The Obama administration is pushing gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, shootings. President Obama is using the murders as a pretext to undermine the Second Amendment and collect data on lawful gun owners. But this administration won’t come clean on its own gunrunning operation, Operation Fast and Furious, which led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and countless Mexican citizens.

In fact, the Obama administration last week filed an outrageous court motion saying it doesn’t have to answer to the American people, or abide by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) at all in this scandal!

This filing was made in our FOIA lawsuit seeking access to Operation Fast and Furious records withheld from Congress by President Obama under executive privilege on June 20, 2012. Our attorneys responded almost immediately. And so this week we filed a brief in response to the Department of Justice (DOJ) motion, which calls upon the court to impose an indefinite delay in considering our lawsuit.

Rather than respond substantively to our FOIA, the DOJ argued in court that our lawsuit should be subject to a stay of proceedings because it is “ancillary” to a separate lawsuit filed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee against the DOJ. The Court “should let the process of negotiation and accommodation [between the House Committee and the DOJ] run its course, and then decide with the input of the parties whether and how this action may appropriately proceed at that time,” the DOJ argued, effectively abrogating the FOIA.  The Obama DOJ even suggested that the Judicial Watch litigation might encourage the Congress to fight harder to get the same documents in separate litigation.

So the American people are supposed to wait until Congress and the White House figure this out?

Judicial Watch countered that the FOIA demands a response, that its lawsuit is more straightforward than the House lawsuit and is ripe for consideration on its merits. A decision on the House Committee lawsuit, meanwhile, could be delayed for months, if not years:

This notion that [Judicial Watch’s] lawsuit is in some way inferior [to the House lawsuit] is simply incorrect. [Judicial Watch] has as much of a right under the law as the House Committee to seek access to records of Defendant. In fact, since Defendant does not challenge [Judicial Watch’s] claim on jurisdictional grounds, it could be reasonably argued that [Judicial Watch’s] right is greater – it is certainly clearer and simpler – than that of the House Committee…Whereas [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA lawsuit is ripe for adjudication on the merits, the House Committee suit could be months, if not years, away from reaching the same stage.

The DOJ also argued that Judicial Watch’s lawsuit might somehow interfere with negotiations between the president and Congress. (As if these negotiations have been at all productive!) Judicial Watch countered: “Regardless of any potential resolution in that case, Defendant in this action will still be required to satisfy its obligations under FOIA, including justifying its withholdings. [Judicial Watch’s] lawsuit simply does not vanish if and when the House Committee suit is resolved.”

And we conclude: “[Judicial Watch] has a statutory right to the requested records and to have Defendant’s denial of Plaintiff’s FOIA request reviewed by this Court. [Judicial Watch’s] claim is now ripe for adjudication, and [Judicial Watch] is prepared to brief the issues. Defendant simply seeks to delay the date that it must justify its claims of exemption. Defendant has not demonstrated why [Judicial Watch’s] rights should be immoderately and oppressively delayed; it has only disparaged the public’s right to request records of its government. For the foregoing reasons, [Judicial Watch] respectfully requests that Defendant’s request for an indefinite stay of the proceedings be denied.

By way of review, Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gunrunning” operation in which the Obama administration reportedly sold guns to Mexican drug cartels in hopes that they would end up at crime scenes.

Congressional investigators, led by Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have fought to secure records related to the Fast and Furious program, but the DOJ continues to withhold responsive records from disclosure. On June 20, 2012, President Obama made a highly controversial decision to assert Executive Privilege in order to shield the DOJ’s Fast and Furious records from disclosure. Executive privilege is reserved to “protect” White House records, not the records of federal agencies, which must be made available, subject to specific exceptions, under the FOIA.

The president’s assertion of executive privilege came just hours before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to congressional subpoenas for Fast and Furious records. On June 28, 2012, Congress voted 255-67 to hold Holder in contempt. (A number of Democrats joined the vote, while other Democrats, endorsing lawlessness, walked out in protest.) A second vote, 258-95, authorized the pursuit of records through civil litigation in the courts. Moreover, documents uncovered by CBS News seem to indicate that Holder may have perjured himself during congressional testimony, detailing what he knew about Fast and Furious and when he knew it.

It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.

Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless other people. The American public is sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite the FOIA and other laws in an effort to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies. I’ll let you know how this court skirmish turns out.

(Judicial Watch separately filed a FOIA lawsuit against the ATF seeking access to records detailing communications between ATF officials and a White House official regarding Fast and Furious.)

Obama Pick to Head CIA Involved in bin Laden Film Leaks

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is putting a hold on the nomination of Obama Chief Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan to serve as CIA Director until the Obama administration comes clean on Benghazi.

But according to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, there is another significant reason why the U.S. Senate should not simply rubber-stamp this nomination: Brennan was evidently smack dab in the middle of another Obama administration scandal – the alleged feeding of sensitive operational details to the filmmakers of Zero Dark Thirty, a Hollywood movie released last Friday that documents the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden.

As JW uncovered, the Obama administration actively sought to have “high visibility” in bin Laden-related projects. And they found willing partners in Kathryn Bigelow and Marc Boal, the director and writer of the film, who were given unprecedented and secret access to details regarding the raid in preparation for their film.

We said when we got hold of the documents that it seemed obvious to us that the Obama administration was looking for a way to bolster the president’s image as a strong leader.

Now where does Brennan enter the picture?

As you know, we went to federal court to force the most “transparent” administration in history to turn over records about the film. We received hundreds of pages, but there is one key document that specifically references Brennan that we disclosed last May:

• A transcript of a July 14, 2011, meeting between DOD officials, including Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers, Bigelow and Boal indicates that Boal met directly with White House officials on at least two occasions regarding the film, including Brennan: “I took your guidance and spoke to the WH and had a good meeting with Brennan and McDonough and I plan to follow up with them; and they were forward leaning and interested in sharing their point of view; command and control; so that was great, thank you,” Boal said according to the transcript.

