.” That may also help explain why, when the state of Florida initiated an eight-month program to detect and prevent fraud among its three million EBT card users, J.P. Morgan saw fit to assign just one employee to the program.

And then there is this: During the 2008 election, Barack Obama received more than $800,000 from J.P. Morgan alone. After his election, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, initiated by Obama and passed by a compliant Congress, made two major changes to existing food stamp policies. First, it increased benefits by 13.6 percent. Second, it actively encouraged states to add more recipients to their food stamp rolls.

But, the corporate cronyism and political payoffs don’t end there. The House and Senate Agricultural Committees have jurisdiction over all food assistance and distribution programs, including the food stamp program.

So, just as one might expect, analysis by the GAI uncovered a clear trend of increasing contributions to Agriculture Committee members of both the House and Senate on the part of J.P. Morgan that clearly coincides with their entry into the lucrative EBT card food stamp market. Between 1998 and 2002, Morgan’s total contributions per election cycle averaged $82,897. After the bank entered the EBT services market until the 2010 election cycle, their average donation per cycle more than doubled to $215,120. And the Agriculture Committees, in turn, have broadly expanded the number of food stamp recipients.

Of course, the more recipients that are added to the food stamp rolls, the more voters Obama can count on at election time. And, the offshoots of Obama’s former client and campaign partner, ACORN, assure not only that those voters are registered, but also that they know to whom they are beholden for their government handouts.

The GAI study concludes, “Increasing profits for JP Morgan in turn means increasing returns for investors.” And, unfortunately, they also appear to mean an exponentially increasing food stamp bill for the American taxpayer. And, Obama’s new Food Stamp Army is seen as a reliable source of new voters for the progressive agenda.

ACORN’s Project Vote remains highly active in registering voters on public assistance. In Colorado, as you may recall, Judicial Watch uncovered documents proving that ACORN/Project Vote successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons.

And what was the result of these new policies?

The percentage of fraudulent voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies exploded to four times the national average. Our investigations also show that the Obama Justice Department is partnering with Project Vote in this campaign to register as many public assistance voters as possible, while neglecting (or outright opposing) legal requirements that ineligible voters are kept off of the voting rolls.

You can see that there are many big lies in the food stamp program. Rather than putting food on the table for poor people, the program is now about massive cash transfer payments to not-so-poor people and major corporations, greased by campaign donations – all in the hopes of gaining new voters – legal or not. 

The 11-year-old FOIA

If you haven’t clicked to read our Corruption Chronicles blog, you’re missing a treat. My JW colleague Irene Garcia has made this blog the “go to” source for government corruption stories on the Internet.  This week, a post on an almost comical contempt for transparency gained a lot of attention.

I reprinted this post below in full. (Please visit our blog here to read more.)

***

The U.S. government, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, is renowned for violating federal transparency laws and blowing off or unscrupulously delaying records requests, but this is a bit much.

Judicial Watch recently got an official rejection letter involving a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that dates back to 2002! It almost seems like a joke, but it’s not. As part of a broad investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, JW submitted FOIA requests to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) in September 2002.

It’s quite common for federal agencies as well as the White House to flip the finger at FOIA requests that could expose wrongdoing or shed a negative light. In fact, JW often must file lawsuits to get “public” records that should not require litigation to obtain. In this particular case, it took the DIA and NSA a whopping 11 years to determine that the information falls under the “release authority” of a different agency—the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).

This means that the NCIS must now take the time to consider the records request, which requires a “classification review,” according to the 11-year-old response JW got recently from the Navy. “Your request has been placed in our complex queue. At this time we are unable to provide you an approximate completion date.” Reading between the lines, this means that no one should hold their breath since there appears to be no intention of furnishing the records.

At least the Navy’s letter, laughable as it is, offers an apology for taking 11 years to respond. “We apologize for the delay in processing your request.” Again, it’s not uncommon to get the run-around during the FOIA process and lawsuits are par for the course, but this shatters all records. Perhaps this one should be framed.

These types of obstacles, however, don’t stop JW from rooting out government corruption.  When it comes to 9/11, JW has been a leader in exposing much of what the mainstream media has failed to report. Earlier this year, for instance, JW obtained documents from the State Department indicating that the FBI knew days after the 9/11 attacks that Anwar al-Aulaqi, assassinated by a U.S. drone in Yemen in 2011, had purchased airplane tickets for three of the terrorist hijackers.

This is relevant because al-Aulaqi, who was born in the U.S., was detained and released by authorities at least twice and had been invited to dine at the Pentagon. Yet the feds knew he had purchased airline tickets for the following 9/11 hijackers: Mohammed Atta, America West Airlines, 08/13/2001, for a flight from Washington, DC, to Las Vegas, Nevada, to Miami, Florida; S. Suqami, Southwest Airlines, 07/10/2001, for a flight from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Orlando, Florida; Al-Sheri, National Airlines, 08/01/2001, for a flight from San Francisco, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada, to Miami, Florida.

***

Over the years, we have seen some off-the-wall attempts by the federal government to avoid releasing information. We’ve heard the ridiculous excuses, the outrageous legal claims, and have suffered one trick after another.

As I told the Daily Caller:

“It is a sad reminder that when it comes to being accountable, when it comes to following the law, the federal government doesn’t give a rat’s tail,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told The Daily Caller. “And this is why we have had to sue well over a hundred times to get access to government information.”

There is a transparency crisis in Washington, DC – remember that (and the 11-year Freedom of Information Act request!) the next time you hear President Obama (or any other president) boast of their transparency efforts.  I encourage you to go to our Internet site to find out about efforts to stem the transparency crisis – and how you can help us bring transparency and accountability to our out-of-control government.

Until next week…

If you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you know that Judicial Watch has been the leading force in uncovering the suspicious and dangerous connections between Obama administration officials and radical leftist special interest groups on a host of issues, from stealth amnesty to voter fraud to reverse discrimination. (See our most recent find, the outrageous videos we uncovered from the USDA, as a disturbing example of just how radical this behavior has become.)

On March 27, 2013, our effort to root out these connections continued as we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Education (DOE) on behalf of the Family Research Council (FRC). FRC is a leading conservative advocacy group that seeks to advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview.

Here’s what we want to know: To what extent did the DOJ or DOE cooperate and coordinate with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) in their lawsuit again the Anoka-Hennepin School District of Minnesota.

Now, there is no doubt that this controversy in Minnesota involved an extraordinary intervention by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, run by Thomas E. Perez, President’s Obama’s current nominee for Secretary of Labor and a key figure in a host of DOJ scandals (beginning with the New Black Panther Party). JW and FRC just want to know how extraordinary. And we want the details.

On April 24, 2012, FRC submitted a FOIA request to the DOJ and DOE requesting the following information dating back to June 1, 2011:

A. Any and all records concerning, regarding, or relating to the anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies of the Anoka-Hennepin School District which culminated in the Anoka-Hennepin Consent Decree;

B. Any and all communications between and/or among the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and/or the National Center for Lesbian Rights concerning, regarding, or relating to the anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies of the Anoka-Hennepin School District which culminated in the Anoka-Hennepin Consent Decree;

C. Any and all communications between the Department of Education and/or U.S. Department of Justice and any third parties not named in #2 (above), concerning, regarding, or relating to the anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies of the Anoka-Hennepin School District which culminated in the Anoka-Hennepin Consent Decree.

In short, we are getting the runaround from both agencies.