• Vickers asks if the meeting was a follow-up, to which Boal responds, “Yes correct; this was a follow-up.” The documents seemingly reference John O. Brennan, Chief Counterterrorism Advisor to President Obama and Denis McDonough, who serves as President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor.

Now, as I say, the Obama White House coordinated the collusion between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the filmmakers from the outset.

A June 27, 2011, email to an official at the Office of the Secretary of Defense suggests that the request from Bigelow and Boal to meet with Vickers came via the White House press office. A June 22, 2011, email to Commander Bob Mehal, Public Affairs Officer for Defense Press Operations, notes “The White House does want to engage with Mark (Boal) but it probably won’t be for a few more weeks. We should provide them a read-out of the session you do with Vickers.” The name of the White House official who forwarded the request is blacked out.

The documents also show that the DOD was very aware of the possibility of negative blowback in the press related to these secret meetings and sought White House guidance regarding the second meeting between Vickers and the filmmakers.

DOD Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Douglas Wilson told colleagues in a June 13, 2011, email to limit media access and that he would follow up with the White House: “I think this looks very good as a way forward, and agree particularly that we need to be careful here so we don’t open the media floodgates on this. I’m going to check with WH to update them on status, and will report back.” A day later, he wrote DOD communications staffers, saying: “Ok to set up the second session with Vickers. I am getting additional guidance from WH.”

Judicial Watch’s discovery led to an Inspector General’s investigation and a criminal referral to the Holder Department of Justice (DOJ) that seems to have fallen into a black hole. Vickers is under fire for releasing the names of those who participated in the raid, but clearly Brennan was involved in these discussions.

Now here’s a key question that should be asked during his confirmation hearing: Was Brennan’s pending nomination to head the CIA the reason the DOJ sat on the IG’s criminal referral? Certainly Brennan’s involvement in a scandal involving the alleged leaking of classified details should take center stage in any debate over his suitability to serve as the nation’s top spy.

By the way, I actually saw Zero Dark Thirty the day it opened nationally and I can tell you that, no matter what you may read in the “Obamedia,” it pushes the Obama narrative in obvious ways.

Barack Obama comes off as a hero character in the film. We see him morally preening on a news program and hear him described as “thoughtful and analytical.” Obama appointees portrayed in the film also come off well, including a Brennan-like character. Boal and Bigelow seemed to have gone out of their way (short of producing a two-hour campaign commercial) to project the Obama administration as “gutsy” for ordering the raid. I’m quite certain the Obama campaign would have loved for the film to come out before the campaign, which was the original plan.

JW continues to investigate. Let’s hope the Senate does its job as well.

(For more background, click here to read a JW court brief seeking access to the information released to Bigelow and Boal. And click here to access the documents we’ve already uncovered.)

Obama DHS Delayed Deportation of Illegal Alien Sex Offender to Protect Democrat Senator

The Obama Homeland Security Department (DHS) took its “selective deportation” illegal alien amnesty scheme to a whole new level last November when it delayed deporting an illegal alien sex offender, Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, just before the election. Now why would they do that? Because Sanchez worked for a powerful Democrat Senator and they did not want the embarrassing scandal to hit the news and jeopardize the re-election chances of the Senator and/or the president.

The Associated Press has been all over this story:

Federal immigration agents were prepared to arrest an illegal immigrant and registered sex offender days before the November elections but were ordered by Washington to hold off after officials warned of “significant interest” from Congress and news organizations because the suspect was a volunteer intern for Sen. Robert Menendez, according to internal agency documents provided to Congress.

(You will recall JW listed Menendez as one of its “Ten Most Wanted” corrupt politicians in Washington, for this scandal and a slew of others, including influence peddling for his staffer and girlfriend and for allegedly patronizing prostitutes.)

This Sanchez story first broke last December, when the AP, citing a source familiar with the situation, published a report indicating that DHS had delayed the deportation of Sanchez for political reasons. When the story hit the press, DHS officials huffed and puffed and dismissed the report as “categorically false.”

But this was a lie. And now the AP has the documents to prove it: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Newark had arranged to arrest Sanchez at the local prosecutor’s office on Oct. 25,” the AP reported. “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. The documents describe a conference call between officials Washington and New Jersey to “determine a way forward, given the potential sensitivities surrounding the case.”

And who is this illegal alien criminal hired by Menendez and coddled by the Obama DHS? Sanchez was born in Peru and entered the country with a now-expired visa. In 2009 he was arrested for repeatedly sexually abusing an eight-year-old boy. Sanchez, 15 at the time, received two-year probation and the child molester was forced to register as a “sex offender.

Sanchez then landed a job with Menendez. Unsurprisingly, he also submitted an application to remain in the country under Obama’s amnesty program! The Obama administration has repeatedly stated that it would arrest and deport illegal aliens who committed serious crimes. But when the administration found out about an illegal alien child molester, political appointees interfered with the legal process and delayed the arrest of an illegal alien who represented a clear threat to the public safety.

Ultimately, with President Obama and Robert Menendez’s re-elections secured, authorities finally arrested Sanchez on December 6, 2012. He is now scheduled for deportation.

Now, as you will recall, this isn’t the first time politics has intervened and stopped the deportation of an illegal alien for political reasons. Remember Obama’s illegal alien Aunt Zeituni Onyango? Just days before the 2008 election, the Bush administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued an “unusual directive” that ultimately delayed Onyango’s arrest so as to avoid precipitating an embarrassing scandal for then-candidate Obama.

The Menendez/DHS scandal is embarrassing for this administration, but I don’t think for a minute it will stop the president from fast-tracking his plans to implement illegal alien amnesty for the 11 million individuals currently residing in the U.S. Fox News reported this week the president and Senate Democrats are planning to pass a slew of illegal immigration reform measures in one massive bill, as opposed to carefully considering the merits of each policy on a case-by-case basis.

The president’s reforms, which are built on lies and lawlessness, will be sweeping, they will be aggressive, they will be fast, and they will most certainly lead to more victims of criminals like Sanchez, who should have been imprisoned and/or deported the moment he attacked an eight-year-old boy.

Until next week…

Would you be surprised if I told you that the federal government invited a terrorist to the Pentagon for lunch, all the while knowing that he likely assisted the 9/11 hijackers?

That’s what we found out recently from documents we received from the U.S. State Department.  According to the records, which we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was aware on September 27, 2001, that Anwar al-Aulaqi, the U.S. born terrorist assassinated by a U.S. drone in Yemen on September 30, 2011, 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!According to a September 27, 2001, FBI transcription obtained by Judicial Watch, al-Aulaqi evidently assisted with the following travel accommodations just before 9/11:

•    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.

The documents also include material showing that al-Aulaqi was uncooperative with FBI agents investigating the 9/11 attacks and was seemingly a central focus of the FBI investigation and monitoring related to 9/11.

These discoveries by Judicial Watch led to widespread press coverage and precipitated unusual pushback from the FBI, which tried to deny that al-Aulaqi was connected to the 9/11 hijackers. No surprises there.

But as I told Fox News: “The FBI can clear up the matter by releasing the full document. It is a shame that we had to sue to get this basic information about the 9/11 attacks. The FBI spin should, accordingly, be taken with a grain of salt. This document was given to us by the FBI in response to a request about al-Aulaqi, so it is interesting that we are now told that the hijackers’ information disclosed in this document has nothing to do with him. Of course, Mr. al-Aulaqi was killed on orders of the president, so no one can pursue this inquiry with al-Aulaqi.”

While the FBI was quick to discount its own records, it has been silent about why al-Aulaqi was arrested for serious crimes and then released by authorities, including the FBI itself!

Records previously uncovered by Judicial Watch, subsequent to the September 27, 2001, FBI transcription, show that al-Aulaqi was arrested and released by authorities. Two documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include “Privacy Act Release Forms” issued by the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, and were signed by al-Aulaqi. One was dated November 14, 2006, and the other July 2, 2007, indicating that al-Aulaqi had been arrested by authorities. The documents do not indicate how long al-Aulaqi was detained or why he was released.

In addition to the arrests noted by the documents in 2006 and 2007, al-Aulaqi was detained and questioned at New York’s JFK airport on October 10, 2002, under a warrant for passport fraud, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. However, the FBI ordered al-Aulaqi’s release, even though the arrest warrant was still active at the time of his detention, as reported by Fox News Channel’s Catherine Herridge. Once released, al-Aulaqi then took a flight to Washington, DC, and eventually returned to Yemen.

So let’s stop and catch our breath for a moment, because this is a point not to be missed: After learning – or at the least suspecting, if you believe the FBI – that al-Aulaqi was connected to the 9/11 hijackers, the FBI had him in its grasp following an arrest, and then simply let him go.

But that’s not all.

On February 5, 2002, four months after the FBI discovered his connection to the 9/11 terrorists, al-Aulaqi was invited to dine at the Pentagon on February 5, 2002, “as part of the military’s outreach to the Muslim community in the immediate aftermath of the attacks,” reports Herridge. (Political correctness strikes again.)

JW also previously uncovered documents detailing an attempted ruse by the U.S. government to revoke al-Aulaqi’s passport in 2011. The records show that the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen was asked on March 24, 2011, to issue a communication to al-Aulaqi, requesting him to “appear in person” to pick up an important letter at the post.

The letter issued by the embassy was a revocation of his passport: “The Department?s [sic] action is based upon a determination by the Secretary that Mr. al-Aulaqi activities abroad are causing and/or likely to cause serious damage to the national security or the foreign policy of the United States.” The embassy was instructed not to inform al-Aulaqi when he came to the embassy that the “important letter” was a passport revocation.

So, again, a known terrorist was arrested and released, invited to dine at the Pentagon and then invited to a U.S. embassy in some sort of crazy keystone cops operation.

The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch further confirm disturbing derelictions by our national security establishment. These and other documents seem to leave little doubt that al-Aulaqi had something to do with 9/11 and violated the law. Yet this terrorist was feted at the Pentagon and given the proverbial “get out of jail free card” by law enforcement – with deadly consequences.

As I’ve noted before in this space, al-Aulaqi was a dangerous character.

Since September 2009, according to the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, 26 terrorism cases have been tied to al-Aulaqi, including an association with blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently in prison for his role in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Anwar al-Aulaqi was also known to have been in email contact (19 email exchanges) with Major Nidal Hasan, who was charged with 13 murders during the Fort Hood massacre on November 5, 2009.

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 targeting and killing of U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law.

Here’s my question: How many other drones will be sent to assassinate terrorists released by the FBI?

House Ethics Committee Punts on Countrywide Scandal

Over the holidays, while the American people were busy celebrating Christmas and New Year, the House Ethics Committee quietly swept a major political scandal under the rug.

You may recall the Countrywide Financial influence peddling scandal, where at least a dozen members of Congress (and many other key Washington figures) received preferential loan treatment as part of a company VIP program named “Friends of Angelo” for the company’s disgraced former CEO, Angelo Mozillo. Well, on December 27, the House Ethics Committee decided that this scandal is simply “outside its jurisdiction” and took no action. Case closed.