In a letter dated August 31, 2012, the Civil Rights Division, a component of DOJ, informed FRC that it was denying access to all responsive records involving its role in the Anoka-Hennepin affair. On September 28, 2012, FRC appealed the DOJ’s decision. Though the DOJ acknowledged receiving the appeal on October 25, it has failed to provide a response to the appeal, which was due by November 1, 2012.

In a letter dated May 30, 2012, the DOJ’s Office for Civil Rights informed FRC that it had located 7,453 pages responsive to FRC’s FOIA request, but was withholding 7,159 pages in their entirety. On June 29, 2012, FRC appealed the DOE decision. According to the U.S. Postal Service, DOE received the appeal on July 5, 2012, but has failed to provide a response to the appeal, which was due by August 3, 2012.

We are asking the District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit to simply order the Obama DOJ and DOE to conduct searches for all records responsive to the FRC FOIA request and to “produce, by a certain date, any and all non-exempt records,” along with indices of all records the departments continue to declare exempt.

I feel like it should go without saying that it is not the proper role of the United States Departments of Justice or Education to collude with radical leftwing organizations like the SPLC in order to impose their political agenda on parents or the American people generally. And the fact that both departments are intent to cover up their collusion makes this court fight more important.

For a bit of background, in July, 2011, the SPLC joined with the NCLR to sue the Anoka-Hennepin School District to overturn the district’s policy requiring its teachers to remain neutral on the subject of homosexuality. In apparent coordination with those groups, the Obama DOJ, after what it termed “an extensive investigation into sex-based harassment,” compelled the school district to sign a 61-page Consent Agreement on March 5, 2012.

Not content with simply forcing its agenda on the school district, the Holder Justice Department added insult to injury.

In July 2012, a group of DOJ employees, led by Holder, joined with the SPLC to honor the Anoka-Hennepin School District students involved in the lawsuit to force the district to endorse homosexual conduct. Five of the students received an award at DOJ’s annual LGBT Pride Month program in the Great Hall of the Main Justice Building.

As I say, this is not the first example of the DOJ’s collusion with the radical left. And it won’t be the last.

In fact, specifically related to SPLC, JW obtained nearly two dozen pages of emails from the DOJ Civil Rights and Tax Divisions revealing questionable behavior by agency personnel while negotiating for SPLC co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a July 31, 2012, “Diversity Training Event.”

The Judicial Watch FOIA request was prompted by the terrorist shooting at the FRC headquarters in August, 2012. On the SPLC’s website, which the shooter used to get a list of targets, the SPLC lists FRC’s headquarters on a “hate map.” The SPLC refuses to take FRC off the “hate map” even after the organization was connected in court to the shooting.

JW also uncovered records indicating that the DOJ worked hand-in-hand with the American Civil Liberties Union to attack Arizona over the state’s tough illegal immigration enforcement law, SB 1070. Judicial Watch released records detailing the cooperation between the ACORN-connected Project Vote to attack states, such as Florida, for implementing voter integrity measures, such as Voter ID laws. Judicial Watch also probed the role that the NAACP played in the controversial DOJ dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation lawsuit.

Judicial Watch Sues Labor Department for Records Detailing Visit of Obama Labor Secretary to CASA de Maryland Training Centers for Illegal Aliens

Speaking of the Obama administration and its penchant for partnering with extreme left-wing organizations, on March 14, 2013, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Department of Labor (DOL) seeking records detailing the May 30, 2012, visit of then-Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to CASA de Maryland’s Langley Park training center.

The organization CASA de Maryland should ring a bell. JW has been involved in a number of high-stakes legal battles against this group, which is fighting for a host of “rights” for illegal aliens, including discounted in-state tuition. But don’t accept my characterization of its mission. CASA names in recent IRS filings its chief goal:  helping all people “participate and benefit fully” in American society, “regardless of their immigration status.”

This is also the group that received financial support from the late Communist dictator Hugo Chavez. And race-baiting Department of Justice (DOJ) official Thomas Perez, President Obama’s current nominee for Labor Secretary, previously served as CASA’s president of the board. (Have you notice how often Perez’s name has found its way into this weekly catalog of corruption?)

Now, regarding Solis, in taking part in a roundtable discussion at the center, the former Labor Secretary reportedly told CASA center graduates to report their employers for wage and hour violations, regardless of the workers’ immigration status. “[Barack Obama] knows very well that it is very important to preserve the rights of the Hispanic community and of other communities in any area where they are working,” Solis was quoted as saying. “The federal laws are clear and protect all workers equally, whether or not they have papers.”

(Federal laws are indeed clear regarding illegal immigration. Unfortunately, the Obama administration continues to ignore them, go around them and replace them via executive fiat!)

Our main purpose with this investigation is to get all of the details regarding Solis’s visit to CASA. And so, on June 1, 2012, we sent a FOIA request to the DOL seeking access to the following information:

a. Documentation of funding to Casa de Maryland, directly or through its affiliation with Prince George’s and Montgomery County Colleges;

b. Talking points, briefing books, or any other internal memoranda (in any language) developed in preparation for Secretary Solis’s visit to Casa de Maryland this week;

c. Documentation of transportation, meals, and security associated with Secretary Solis’s visit to Casa de Maryland this week, including invoices, reimbursement authorizations, and check requisitions; and,

d. Notes, agendas, minutes, and any other communications relating to Secretary Solis’s visit to Casa de Maryland this week, including video, audio and e-mail contact with the press and third-party organizations before and after the event.

Under federal law, DOL was required to respond to the Judicial Watch FOIA request by June 29, 2012. According to the Judicial Watch March 14 lawsuit, DOL has “failed to make a determination about whether it will comply … or notify [Judicial Watch] of its right to appeal any adverse determination … Nor has [DOL] produced any records responsive to the request, indicated when any responsive records will be produced, or demonstrated that responsive records are exempt from production.”

The Judicial Watch lawsuit asks the District Court to order the DOL to conduct a search for all responsive records to the original FOIA request, produce all non-exempt records, enjoin the DOL from continuing to withhold non-exempt records, and grant Judicial Watch attorneys’ fees and litigation costs.

Now ask yourself, why would the Obama administration stonewall such a basic request? Certainly there are no national security or privacy considerations. I think the answer is obvious. The stonewalling strongly suggests that the administration is covering up connections and policies that most Americans would find objectionable.

As I say, this is not our first scrape with CASA.

In February 2012, Judicial Watch and its client, MDPetitions.com, scored a major court victory over CASA when the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County ruled against its attempt to block a referendum vote on whether Maryland should provide taxpayer dollar subsidies for the college tuition of certain illegal aliens through the so-called “Maryland Dream Act.”

On March 19, 2013, we also cited the illicit activities of CASA in a statement raising concerns about the nomination of the Perez DOL nomination.

In opposing the Perez nomination, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-AL), described CASA, as “a fringe advocacy group that has instructed illegal immigrants on how to escape detection, and also promoted illegal labor sites and driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.”

Senator Sessions is correct. For certain, most reasonable American citizens would characterize CASA as a “fringe group.” Unfortunately, the Obama administration doesn’t see it that way and continues to give organizations like this not only respect, but a seat at the table in terms of crafting government policy. Just shameful.

Judicial Watch Obtains FBI Records Detailing Banking Activity and Purchases Linking Anwar al-Aulaqi and 9/11 Hijackers

The more we learn about Anwar al Aulaqi, the U.S.-born terrorist assassinated at the direction of Barack Obama by a U.S. drone in Yemen on September 30, 2011, the more reason there is for concern. Not only are we unearthing details about al Aulaqi’s connections to the 9/11 attacks, but we are also learning of the government’s utter failure to recognize the threat he posed, prompting President Obama to ultimately issue the controversial order to take him out via drone.