The Hill’s Peter Schroeder explains:

So, in other words, it took Congress so long to act on this scandal that now many of the transgressors are retired or were bounced from Congress. And whose fault is that?! The Senate Ethics Committee began review of this scandal in 2009 and wasted no time in whitewashing the whole mess. It took the House Ethics Committee four years to “investigate” and then do nothing.

The issue of timing aside, the House Ethics Committee stated that it could find no evidence that the majority of the members were aware of the VIP treatment. But this is nearly impossible to believe.

After all, according to a stinging report released by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in July 2012, at least a dozen members of Congress received home loan rates not available to the general public. And they almost certainly knew they were getting a sweetheart deal. In fact, correspondence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee has the words “VIP TEAM” emblazoned at the top of the letter!

And then there’s the sworn testimony involving a Countrywide loan granted to former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT).

Dodd, who just happened to be chairman of the powerful House Senate Banking committee, used two “VIP” mortgage loans in 2003 to refinance residences in Connecticut and Washington, DC. And an official who worked in the Countrywide program testified before Congress that Dodd absolutely knew he was receiving special VIP treatment. (Dodd was so impressed with the VIP program he even recommended it to a staffer for a Senate colleague who got her fees waived too.)

So here’s the key question: We know how Congress benefited from this program, but what did Countrywide get in return for its largess?

Well, at the same time Countrywide was doling out sweetheart mortgage deals, their lobbyists were also pressuring Congress on a wide range of issues pertaining to the mortgage lending industry.

For example, according to the House Oversight Committee report, “on June 17, 2008, the same day he acknowledged for the first time that he was a Countrywide VIP customer, Dodd announced that he was bringing to the Senate floor a housing bailout to help Countrywide and other struggling subprime lenders.”

And as Politico noted when the House Oversight Committee report was issued, the “Friends of Angelo” program was far more damaging than a waste of taxpayer funds in the form of a quid pro quo mortgage industry bailout. The program also helped to kick off the entire financial crisis by playing a “critical part” in blocking efforts to reform the mortgage lending industry, including the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Countrywide also gave sweetheart deals to top officials at those GSEs, who were the biggest buyers of Countrywide’s dubious mortgage loan products.)

We cover this in some detail in our New York Times best-selling book, Corruption Chronicles. (Have you purchased your copy yet? If not, please click here. And be sure to check out the best-selling book by author Ben Shapiro “Bullies.”):

Fannie and Freddie (and federal housing policy, generally) helped create the mortgage backed securities and secondary mortgage markets that collapsed in 2008 because of the loss of confidence in the subprime mortgage market – which was also pushed along by the federal government. Fannie even had a mortgage program it ran with Countrywide called “Fast and Easy.” That’s not the name of a pawnshop, but a government-backed mortgage program!

The point is that there is a direct relationship between the Countrywide “Friends of Angelo” program and the collapse of the housing market. As I’ve been saying now for four years, corruption, as much as bad policy, was to blame for the financial crisis.

So yes, as the House Ethics Committee acknowledged, the corrupt Countrywide influence peddling scandal was a “serious matter.” And it merited serious investigation.

Instead, the House Ethics Committee delayed and then used the excuse of the delay to drop the case.  You can read the Committee’s dishonest report here. Washington’s traditional government institutions to enforce the rule of law with politicians and government officials are fundamentally broken.  But you can count on us to stand in the gap.  This scandal is just more proof of the importance of the independent oversight by your Judicial Watch.

JW in Major Court Battle over Obama’s Osama bin Laden Secrets

Yesterday (January 10), a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument regarding our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit requesting the release of dozens of images of Osama bin Laden’s body taken after he was fatally shot in a Special Forces raid in May 2011.

Judicial Watch staff attorney Michael Bekesha argued on behalf of Judicial Watch at the hearing.  I was there with many of my Judicial Watch colleagues in the packed courtroom for this historic legal fight. It was quite the scene. The Obama administration sent seven lawyers to participate in the briefing! Media around the world closely covered this week’s court activity, one of our most significant battles against Obama secrecy.

JW is asking the Appeals Court to reverse an April 26, 2012, ruling by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg allowing the images to remain an Obama administration secret.

The government is hiding behind the bogus claim that JW’s request will somehow harm our national security. But we’re not after any information about equipment or techniques used in the bin Laden raid, or indeed anything that would compromise the safety and security of the country and its citizens.  As our lawyers argued to the court:

Specifically, Defendants have failed to provide any evidence that all 52 images, including those depicting bin Laden’s burial at sea, pertain to “foreign activities of the United States.” Defendants also have failed to provide any evidence that images depicting the burial at sea actually pertain to “intelligence activities.” Nor have they demonstrated that the release of images of a somber, dignified burial at sea reasonably could be expected to cause identifiable or describable exceptionally grave damage to national security.

Look, there is simply no legal precedent for this. President Obama is asking the courts to rewrite FOIA law to allow his administration to withhold documents simply because their disclosure may cause controversy.

Interestingly, one of the judges hearing our case yesterday said that a video caused the death of our ambassador to Libya.  The court’s misimpression of what really happened (contrary to the Obama administration’s initial lies, the video had nothing to do with the Benghazi slaughter) shows that we can’t trust the Obama administration to tell us that a certain video or photo will cause harm and that the FOIA should be upended to appease terrorists.

And – again – do you see the blatant hypocrisy of the Obama administration’s opinion on this issue in light of its decision to leak apparently classified details to the filmmakers behind the new Hollywood blockbuster Zero Dark Thirty, which releases today? The film, which has elicited Oscar buzz, details the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden in incredible detail.

So, photos of a dead terrorist? Off limits to the American people. Sensitive or classified details, including the names of the military personnel involved in the bin Laden raid? Hollywood filmmakers are welcome to them, so long as the president looks good.