To our latest find…

On March 4, 2013, Judicial Watch investigators received new records from the FBI that raise new questions about close ties between Anwar al Aulaqi and Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, two of the five hijackers who attacked the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In the documents the FBI describes al Aulaqi as “The Spiritual Leader of the Hijackers.”

We got hold of these records in response to a June, 2012, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI and the U.S. Department of State. They are part of Judicial Watch’s ongoing investigation of al Qaeda in the United States, including its current operations and support network.

Materials received by Judicial Watch reveal the following information that the FBI regarded as worthy of investigation in its probe of ties between al Aulaqi and the 9/11 hijackers:

• An FBI report dated 9/20/2011 notes that al Aulaqi made purchases at a Texaco in La Mesa, California, “several times a month” over the preceding two years. Reportedly this is the station where hijacker Nawaf al Hazmi worked, as did probable 9/11 co-conspirator Mohdar Abdullah (whose close association with and material assistance to al Hazmi and al Mihdhar is well-documented in the 9/11 Commission’s report).

• An undated FBI report indicates an individual received a check for $281.50 from al Aulaqi and wrote a check for $175 to al Hazmi on July 7, 2001. There is no additional information about the transactions. The FBI apparently found the transaction to be of investigative interest because, depending on the identity of the intermediary party, it could indicate direct assistance from al Aulaqi to al Hazmi.

• On 9/13/2001, FBI agents took possession of and searched the vehicle al Aulaqi rented in San Diego on 9/8/2001 (which he kept for one day and drove only 37 miles). While there is no report regarding the results of the search, the action highlights the FBI’s interest in al Aulaqi and suspicions about his trip to San Diego, home to both al Hazmi and al Mihdhar leading up to the attacks.

• An FBI report dated 10/24/2001 indicates that the Bureau became aware three days after the 9/11 attacks (9/14/2001) that al Aulaqi had rented a Mailboxes Etc. mail drop in Falls Church, VA.  The mail box was the subject of a federal grand jury subpoena.

An earlier release of FBI documents obtained by a Judicial Watch FOIA and reported by Fox News suggest that the FBI was aware on September 27, 2001, that al Aulaqi had purchased airplane tickets for three of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers, including mastermind Mohammed Atta. Subsequent to the FBI’s discovery, al Aulaqi was detained and released by authorities at least twice and had been invited to dine at the Pentagon.

Through our investigation, we are learning more about the al Qaeda operational and support network still active in the United States and the massive failure of our national security apparatus. For example, how is it that al Aulaqi was invited to the Pentagon after 9/11 and then let go by the FBI despite warrants for his arrest?

In 2010, President Obama reportedly authorized the assassination of al Aulaqi, the first American citizen added to the government’s “capture or kill” list, describing the radical Muslim cleric as “chief of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).” The Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department has reportedly determined that the targeting and killing of U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law.

Whatever your feelings are about these drone assassinations, this particular killing would not have been necessary if the FBI had simply done its job and kept this dangerous terrorist off the streets and in custody. What could they have learned by interrogating al Aulaqi, who was clearly a well-connected terrorist? Could American lives have been saved?

Given all the debates about the use of drones, it might do us well to investigate the truth about the most notorious targets of this assassination program. Congress won’t bother and much of the media is AWOL, so it once again falls to Judicial Watch to fill in this oversight gap.

Until next week…

Last week, JW attorney Jim Peterson and I visited the U.S. Supreme Court with former Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce to attend oral arguments concerning a critical issue – the right of the state of Arizona to ensure that every vote cast in the state is legitimate.

Senator Pearce was the driving force behind Proposition 200 (the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Projection Act), which requires voters to offer proof of citizenship before casting a ballot. (As you may recall, Senator Pearce also crafted SB1070, Arizona’s tough illegal immigration enforcement law.)

Now I cannot believe we have allowed illegal immigration activists to bully public officials and the courts to the point where clean elections have become controversial. But here we are in the Supreme Court fighting over a basic American principle in a high-stakes case that will have ripple effects across the country.

How high stakes? As UPI put it last October, “an eventual Supreme Court decision will help shape the voting landscape of the future…” The Guardian noted this week that as many as 16 states would be immediately impacted:

The Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments on Monday in a case which will decide whether US states can require voters to submit proof of citizenship to cast a ballot.

The case focuses on whether a voter-approved Arizona law known as Proposition 200, which requires voters to prove they are US citizens, violates federal law. Four other states, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee, have similar laws while 12 other states are contemplating such legislation, officials told The Associated Press.

The measure, amended state laws to require voters to show proof of citizenship to register as well as ID at the polls. Defenders of the law, enacted in 2004 with 55% of the vote, say it is necessary to prevent people from fraudulently impersonating registered voters at the election booth.

Does the country have a problem with election fraud?  You bet. Independent research published by the non-partisan Pew Charitable Trust in February 2012 indicated that, at that time, approximately 24 million active voter registrations throughout the United States – or one out of every eight registrations – were either no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.

And the situation has gotten no better under the Obama administration which not only refuses to enforce provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (which requires that states keep clean voter registration lists), but bends over backwards to attack states that try to impose any voter integrity measure.

As you know, Judicial Watch has led the fight for voter integrity. We launched our Election Integrity campaign in 2012 to force states to clean up their voter registration lists and earned some key victories. And specifically relevant to this case, JW filed an amicus curiae brief on December 14, 2012, with the United States Supreme Court challenging the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declaring that Arizona’s Prop 200 violated the NVRA. (Judicial Watch filed the amicus brief on behalf of Senator Pearce.)

Now let’s take a look at exactly what Prop 200 requires. According to the law, state election officials “shall reject any application for registration that is not accompanied by satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship.”

Such evidence can include a driver’s license, a photocopy of a birth certificate or passport, naturalization documents, or “other documents that are meant as proof that [may be] established pursuant to” federal immigration laws. On April 17, 2012, the Ninth Circuit ruled that voter registration provisions of Arizona’s Proposition 200 violated certain provisions of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. On October 15, 2012, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, a challenge to Proposition 200.

With its amicus curiae brief Judicial Watch maintains that the Ninth Circuit erred when ruling that the NVRA “accept and use” provision prohibited states from requiring additional documentation:

The NVRA also does not provide that it is the exclusive authority on eligibility verification or that, as the Ninth Circuit contended, “Arizona’s only role was to make [the Federal] [F]orm available to applicants and to ‘accept and use’ it for the registration of voters.” [Emphasis added] The language of the statute not only does not prohibit additional documentation requirements, it permits states to “require . . . such identifying information . . . as is necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant . . .” Besides express authorization for a state to “develop and use” a form compliant with the statute’s criteria, the NVRA also provides that “each State shall establish procedures to register to vote in elections for Federal office . . .”

Judicial Watch further argues that, “The Ninth Circuit also failed to give any weight to the stated goal of the NVRA to ‘protect the integrity of the electoral process’ and ‘enhance the participation of eligible citizens as voters in elections for Federal office’ as guiding purposes of the statute. [Emphasis added] Under no sensible reading of the statute is the goal of election integrity advanced by allowing non-citizens to vote.”

As our client Russell Pearce stated when we jointly filed our amicus brief, the rule of law must prevail: “The Ninth Circuit Court ruling ignores the rule of law, common sense and states’ rights. This court (Ninth Circuit) is apparently okay with illegal votes or non-citizens voting. This ruling absolutely flies in the face of common sense and ignores the will of the people of Arizona, who overwhelmingly passed Proposition 200 in 2004.”

We hope the Supreme Court sees the wisdom in these arguments. There is no coherent reason for refusing to allow states to check voter identification other than a desire to circumvent the law and let non-citizens determine the results of American elections. The people of Arizona, and every other state, have the right to protect the sanctity of the ballot box. I am cautiously optimistic, after attending listening to the oral argument, that the High Court will uphold Prop 200 and election integrity.

Stay tuned…

Will Marriage Survive the Supreme Court?

Two high profile marriage cases were front and center in the Supreme Court this week that could have a significant impact on the bedrock institution of marriage. First, the High Court heard oral arguments in a case involving California Proposition 8, through which California voters amended the state Constitution to reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals then struck down Prop 8, and the issue is now before the High Court.

The general consensus with respect to the Proposition 8 case (insert “reading tea leaves” disclaimer here) seemed to be against the notion of the Court issuing a broad sweeping ruling either upholding or striking down gay marriage. Court observers seem to be prepared for a more nuanced ruling limited to the extent possible to the state of California and this particular lawsuit.

Judicial Watch, for its part, is hoping for a direct Supreme Court ruling in favor of Prop 8 as we argued in our amicus brief filed jointly in January with the Allied Educational Foundation:

…should the Supreme Court fail to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision, the people of California would be deprived of “the right to decide for themselves the ways in which they want to restrict or liberalize their marriage laws – or not.”

The Ninth Circuit’s sleight of hand decision … constitutes a dangerous erosion of the principle of rational basis review … Furthermore, the Ninth Circuit decision expands the reaches of the Equal Protection clause in such a way as to eclipse the people’s sovereignty to make laws for their own governance … Finally, this [Supreme] Court should find that petitioners have standing to bring this appeal, as a contrary ruling would undermine the people’s rights to initiative and referendum in twenty-six states.

Of course, the “standing” issue would not be on anyone’s radar if corrupt politicians (we’re looking at you former Governor Schwarzenegger and Governor Jerry Brown) had done the proper thing and defended the people’s right to decide this issue for themselves. Instead they betrayed their duty to defend the law, leaving it to the citizens of California to protect the law.

The second gay marriage case involved a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage as it has been defined since the dawn of civilization. The challenge to DOMA comes courtesy of a plaintiff who is seeking a $300k plus estate tax refund because she thinks her same sex “marriage” in Canada should have been recognized by the federal government.  I thought same sex marriage was about love!

As with Prop 8, the chief executive (President Obama) and the chief law enforcement officer (Attorney General Eric Holder) have betrayed their oaths of office and have refused to defend DOMA — the law of the land — in court.

JW has been highly critical of the Obama Justice Department’s refusal to defend DOMA. In fact, we launched an investigation to get hold of documents that would almost certainly shed light on the administration’s internal deliberations on the issue. (We filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of the Family Research Council.)

It was good to see this week that some of the Supreme Court was critical of this lawlessness as well.  Justice Kennedy called the situation “troubling” and Justice Scalia said, noting that Obama and Holder won’t defend the law but are supposedly enforcing it:

And I’m wondering if we’re living in this new world where the Attorney General can simply decide, yeah, it’s unconstitutional, but it’s not so unconstitutional that I’m not willing to enforce it, if we’re in this new world, I — I don’t want these cases like this to come before this Court all the time.

And I think they will come all the time if that’s — if that’s — if that’s the new regime in the Justice Department that we’re dealing with.

You can see how this thing is a mess.  Beyond the absurdity and hubris of lawyers and judges wondering if they can redefine marriage – despite the will of the people – we have a situation where those officials who took a solemn oath to defend and enforce the law simply refuse to do so. I can’t even hazard a guess on how these cases will turn out.   I fear, especially after last year’s ludicrous and political Supreme Court opinion upholding Obamacare, that the upcoming marriage decisions will undermine the rule of law and further degrade the Supreme Court in the eyes of the public.

You can listen or read the oral arguments to get a full appreciation on the controversy this week.  To access the transcript and audio on the Prop 8 arguments, click here.  To access the transcript and audio on the DOMA arguments, click here.

JW Brief Challenges Constitutionality of Arizona Medical Marijuana Act

Imagine this scenario. Voters in the State of California, after a furious special interest propaganda campaign, elect to flout federal law and render it legal in the state for printers to manufacture their own counterfeit currency. Maybe they were convinced this was a necessary fix the state’s economic woes. Or maybe they were told public officials would use the currency in place of taxpayer funds to bankroll important public projects. The reason doesn’t really matter.

The key question is this: Would you support the right of California to enact such a provision?

My guess is not a chance. However a very similar ridiculous scenario is playing out right now in the State of Arizona where a new state law permits the distribution of marijuana for medical purposes. And Judicial Watch has stepped into the battle.

This week we filed an amicus curiae brief in the Court of Appeals of the State of Arizona, District One, in support of Maricopa County and the State of Arizona’s lawsuit appealing a December, 4, 2012, Maricopa Superior Court ruling that the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA) did not conflict with federal drug laws.

In our brief Judicial Watch maintains that the AMMA, which permits the use of marijuana for medical purposes, is a direct violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), making it unlawful to “manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense” any controlled substance:

Federal law is unambiguous in that marijuana is a controlled substance regulated under a comprehensive statutory and regulatory scheme. As such, the production, sale, and use of marijuana, other than as part of a federally authorized research program, is a violation of federal law regardless of any state law permitting such activities even in a limited manner.

We further argue that, the Superior Court ruling notwithstanding, the CSA preempts the AMMA under the “Supremacy Clause,” which makes federal laws “supreme” to contrary any state law. Citing the CSA provisions, Judicial Watch maintains:

… where a”positive conflict” exists between the CSA and a state law such that “the two cannot consistently stand together, the CSA “shall be construed” as evidencing Congressional intent to “occupy the field” in which the CSA provision operates ….

And how did this wind up in the courts?

In 2010, Arizona voters narrowly approved a ballot measure allowing people with certain debilitating medical conditions to use medical marijuana. Under the law, state health officials can license up to 126 dispensaries in designated areas. In June, 2012, the White Mountain Health Center sued Maricopa County for allegedly stalling approval of its zoning application to prevent it from seeking a state operating license for a dispensary. In December, 2004, the Maricopa Superior Court ruled in White Mountain’s favor.

In its amicus brief defending the Maricopa County appeal, Judicial Watch argues:

Maricopa County cannot issue a zoning permit for a facility for the cultivation and dispensing of marijuana any more than it could issue a permit to establish a “meth lab” or a print shop for counterfeit currency. Our federal system does not permit that.

This is a clear cut case where federal law trumps state law, regardless of how many voters may wish it weren’t so. Medical marijuana special interest groups have invested heavily in shaping public perception on this issue, but we cannot allow the rule of law to be subject to the shifting whims of the electorate.

If marijuana is to be “legalized,” the U.S. Constitution requires that it be done by an act of Congress. In the meantime, a state simply can’t legalize a federal felony.  Conflicting marijuana laws create not just uncertainty in the law, but undermine the rule of law that protects our liberty. I encourage you to read and share our amicus brief, as it provides a useful education on the law surrounding the drug legalization debate.

FOIA Documents Reveal Sequestration Propaganda in HHS Letters to Governors

At this point, I can honestly say that I have never seen a more politicized presidential administration than the one currently in power.

We have a Justice Department overrun by leftist activists from ACORN and the ACLU shaping policies ranging from illegal immigration to discrimination laws to voter integrity. We have a US Department of Agriculture spending hundreds of thousands to hire a radical race hustler to brainwash agency employees, forcing them to chant in unison that the Pilgrims were illegal aliens.