Judicial Watch has led the way in trying to uncover the details of Osama bin Laden’s capture and killing. We’re after the photos and videos. We’re after the details surrounding the bin Laden burial. We want to close the record on one of the American military’s most important victories. We don’t care if the president looks good or looks bad, we simply want information that the American people are entitled to under the law.

And we certainly want to get our hands on all of the details behind the Obama administration’s reckless cooperation with Bigelow and Boal, the director and writer behind Zero Dark Thirty.

You can click here for a full discussion of JW’s efforts to get to the truth in that scandal, but here’s the bottom line.

According to records we uncovered, the Obama White House sought to have “high visibility” in bin Laden-related projects to help the president look strong for ordering the raid that led to the terrorist’s capture and killing. White House officials helped to broker a deal to give two Hollywood filmmakers (Bigelow and Boal) unprecedented and secret access to classified details to craft an honorific film. White House spokesman Jay Carney denied that any classified details were handed over, but Obama administration officials have admitted under oath that the information passed on to the filmmakers could pose a serious risk to national security if disclosed to the public.

Judicial Watch has made the argument in court that the Obama administration cannot have it both ways. Either the information passed on to the filmmakers is harmless and should therefore be disclosed to the American people, or the Obama administration improperly and recklessly leaked sensitive information to the filmmakers.

Overall, Judicial Watch’s discoveries resulted in an Inspector General investigation into the whole sordid mess, resulting in a criminal referral to the Holder Justice Department.

So again, we ask which is more potentially harmful to national security: providing the American people with the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden or leaking classified details regarding the bin Laden raid to filmmakers?

Until next week…

It is that time of year again: Time for the Judicial Watch’s annual roster of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The purpose of the list, which is widely distributed in the press, is to put the spotlight on some of DC’s most unethical politicians who have undermined the rule of law and abused the public trust. This list is a powerful tool to educate Americans about the bipartisan problem of corruption in Washington and about Judicial Watch’s critical work in holding corrupt politicians accountable to the rule of law.

(By the way, if you want the full behind-the-scene details on many of the scandals listed below, please be sure to pick up your copy of THE CORRUPTION CHRONICLES: Obama’s Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government. Termed “highly readable, informative and entertaining” by Washington Examiner Executive Editor Mark Tapscott, the book comprehensively details how the Obama administration, which promised to be one of the most transparent, could prove to be the most secretive in a generation.)

And now on to our list, which includes (in alphabetical order):

• Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
• Secretary of Energy Steven Chu
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice
• Attorney General Eric Holder
• Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL)
• Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
• President Barack Obama
• Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
• Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

Dishonorable Mentions for 2012 include:

• Former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC)
• Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY)
• Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano
• Gen. David Petraeus
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
• Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL):

In July 2012, the House Ethics Committee, after a haphazard investigation, reported that Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) had omitted information on his financial disclosure forms over four years. However, the ethics committee took no action because once caught, Rep. Buchanan evidently corrected the “errors.” What, exactly, were the errors? In his disclosure statements for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, Buchanan failed to report all of his positions or ownership interests in six entities and income received from the entities.

In a separate matter, the committee continues to investigate findings of the Office of Congressional Ethics, Congress’s independent ethics review board, that there is “substantial reason to believe that Representative Buchanan attempted to influence the testimony of a witness in a proceeding before the FEC [Federal Election Commission].”

The alleged violation occurred during an FEC probe of Buchanan’s former business partner, Sam Kazran. According to Kazran, during the FEC probe, Buchanan offered him a $2.9 million settlement in a separate lawsuit if Kazran would lie about his role in a campaign cash laundering scheme involving Buchanan’s Florida car dealerships.  CNN reports that the FBI is now conducting its own investigation into possible federal witness tampering.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu:

“The final decisions on Solyndra were mine,” said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight Committee on November 17, 2011. And this should be his political epitaph. Chu’s decision to pour $528 million tax dollars into a failing green energy boondoggle that went belly-up in 2011 is indefensible and corrupt, especially in light of the fact that Solyndra’s key investor (Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser) also happens to be a major Obama campaign donor.

On March 12, 2012, Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) Energy and Oversight Committee exposed the full extent of Chu’s incompetence and corruption in a report citing “numerous examples of dysfunction, negligence and mismanagement by DOE [Department of Energy] officials, raising troubling questions about the leadership at DOE and how it has administered its loan guarantee programs.”  The report accused Chu’s DOE of having “turned a blind eye to the risks that have been glaringly apparent since the inception of the program.”

Whether Chu indeed made the “final” decision on Solyndra, or is simply protecting the president and his donor, this is a scandal of a major magnitude. And yet, it is only the tip of the iceberg. As Peter Schweizer, author of the book Throw Them All Out wrote, “According to the Department of Energy’s own numbers … In the 1705 government-backed-loan [green energy] program, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted … went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice lied about the events surrounding the Benghazi massacre. Hillary Clinton, the only First Lady to have been the subject of a grand jury investigation, is a regular visitor to our Most Corrupt list, while this is a first-time appearance for Ms. Rice.

One day after the attack, on September 12, 2012, Sec. Clinton said the following: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear — there is no justification for this, none.” She then joined President Obama in taping a television ad apologizing to the Muslim world for the obscure video, spending a reported $70,000 in taxpayer funds on the ad buys.

And then Rice repeated the Benghazi lie, over and over again on every major television news network. Hillary Clinton’s and Rice’s lies about one of the most significant terrorist attacks since 9/11 are, perhaps, the scandal of the year out of this administration. Little wonder that in his October 2012 testimony Eric Nordstrom, a former a top security official in Libya who was criticized for seeking more security in Benghazi, felt compelled to tell the House Oversight Committee that conversations he had with people in Washington led him to believe that it was “abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident. How thin does the ice have to get before someone falls through?”

He said he was so exasperated at one point he told a colleague that “for me the Taliban is on the inside of the building.”

Attorney General Eric Holder:

A regular on our annual Top Ten Corrupt list, Holder shamelessly operates the most blatantly politicized Department of Justice (DOJ) in a generation. And, with the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, it is no exaggeration that his agency has blood on its hands.

Fast and Furious was a reckless DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gun-running” scheme in which guns were sold to Mexican drug cartels and others, apparently in the hope that the guns would end up at crime scenes. Well, they did – and it appears that the guns were involved in the deaths of hundreds of Mexican citizens, as well as the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout with Mexican criminals in December 2010. On December 5, 2012, CBS News reported that 17 DOJ and ATF officials had been faulted in an Inspector General investigation of the Fast and Furious scandal. But, the man at the top remains unscathed, even after becoming the first attorney general in history to be cited for criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to divulge documents about DOJ lies to Congress about Fast and Furious.

Every day that Eric Holder remains at the helm, the Department of Justice sinks further into the abyss of cronyism, corruption, and deceit. And it is well past time for him to go.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL):

On November 21, 2012, Rep. Jesse Jackson resigned from Congress in disgrace, acknowledging in his statement that he had made his “share of mistakes.” This may well be the understatement of year. Jackson has been under federal investigation for alleged campaign finance improprieties, including reportedly using donor dollars to remodel his home and purchase personal gifts, a potential criminal violation. Add to that the fact that Jackson was one of the major figures implicated in the massive scandal involving jailed former Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich, who was brought to justice in 2011 for a number of crimes, including his efforts to “sell” President Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder. The evidence strongly suggests Jackson was one of those bidders.

Because Jackson refused to resign before the November elections, Illinois taxpayers will now be faced with costs of a special election: estimated to cost $5.1 million.

The late great Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko famously said that the official motto of Chicago should be “Ubi Est Mea — Where’s mine?” Clearly, Jackson and his cohorts have taken this motto to heart.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ):

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) joins the Judicial Watch’s list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians for 2012” in what might be considered a sort of “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

As far back as 2007, Sen. Menendez was investigated by a federal grand jury for illegally steering lobbying business to his former chief of staff Kay LiCausi, with whom he was also romantically linked. In just a few years, her firm reported $1.3 million in business with nearly $300,000 coming from a New Jersey medical center that was later awarded government funding thanks to a push from her former boss and lover.

In 2010, Menendez and his colleague in corruption, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), allocated $8 million for a public walkway and park space adjacent to upscale, waterfront condos built by a developer whose executives have donated generously to their political campaigns. The veteran legislators have received about $100,000 in contributions from the developer, according to federal election records. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the developer’s Washington D.C. lobbyist was a longtime senior aide to Menendez.

And to top it all off, in October 2012, The Daily Caller broke the story that two women from the Dominican Republic claimed that the senator had procured their services while on Spring Break at the luxurious Casa de Campo. Then in mid-December, the Associated Press revealed that Menendez employed an illegal immigrant as an unpaid intern in his Senate office who was a registered sex offender.

President Barack Obama:

Were there a “Hall of Fame” for broken promises, here is one that would get in on the first ballot: “Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency” (President Barack Obama, January 21, 2009). Instead of transparency and the rule of law over the past four years, we have witnessed the greatest expansion of government in modern political history and, consequently, an explosion of government secrecy, scandals, and abuses of power. Among the low-lights:

• Illegal recess appointments: Perhaps former Attorney General Ed Meese and Todd Graziano summed it up best in their January 5, 2012, Washington Post guest commentary: “President Obama’s attempt to unilaterally appoint three people to seats on the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the Senate blocked action on his nomination) is more than an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent the Senate’s advice-and-consent role. It is a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress.”

• Illegal immigration: In mid-June, Obama announced that by executive decree – and in apparent violation of his oath of office – his administration would stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. According to The AP, “the policy change … bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan …” Lest anyone doubt that Obama knew he was overriding the law of the land, in March, 2011, he said, “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”

• Unprecedented secrecy: Judicial Watch has had to file almost 1,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and nearly 100 lawsuits against the Obama administration on issues ranging from Obamacare to the continued funding of the criminal ACORN network; from tracking Wall Street bailout money to the unconstitutional use of czars; to White House visitor logs; to the attacks on the integrity of our nation’s elections.  This president touts transparency but condones law-breaking of open records laws by his administration.

• Unconstitutional czars: As far back as 2009, Reuters reported, “Name a top issue and President Barack Obama has probably got a ‘czar responsible for tackling it.” By the time the Judicial Watch Special Report President Obama’s Czars was published in October 2011, the number of Obama czars had skyrocketed to 45. Largely unconfirmed by and unaccountable to the Senate, many of Obama’s czars are often outside the reach of FOIA.  Some of these czars exercise unprecedented and unconstitutional control over major aspects of government policy and programs. And a number of the czars have been linked to scandals, thefts and kickbacks, flagrant and offensive statements, conflicts of interest, and radical leftist political ideologies and policies.

• Use of Executive Privilege to protect Eric Holder: On June 20, 2012, Barack Obama acquiesced to a plea from Attorney General Eric Holder and asserted “executive privilege” to protect the Attorney General from being prosecuted for failing to provide Congress with Fast and Furious documents. On March 22, 2011, when asked by a Univision TV if he had been informed of the Holder gunrunning program, Obama bluntly stated, “Absolutely not. This is a pretty big government, the United States government. I’ve got a lot of moving parts.” So, as Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox News, “They can’t have it both ways. If the President was not personally involved, executive privilege does not apply.”  To this day, President Obama refuses to detail the specific documents he is withholding from Congress.