And we have a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that not only pitched Obamacare to the American people through a massive taxpayer-financed propaganda campaign (featuring television icon Andy Griffith), but also used government resources to spread lies about the impact of sequestration on government services.

Allow me to explain.

On March 19, 2013, we received documents from HHS revealing that Deputy Secretary of State William Corr had sent highly politicized letters to the governors of all 50 states attacking Congress and providing misleading information about the effects of the budget sequestration mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.

The documents also contained memos from Secretary of HHS Katherine Sebelius to her employees indicating that sequestration would have little effect upon department operations.

JW obtained the records pursuant to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request  made to HHS on February 26, 2013. The FOIA request asked for: “Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to the projected effects of the potential budget sequestration mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.”

Documents provided by HHS to Judicial Watch included letters sent in early March from Corr to the governors of each of the 50 states politicizing the sequestration:

As you are likely aware, due to the failures of Congress [emphasis added] to reach a deal on balanced deficit reduction to avoid sequestration, a series of spending cuts call sequestration will cancel approximately $85 billion in budgetary resources across the federal government for the remainder of the federal fiscal year.

Each of the fifty Corr letters detail alleged specific cuts for each state, including the previously debunked claim that sequestration would lead to “school systems forced to lay off teachers, teacher assistants, and other staff.” Other threatened cuts include: Head Start and Early Head Start, Social Services, Senior Nutrition Programs, Maternal and Child Healthcare, and Substance Abuse Treatment/Prevention.

In a Washington Post article on February 27, 2013, entitled “4 Pinocchio’s for Arne Duncan’s false claim of ‘pink slips’ for teachers,” the Post found that earlier claims by Secretary of the Department of Education (DOE) Duncan of teacher layoffs “appears to be hyperbole”

[T]he Education Department for days was unable to cough up the name of a single school district where these notices had been delivered … [T]here is no reason to hype the statistics — or to make scary pronouncements on pink slips being issued based on misinformation. Indeed, Duncan’s lack of seriousness about being scrupulously factual undercuts the administration’s claim that the cuts are a serious problem.

Notwithstanding the failure of the DOE to produce “the name of a single school district “ where sequestration had resulted in layoffs, Corr, in his official letter to the governors of all 50 states, informed the governors that they would be forced to lay off their state’s school teachers.

However, inside HHS, Secretary Sebelius was telling a very different story. Documents we uncovered show that HHS had informed its own employees that the sequestration would not affect the ability of HHS to carry out its wide-ranging programs. In a memo dated December 20, 2012, Secretary of HHS Katherine Sebelius informed HHS employees:

I do not expect our day-to-day would change dramatically on or immediately after January 2, should sequestration occur. This means we will not be executing any immediate personnel actions, such as furloughs, on that date.

In a HHS memo dated March 1, 2013, Sebelius again minimized the impact of the sequestration, reassuring HHS employees:

It is vitally important to keep in mind the distinction between the reduction in spending authority triggered by the sequestration and the complete absence of funding associated with a government shutdown. Unlike a shutdown, sequestration does not trigger an automatic break in service. Please plan to continue your scheduled work, even if sequestration goes into effect as anticipated.

Political scare tactics are nothing new. But what makes this flagrantly corrupt is the fact that we have a taxpayer-funded federal agency doing the politicking.

Clearly this is a well-orchestrated attempt by the Obama administration to mislead the American people and the nation’s governors. These propaganda letters are a misuse of taxpayer resources and show that HHS, the agency charged with running Obamacare, is out of control.

These are troubling times.  Thankfully, we have the gift and joy of Easter this week to help clarify things.   On behalf of all of us here at Judicial Watch, I wish you and yours a wonderful Easter holiday.

Last week, I alerted you about Thomas Perez, the scandal-ridden Department of Justice (DOJ) official who is now officially President Obama’s pick to head the Department of Labor. The Inspector General (IG) had just come out with a disturbing report proving what Judicial Watch has said all along, that Perez and Holder lied to Congress and have instigated a divisive and bitter race war inside the DOJ.

Without rehashing all of the details – you can read the post here – in summary, Judicial Watch demonstrated through documented evidence (and a U.S. District Court ruling) that Perez (and later Holder) lied in a congressional hearing when he said no political appointees were involved in the decision by the Obama DOJ to drop its voter intimidation lawsuit against the Black Panthers (New Black Panther Party), stemming from an incident that took place at a Philadelphia polling station in 2008.

(As I noted last week, The DOJ’s IG report, entitled, “A Review of the Operations of the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division,” confirms JW’s findings: “We believe that these facts evidence ‘involvement’ in the decision by political appointees within the ordinary meaning of that word,” and that Perez’s statements, “did not capture the full extent of that involvement.”  The report also documents that Perez does not believe in the race neutral application of certain civil rights laws.)

Judicial Watch has also been able to demonstrate that Perez has been a key official inside a DOJ that is flagrantly racist in its application of the rule of law, failing to respond to acts of discrimination perpetrated against non-minorities (to read, white people). Moreover, Holder and Perez were involved in the attempt by the DOJ to corrupt the voting process by attacking states that tried to implement voter integrity measures.

Of course, none of this is evidently seen by President Obama as reason to exclude Perez from consideration. Quite the contrary, says The New York Times:

Mr. Obama’s nomination of Thomas E. Perez, who has racked up record discrimination and housing claims as head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, generated criticism from some Senate Republicans who called him a divisive and political choice. But after pushing through other disputed nominees, most notably Chuck Hagel, the defense secretary, Mr. Obama calculated he could win another fight. It might even be a fight that he wants to have.

Some say this is a “risky” fight for Republicans, in part because Perez was confirmed in 2009 for his post at the DOJ. But that vote came before the Black Panthers’ scandal, and before the accusations of racism inside the DOJ, and before that damning IG report.

And no matter the “risk” for politicians involved, this is a fight worth having, as I made clear in my press statement in response to the nomination:

During his time as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Thomas Perez has shown a glaring inability to tell the truth and dispassionately apply the basic constitutional tenet of “equal justice under law.”

Time and again in recent years, Judicial Watch has exposed Mr. Perez’s repeated attempts to undermine those seeking to assure that the laws of the land are applied equally to those of all races. Mr. Perez’s attacks on election integrity measures such as voter ID were so far off base that he helped the DOJ earn a reputation as a partisan campaign arm for the Obama reelection campaign.

As Secretary of Labor, Mr. Perez would be in a position to push policies which broadly discriminate against American workers who failed to meet his own, thoroughly racialist worldview. Furthermore, based upon his relentless record both in and out of government, there can be little doubt that he would continue to put his personal preference for illegal immigrants above the rights of all workers of any race to equal employment opportunity.

Mr. Perez is a terrible, hyper-partisan choice for Labor Secretary.  Honest Democrats and Republicans who want the Labor Department to be run well should look skeptically at his nomination.

Now the flap over racism inside the DOJ and Perez’s false testimony is serious enough to merit not only his removal from consideration for the Labor post, but also his resignation. But this isn’t the only Perez scandal that the committee is likely to investigate.

In 2012, Judicial Watch discovered that Perez may have colluded with St. Paul, Minnesota, officials to persuade the city to take the extraordinary step of withdrawing its cert. petition from the Supreme Court docket in a case involving “disparate impact” discrimination. Documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Minnesota Data Practices Act showed that St. Paul City Attorney Sara Grewing arranged a meeting between Perez, and Mayor Chris Coleman a week before the city’s withdrawal from the case, captioned Magner v. Gallagher. Following Perez’s visit, the city withdrew its case and thanked DOJ and officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for their involvement.

Documents and a staff briefing with the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform revealed in September 2012 that, in exchange for St. Paul dropping its case before the high court, DOJ stopped two whistleblower claims against the city with the power to restore $180 million in violated HUD grants to the U.S. taxpayer.  The Wall Street Journal confirmed Judicial Watch’s concerns in an investigation of its own and noted that the issues are “likely to get high billing” at Perez’s confirmation proceedings.

More from Perez’s resume: He is a former president of the board of the radicalist Central American Solidarity Association de Maryland, CASA de Maryland, a group whose recent filings with the IRS describe its chief goals as  helping all people “participate and benefit fully” in American society, “regardless of their immigration status.” In opposing the Perez nomination, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-AL), described CASA as “a fringe advocacy group that has instructed illegal immigrants on how to escape detection, and also promoted illegal labor sites and driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.”  (CASA even received funding from Hugo Chavez.  Accuracy in Media has an excellent report on that group, which we are continuing to investigate here. Judicial Watch’s friend and litigation partner J. Christian Adams, who witnessed some of Perez’s misconduct directly at DOJ, had a nice summary piece of the concerns about Perez over at Breitbart.com.)

Only in Washington could a race-baiting politician – who lied to Congress – be given an opportunity for a promotion. It is important that you share any concerns you might have with the U.S. Senate, especially the senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) who will initially consider the Perez nomination.  The committee is led by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA).  The ranking minority leader is Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN).  Senator Harkin’s DC phone number is (202) 224-3254.  Senator Alexander’s number is (202) 224-4944.  If you care about fighting corruption in government and holding this administration accountable for its lawlessness, then activism on the Perez nomination is a must.

JW and MDPetitions.com Ask Court for Revote on Ballot Question 5, Maryland’s Gerrymandered District Map

You’ve no doubt heard of an election “recount.” Well, Judicial Watch and its client MDPetitions.com is now attempting to do something very rare but necessary – convince a court to order a “re-vote” on Question 5 in Maryland, a referendum on the state’s gerrymandered congressional redistricting plan voted on last November.

Earlier this week, we filed an appeal with the Maryland Court of Special Appeals on behalf of MDPetitions.com against Maryland Secretary of State John McDonough and the State Board of Elections asking the appellate court to order a new vote on Question 5.

In our lawsuit, we allege that the ballot language certified by Secretary of State McDonough was “misleading and insufficient as a matter of law.” With this misleading ballot language, the referendum passed with the support of 64% of the voters.  But it wasn’t a fair vote, and the people of Maryland deserve better.

In our complaint filed last year on behalf of MDPetitions.com, we argue:

The ballot language gave the voters of Maryland no idea they were being asked to approve some of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States. The language (and therefore, the vote) was illegal and in violation of the Maryland Constitution because it failed to apprise voters of the true nature of the redistricting, and because it failed to inform voters of the broad scope of the changes to the existing congressional districts.

Judicial Watch and MDPetitions.com asked the Court of Appeals to reverse a September 2012 Circuit Court decision upholding the ballot language and remand the case to the Circuit Court with instructions to order a new election on Question 5. “The only sufficient remedy for this illegality,” the appeal argues, “is voiding the referendum results and ordering a new election using ballot language that informs voters of the true nature of Senate Bill 1,” the legislation authorizing ballot Question 5.

In other words, back to the drawing board on the language and then back to the voters for a fair vote.

By way of review, on October 20, 2011, the Maryland General Assembly passed and Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law Senate Bill 1 to redistrict Maryland’s eight congressional districts. In August 2012, Judicial Watch and MDPetitions.com successfully defended the placement of the Congressional Districting Plan on the 2012 ballot when Maryland’s highest court denied an attempt by the state Democratic Party to prevent a referendum.

On August 30, 2012, Judicial Watch filed a complaint in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County alleging that the Question 5 ballot language certified by the Secretary of State was legally insufficient. It noted that the ballot, “is a mere 23 words and omits any reference to the fact that Senate Bill 1 makes material changes to existing congressional districts … remov[ing] 1.6 million Marylanders from their previous congressional district.” On September 6, 2012, the Circuit Court ruled in favor of the state, prompting this week’s action in the Special Court of Appeals.

To this point, the people of Maryland have been effectively denied their constitutional right to choose their own representation in Congress. As our lawsuit makes clear, the gerrymandered map undermines the accountability of Maryland’s congressional representatives to the voters by both reducing competitive congressional races and dividing communities to prevent unified opinions about representatives. Voters were purposefully misled by the ballot language when they voted on the issue last November.

Now, MDPetitions.com is not alone in criticizing Maryland’s gerrymandered district map. At the time of the Question 5 referendum, voters were urged to vote “No” on Question 5 by the editorial boards of the Baltimore Sun, the Annapolis Capital Gazette, the Carroll County Times, the Gazette, the Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, and Washington Jewish Week.

The Washington Post editorialized: “The map … mocks the idea that voting districts should be compact or easily navigable. The eight districts respect neither jurisdictional boundaries nor communities of interest. To protect incumbents and for partisan advantage, the map has been sliced, diced, shuffled and shattered, making districts resemble studies in cubism.”

But criticisms of the map notwithstanding, if the people of Maryland, with full understanding, vote to endorse the map, so be it. But full understanding requires clear ballot language. And that is what we’re after.

By the way, this litigation is one of the reasons I love Judicial Watch’s work (subjectively speaking, of course!).  Our lawsuit for MDPetitions.com raises a substantial question of law, seeks to protect basic rights of citizens, and uses our courts to seek redress against government corruption and dishonesty.  Your support allows Judicial Watch to initiate and persist in these types of legal battles so we are certainly most grateful for you standing with us!

Stay tuned…

HPV Vaccine Injuries and Deaths: Is the Government Compensating Victims?

Judicial Watch has led a comprehensive investigation into the dangers of the vaccine for human papillomavirus vaccines (HPV), which has been linked to serious complications and numerous deaths.  And according to documents recently uncovered by JW, while the government has in place a program to compensate victims of the HPV vaccine, most cases have been ignored.

The records, obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), reveal that its National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has awarded $5,877,710 dollars to 49 victims in claims made against the highly controversial HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines. To date 200 claims have been filed with VICP, with barely half adjudicated.

This new information confirms our long-held safety concerns about Gardasil (the most widely known HPV vaccine).  The fact that the federal government is paying out on claims related to HPV vaccines, is confirmation that the vaccine is potentially dangerous and deadly.

We obtained these documents in response to a February 28, 2013, Judicial Watch lawsuit against HHS to force the department to comply with a November 1, 2012, Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. On March 12, 2013, The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of HHS, provided Judicial Watch with documents. And here’s what our investigators report on what these previously secret document show:

• Only 49 of the 200 claims filed have been compensated for injury or death caused from the (HPV) vaccine.  Of the 49 compensated claims 47 were for injury caused from (HPV) vaccine – the additional 2 claims were for death caused due to the vaccine.

• 92 (nearly half) of the total 200 claims filed are still pending.  Of those pending claims 87 of the claims against (HPV) vaccine were filed for injury, the remaining 5 claims were filed for death.

• 59 claims have been dismissed outright by VICP.  The alleged victims were not compensated for their claims against the HPV vaccine.  Of the claims dismissed, 57 were for injuries, 2 were for deaths allegedly caused by the HPV vaccine.

• The amount awarded to the 49 claims compensated totaled 5,877,710.87 dollars. This amounts to approximately $120,000 per claim.