The list could go on ad infinitum – with Benghazigate, bailouts, abusing the perks of office for luxury vacations for his family, and, of course, his personal involvement in the Solyndra scandal. But the bottom line is this: The federal government under Barack Obama is off the rails and out of control. And now, with Obama having been given the “flexibility” of a second term, it can only be expected to get worse.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV):

A July 30, 2012, headline in the Las Vegas Review-Journal alerted Nevadans to Sen. Harry Reid’s latest influence-peddling scandal – this one involving ENN Energy Group, a Chinese “green energy” client of the Nevada law firm of which Reid’s son, Rory, is a principal.

As Reuter’s reported on August 31, 2012, “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”

“Well below appraised value” is a considerable understatement. The deal Rory Reid put together for the firm his dad brought to town saw ENN purchase the site for just $4.5 million – a mere fraction of separate appraisals that valued the property at $29.6 million and $38.6 million. Even with all of that, however, the project has failed to move forward as rapidly as Harry and Rory Reid would like – for the simple reason that there is currently no market in Nevada for the green energy ENN claims it could produce.

But, of course, funneling money to the Reid family is nothing new for the Senate Majority Leader. As the Washington Post reported in a February 7, 2012, story titled “Public projects, private interests:”

In 2004 and 2005, the Senate majority leader secured $21.5 million to build a bridge over the Colorado River, linking the gambling resort town of Laughlin, Nev., with Bullhead City, Ariz. Reid owns 160 acres of undeveloped land in Bullhead City.

And according to Peter Schweizer, writing for Fox News on December 12, 2012, “Sen. Reid has sponsored at least $47 million in earmarks that directly benefitted organizations that one of his sons, Key Reid, [RW1] either lobbies for or is affiliated with.

Needless to say, the well-entrenched Sen. Reid has been a repeat Top Ten offender.

Rep. David Rivera (R-FL):

On October 24, 2012, the Florida ethics commission found “probable cause” that Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) had committed 11 violations of state ethics laws during his time in the Florida legislature. This comes amidst reports that Rivera remains under federal investigation over his personal and campaign finances. And, in a separate matter, the congressman is under investigation by the FBI for secretly funding the campaign of Justin Lamar Sternad, a candidate running against Joe Garcia in the Democratic primary earlier this year. Garcia defeated Rivera in the November election.

The “probable cause” findings stem from an investigation by the FBI and the IRS regarding Rep. Rivera’s dealings with the Flagler Dog Track, now known as the Magic City Casino. The basis for the investigation relates to payments reportedly totaling as much as $1 million made by the casino to Millennium Marketing in the guise of a consulting contract. Most of the money is said to have been paid in 2008. Millennium Marketing is owned by Rivera’s mother and godmother, and Rivera supposedly benefited from the arrangement, and is thus the subject of a tax evasion inquiry.

For a long time, Rep. Rivera denied ever receiving any income from the dog track, but just before heading to Congress, Rivera admitted receiving $132,000 in “undisclosed loans” from Millennium. He claims he paid the money back. Investigators are also taking a close look at Rivera’s campaign spending, including $75,000 he paid in 2010 “to a now-defunct consulting company owned by the daughter of a top aide.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

On September 12, 2012, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius became the first member of the President’s cabinet in U.S. history to have been found guilty of violating the Hatch Act when she campaigned for the reelection of Barack Obama in her official capacity of Secretary of HHS. According to Politico, “During a speech to the Human Rights Campaign Gala in North Carolina in February, Sebelius . . . outlined the Obama administration’s accomplishments so far and said, ‘One of the imperatives is to make sure that we not only come together here in Charlotte to present the nomination to the president, but we make sure that in November he continues to be president for another four years.’”

After the speech, Sebelius tried to cover her tracks by reclassifying the event from “official” to “political,” and claiming her appearance was in her personal capacity. The scheme didn’t work.

According to the official statement put out by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel: “The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) sent findings to the President today from its investigation of complaints of prohibited political activity by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. OSC concluded that Secretary Sebelius violated the Hatch Act when she made extemporaneous partisan remarks in a speech delivered in her official capacity on February 25, 2012.  The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or influence to affect the outcome of an election.”

Thoroughly unapologetic, Ms. Sebelius justified her transgression by informing the OSC that she simply “got a little caught up in the notion that the gains which had been made would clearly not continue without the president’s reelection.” In other words, her Obamacare agenda took precedence over the law. Normally, when a government official is found violating the Hatch Act, the punishment is termination.  How did President Obama respond? There was no punishment whatsoever.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC):

On May 31, 2012, a jury in the corruption trial of former U.S. Senator from North Carolina and presidential candidate John Edwards said that it could not agree on a verdict for five of six counts, and U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles was forced to declare a mistrial. But, while Edwards may have been partially exonerated (he was acquitted on one count), he was certainly not vindicated.

John Edwards conducted an illicit affair with campaign employee Rielle Hunter that resulted in the birth of their daughter. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Edwards reportedly persuaded his former political aide Andrew Young to claim that he was the father of the child, and not Edwards. The ruse failed and Edwards was forced to admit to the whole sordid mess. The focus then shifted to whether Edwards unlawfully diverted campaign funds to hide the affair.

Edwards denies the claim, but according to witness testimony Hunter and Young received nearly a million dollars in “hush” payments from philanthropist Rachel “Bunny” Mellon and Texas billionaire Fred Baron, two campaign donors who did not want to see the scandal derail Edwards’ pursuit of the White House. According to an excellent analysis by Hans Von Spakovsky at the Heritage Foundation, the money paid to Edwards’ mistress was “dishonest, dishonorable, and illegal:”

“Federal law…prohibits the conversion of campaign funds to any personal use (2 U.S.C. §439a). Most important, FEC regulations state that the payment of a personal expense by any person other than the candidate is considered a contribution to the candidate, unless the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy (11 CFR 113.1). As the FEC said in a prior advisory opinion (AO 2008-17), the key question is, ‘Would the third party pay the expense if the candidate was not running for Federal office?’”