VICP is a Health and Human Services program that compensates patients who have been adversely affected by certain vaccines. The HHS web site describes the program as a “no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system,” and it covers 16 specific classes of vaccines, including HPV vaccines which were added in 2007.

From its inception, the use of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases has been hotly disputed.  According to the Annals of Medicine: “At present there are no significant data showing that either Gardasil or Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) can prevent any type of cervical cancer since the testing period employed was too short to evaluate long-term benefits of HPV vaccination.”

This new information from the government shows that the serious safety concerns about the use of Gardasil have been well-founded. Public health officials should stop pushing Gardasil on children.

As I say, JW has been most aggressive in its pursuit of the truth about the HPV vaccines, including Gardasil, which was fast-tracked by the Clinton administration after a furious lobbying campaign by the drug manufacturer Merck. If you want more background information, you can check out some of the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) records we’ve obtained related to Gardasil. Be forewarned, though, that these reports are graphic.

You might also want to check out our special report published in 2008 detailing Gardasil’s approval process, side effects, safety concerns and marketing practices.

Until next week…

Judicial Watch took a leading role in uncovering racism inside the Holder Department of Justice (DOJ), especially pertaining to the DOJ’s controversial decision to abandon its own voter intimidation lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, that threatened and intimidated white voters outside a polling station in Philly on Election Day 2008.

You may recall, we were able to show through documented evidence that contrary to testimony of head of the DOJ’s Voting Rights Section, Thomas Perez, before Congress, political appointees inside the Justice Department were involved in this decision to dispose of this case. (Perez had blamed the matter on two “career” officials. Holder later repeated the lie.)

And why did Holder and Perez want the Black Panther case dismissed? Because they, and others inside Justice, do not believe that voting rights laws should be equally applied to all races, including whites.

The Justice Department scoffed at our findings. Justice officials vehemently denied them in the halls of Congress and in numerous press interviews.

But we knew the truth. Of course, we had the evidence. But we also had a court victory. Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled in a JW FOIA lawsuit seeking Black Panther records that the documents we had thus far uncovered “appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’s testimony [before the commission] that political leadership was not involved” in the decision to dismiss the NBPP case.

So we did not necessarily need the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to confirm what we already knew – that Justice officials were engaging in widespread reverse discrimination. (The IG tried to soften the blow by using phrases such as “deep ideological polarization” and a “disappointing lack of professionalism,” but this is fairly saucy language by government report stanards.)

But for those so-called “mainstream media” types who chose to ignore the evidence and buy the administration’s lies, a newly released OIG report on the Black Panther scandal must have come as quite a shock to the system.

This report, numbering 250-plus pages, is entitled, “A Review of the Operations of the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Decision.” And it reveals a brutal truth that will only fan the flames of controversy about the operations of our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

It is a particularly disturbing read for Perez, who is reportedly a leading candidate to assume a new position as Secretary of Labor and Eric Holder, who is embattled over too many scandals to count.

(Michelle Malkin also has some great background no the race-baiting Perez, who helped spearhead Holder’s shameless legal attacks against states, such as South Carolina, who tried to implement voter integrity measures during the last election cycle – attacks which prompted Judicial Watch’s successful Election Integrity campaign.)

With respect to the details in the report, one of our partners in our election integrity effort, J. Christian Adams, who, along with former Justice official Christopher Coates, was pilloried by the Left for testifying before Congress about racism inside the agency, produced a very thorough review of the report for Pajamas Media and his Election Law Center blog, both of which I highly suggest you read. Here is the some of Christian’s rundown:

“Many of those individuals [DOJ officials and career lawyers] told the OIG that they believed that the reason the voting rights laws were enacted was to protect historic victims of discrimination and therefore the Section should prioritize its resources accordingly. Additionally, some of these individuals, including one current manager, admitted to us that, while they believed that the text of the Voting Rights Act is race-neutral and applied to all races, they did not believe the Voting Section should pursue cases on behalf of White victims.”

Threats were made to African American employees by other Justice Department staff.

The threats were made because the black employees were willing to work on cases like the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and a case in Mississippi involving a black wrongdoer and a white victim. I testified about this disgusting hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the law, and today’s report confirms it took place.

Attorney General Eric Holder was approached by Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King: King complained about cases that Voting Section Chief Chris Coates was bringing. King didn’t like that Coates was willing to use civil rights laws to protect white voters.  Coates had brought and managed the New Black Panther voter intimidation case.

Holder greenlighted King: do what was necessary to take care of Coates.

Conservative columnist and author John Fund pulled another fascinating excerpt:

In a broader critique of the Civil Rights Division, the IG report concludes that, while it’s useful to hire lawyers on the basis of voting-rights legal experience, the division should no longer base hiring decisions on whether applicants have supported civil-rights causes. “Evaluating the degree of applicants’ civil rights ‘commitment’ creates the possible appearance that [the division] is searching for applicants who share political or ideological views common in the liberal civil rights community,” the report says. “This perception is compounded by the fact that the ‘commitment’ that passes muster is often demonstrated through work with a small number of influential civil rights organizations.”

Again, this further confirms what we have been saying all along: Leftist special interest groups are running the DOJ! Remember, JW sued the DOJ for documents detailing the involvement of the NAACP in the Black Panther scandal. We’ve seen a steady stream of radical liberals traipsing in and out of the Justice Department helping to craft policies and even helping to make staffing decisions.

Now, what does all of this mean?

Perez, it should go without saying, must resign and take himself out of the running for Secretary of Labor.  We’ve documented Perez’s big lie on no political appointees being involved in the decision to drop much of the Black Panther case.  And we are vindicated in this analysis by the OIG report:

In his OIG interview, Perez said he did not believe that these incidents [of political appointee involvement – including Holder’s!] constituted political appointees being “involved” in the decision. We believe that these facts evidence “involvement” in the decision by political appointees within the ordinary meaning of that word, and that Perez’s acknowledgment, in his statements on behalf of the Department, that political appointees were briefed on and could have overruled this decision did not capture the full extent of that involvement.

That paragraph, which also footnotes the JW court victory that also documents Perez’s lie, is bureaucrat-speak for “Perez lied.”  We also learn in the report, as we had guessed, that Holder was personally involved in the Black Panther decision.  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again loudly and clearly, as I did yesterday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), see below: Holder must resign. (Even some leftist press outlets are now calling for Holder to respond to the criticisms cited in the report.)

Of course, I expect the Holder DOJ to “spin” the report and conduct business as usual. But maybe, just maybe, the balance is starting to shift. The public is fed up with government corruption and there is no bigger poster child for the corruption crisis than Eric Holder.

I urge you to read this report in its entirety.  It documents a rat’s nest of raced-based decision making and lawlessness at the DOJ.  This is a report that will rock the DOJ for years to come and lead to significant personnel and policy changes.   As a supporter of Judicial Watch, you can be proud that our good work played no small roll in highlighting the corruption of the DOJ.  Our persistence, our litigation, our public education efforts – all have paid off in a major way.

JW Targets Obama Corruption at CPAC

As I mentioned last week, JW is taking major role in the Conservative Political Action Conference going on now here near DC. Click here to read in detail about all of our activities.

Our mission at CPAC is simple: To educate attendees about the true threat posed by the Obama administration’s “Chicago Way” of conducting the people’s business, and to detail Judicial Watch’s unique and nonpartisan role in countering government corruption and secrecy. Yesterday, I was honored to address attendees on these topics, and for those of you who were not able to make it to CPAC, I reprint my remarks in full below.  (To see the speech on video, you can click here.)

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I am honored, once again, to speak to all of you at CPAC. I am here on behalf of Judicial Watch, America’s largest and most effective government watchdog. We just don’t complain about government corruption, we go to court to expose and stop it.

And when it comes to government corruption, President Obama has turned Washington, DC, into “Chicago on the Potomac.”

And when it comes to government transparency, Obama has built the great “stone wall” of secrecy to avoid accountability. Judicial Watch has had to sue what Obama calls “the most transparent administration in history” over 100 times just to gain access to information about what the government is up to. If you think the Obama administration is transparent, then I have some shares in Solyndra I’d like to sell you.

The Founding Fathers took transparency seriously.

James Madison wrote, “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.”  Unfortunately, DC is both a tragedy and a farce today – but as Thomas Jefferson said, “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.”

Judicial Watch helps Americans stay informed by frequently being “the one and only” when it comes to forcing the public release of information that the government doesn’t want you know about. For instance, we found out how much Michelle Obama’s luxury vacations were costing taxpayers. (Like her trip to the coast of Spain, which cost nearly $500,000.)

I have an idea — let’s put a sequester on luxury travel to Spain and Aspen by the Obamas.

And we were also successful in exposing improper leaks for a pro-Obama movie on the bin Laden killing. This administration tells us we can’t know much of anything about Benghazi but it will help Hollywood do an entire movie with the help of secret information? The Obama approach to transparency is fundamentally corrupt: release info if it helps the Obama agenda, keep it secret if it hurts the Obama agenda. As a result of our work, there’s been a criminal referral over the bin Laden leaks. And when the president and all his men and women lie about the circumstances of the death of our ambassador and other brave Americans, we are in dark times. Congress and Obama’s lapdog media may give this administration a pass on Benghazi, but we won’t put politics over the public safety and the lives of our men and women abroad.

I had a personal run-in with Obama’s Chicago way.  Shortly after Obama came into office, my colleagues and I were “invited” to the White House to talk with Obama’s “ethics czar” about transparency. And we were told, quite directly, that if we said nice things about Obama’s transparency efforts, the White House would say nice things about us. We weren’t intimidated, but how do you like that for gangster government?

The corruption crisis in DC undermines our republic.

For instance, this administration, through Eric Holder, stands in the courthouse door against efforts to secure our elections. The Holder Justice Department attacks voter ID, attacks efforts to clean up voter rolls (because you never know when you’ll need a dead voter to help you win an election), and actually opposed efforts to even ask questions about non-citizen voters on the rolls.

Because the Justice Department is AWOL, Judicial Watch is stepping up and suing states to clean up their voter rolls. I estimate that, in most big states, as much as 20% of the voter rolls are dirty. If you have dirty election rolls, then, as surely as night follows day, you will have dirty elections.

We must continue to push for voter ID laws and clean election rolls. Because it is not enough for elections to be honest – they must APPEAR to be honest. If voters think elections are rigged, they won’t vote.  And that hurts representative democracy.

And speaking of Eric Holder: why in Heaven’s name is he still Attorney General!

This man was held in contempt of Congress — a historic first — for stonewalling Congress on his Fast and Furious killings and lies.

Eric Holder protects the president and all of his men from corruption investigations. Eric Holder turned our Justice Department into an arm of the Obama campaign.  And now he refuses to defend the federal law protecting marriage – one of the laws he swore an oath to protect and execute.  Obama even asserted fantasy executive privilege claims to protect his pliant attorney general.

And now the head of the agency responsible for hundreds of gun murders in Mexico and the death of Bryan Terry is Obama’s point man on gun control. Maybe Eric Holder should start following the gun laws before he starts helping Obama create new ones. Holder is not independent, he is not ethical, and he has turned his Justice Department into a taxpayer-funded legal battering ram for outside leftist groups.

My gosh, at least with Watergate we didn’t have body bags.

Let me suggest a rallying cry for those who believe in the rule of law: Dump Eric Holder.

The rule of law is under attack from President Obama’s imperial presidency. President Obama has released criminal illegal aliens onto the streets in order to pressure Congress for so-called “immigration reform.” Unbelievably, this president would put politics over public safety.

And let me say this about illegal immigration. Americans, including many Hispanic Americans, want the rules enforced. Secure the borders and enforce the law. The massive, instant amnesty being pushed by Obama and some Republicans is unworkable, unjust, undermines the rule of law and will harm the public safety. That is why amnesty was rejected in the Bush administration, was rejected in Mr. Obama’s first term, and why it should be rejected today.

President Obama says “we can’t wait” for Congress to pass laws he likes, so he will take executive action on his own.  We should respond – “You will wait, Mr. President!”

Unfortunately, we can’t rely on Congress to protect our constitutional system of government. Too many members of Congress – Republicans and Democrats alike – are committed to one thing only – staying in office.

This is a Congress where 56 members have had family members that lobby on issues before them. Well, I believe in family values, but that is a corrupt bipartisan racket.

And you may have heard about Sen. Bob Menendez. He made our list of “Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for good reason.  Senator Menendez was previously investigated for steering lobbying business to his former chief of staff (and girlfriend); he helped sneak an $8 million earmark for a public walkway and park that benefitted campaign donors and a former senior aide; and then late last year he was alleged to have patronized underage prostitutes and to have employed an illegal alien sex offender on his staff.  Now he’s under investigation by the FBI for illicitly using his public office to benefit a big donor.

You think that crimps his style! No. Senator Menendez continues to take the lead on developing amnesty legislation for President Obama. This helps place into context why our system is so broken.  Our nation’s top legislators are corrupt, and yet they seek to take the lead on key rule-of-law issues, such as immigration.

Our republican form of government is harmed when we have lawbreakers writing our laws.

Let me make a suggestion – rather than contriving ways to spend more of our money – Congress should spend more time monitoring the money that has already been spent!  How is it, for instance, that our federal government spends over $3 million on politically correct mandatory brainwashing sessions where government employees are forced to chant anti-American slogans? Judicial Watch got the video of this outrage by the way, not Congress, not the liberal media.

I know conservatives are wondering what way forward? I have a one word answer:  reform!

Let’s go after rule by executive fiat;  Benghazi-gate; bin Laden raid leaks and secrets; threats to Second Amendment protections; Fast and Furious; ongoing government bailouts; green energy boondoggles; Illegal Immigration; the terrorist threat, Obama czars; Obamacare, and, of course, Obama’s unprecedented secrecy.

Am I missing anything?

Let’s combat corruption in government. Hold accountable corrupt government officials.  Promote the rule of law. Open up the government to the sunshine. Let’s combat the czars, revive legitimate congressional oversight, cut back our government to a constitutional size, end Obamacare, protect our national security, take back control of the private sector from federal takeovers, and secure our borders. All of this will have to be done no matter what happens in 2014 or 2016.

Conservatives and honest liberals know that Big Government, Big Secrecy and Big Corruption go hand-in-hand.

Our government is off the rails and out of control.

That’s why, fellow Americans, I ask you to join our fight. Please take up the cause of holding government to account. You can ask for government documents. You can demand that your political leaders make enforcing the rule of law a priority. And you can provide and demand leadership to control the rampant government corruption in Washington, DC, and in your state.

A clean, transparent government run by ethical politicians is essential to the future of our Republic.

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As you might imagine, Judicial Watch has many fans at CPAC and I’ve had a wonderful time visiting with supporters in attendance.  There are also thousands of young people here who are thirsting for leadership and information on what is really going in DC.   Tonight is our big night, as we are the sponsor the Ronald Reagan Banquet, the CPAC premier even which will feature former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as the speaker.  Again, thank you for your support that allows to take our rule of law message to America’s largest gathering of conservative activists

Until next week…