In short, John Edwards may have eluded the reach of the law. But, in the courtroom of public opinion he remains one of the “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2012.

Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY):

Though Staten Island’s Rep. Michael Grimm managed to eke out a reelection victory on November 6, it wasn’t because he had failed to supply his opponent with serious issues of campaign corruption. During the race, Grimm was the subject of an FBI investigation into allegations that his 2010 congressional campaign had accepted contributions over the legal limit and from noncitizen donors via Ofer Biton, a former aide to a prominent Israeli rabbi, in exchange for helping Biton obtain a green card.

According to ABC News, “In early 2012, the New York Times reported that Grimm, a devout Catholic and former agent for the FBI, allegedly accepted illegal donations from members of an Upper East Side rabbi’s congregation. Ofer Biton, an Israeli citizen and a top aide to the prominent Orthodox rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, came under investigation by the FBI over allegations that Biton embezzled millions of dollars from the congregation. It is said that while campaigning with Biton, the Grimm campaign collected over $500,000 in campaign contributions.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano:

According a Gallup Poll, a full 62 per cent of the American people believe that stopping illegal immigration should be a top priority of the U.S. government. Unfortunately for the American people, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is not numbered among that 62%. And she is the person who is supposed to be enforcing the law. Last year, Napolitano opened the floodgates of illegal immigration by having the Department of Homeland Security review all cases then before the immigration courts with an eye towards halting the deportation of many illegal immigrants allegedly with no criminal backgrounds. (JW uncovered records demonstrating this to be an utter lie. Many of the illegals let off the hook were convicted of violent crimes.)

Not satisfied with skirting the law in 2011, Napolitano decided to abandon it altogether in 2012. Accordingly, on June 15, 2012, she announced: “By this memorandum, I am setting forth how, in the exercise of our prosecutorial discretion, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should enforce the Nation’s immigration laws against certain young people who were brought to this country as children and know only this country as home.”

In short, this amounted to blanket “temporary” amnesty for illegals under the age of 30. With her single statement, she simply declared upwards of one million illegal aliens entirely legal. Just like that. No legislation. No debate. No votes. No court rulings. The Constitution of the United States notwithstanding. And, in so doing, she violated the Oath of Office she had taken when sworn in as secretary of Homeland Security on January 21, 2009: “I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Gen. David Petraeus:

General Petraeus was forced to resign after news leaked of his long-term extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, a writer and military analyst who penned a Petraeus biography. Compounding the scandal are questions involving whether Petraeus’ mistress had improper access to classified information from the nation’s top spy. At the University of Denver on July 28, Broadwell said, “I had access to everything, it was my experience not to leak it, not to violate my mentor, if you will.”

There is also a major question about whether Petraeus misled Congress about the Benghazi attack in his initial congressional testimony. On September 14, just days after the attack on the consulate, Petraeus briefed congressional intelligence leaders, reportedly telling them he believed the attack was spontaneous and not carefully pre-planned. Yet on Friday, November 16, in private hearings before Senate and House intelligence committees, Petraeus changed his story. According to Fox News: “Petraeus’ testimony both challenges the Obama administration’s repeated claims that the attack was a “spontaneous” protest over an anti-Islam video, and according to [New York Rep. Peter] King conflicts with his own briefing to lawmakers on Sept. 14. Sources have said Petraeus, in that briefing, also described the attack as a protest that spun out of control.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA):

Judicial Watch uncovered evidence that Elizabeth Warren gave false statements under oath regarding Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) activities when she served as the agency’s interim director. According to the records, Warren and the CFPB were intimately involved in brokering a 50-state settlement underway with the nation’s largest mortgage lenders related to alleged improper foreclosure procedures. This evidence seems to contradict Warren’s statements before Congress suggesting her office responded to requests for advice, but did not seek to push its views.

During a March 16, 2011, hearing of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, Ms. Warren downplayed her agency’s involvement in the state settlement negotiations: “We have been asked for advice by the Department of Justice, by the Secretary of the Treasury, and by other federal agencies. And when asked for advice, we have given our advice.”

But this does not come close to telling the full story.

Emails obtained by Judicial Watch from several states suggest her agency’s participation was far more intense and aggressive. Warren called emergency meetings by phone and in person with attorneys general nationwide to contribute unsolicited input on the matter. The documents also indicate that Warren’s office insisted on keeping its contact with the state attorneys general secret. For example, in a February 25, 2011, email to the Executive Committee of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), Iowa Assistant Attorney General Patrick Madigan wrote: “Elizabeth Warren would like to present the CFPB’s view on loan modifications.” Two weeks earlier, a similar email was distributed to NAAG’s Loss Mitigation Subgroup on Warren’s behalf. In an email on February 15 regarding that meeting, Madigan points out that “The CFPB wanted me to stress the confidential nature of this briefing.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA):

In early December, Democrats chose the scandal-plagued Rep. Maxine Waters to be the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee despite her many transgressions over the years. The influential congresswoman has helped family members make more than $1 million through business ventures with companies and causes that she has helped, according to her hometown newspaper.

In August 2010, Waters’ influence peddling earned the attention of a subcommittee of the House Ethics Committee which charged Rep. Waters with three counts of violating House rules and ethics regulations in connection with her use of power and influence on behalf of OneUnited Bank. After a highly controversial investigation, plagued by accusations of impropriety and corruption, on September 12, the committee failed to hold Waters to account for steering a $12 million to OneUnited, in which she and her board member husband held shares.

The Financial Services Committee, among other responsibilities, has jurisdiction over all issues pertaining to; you guessed it, the banking system.

I encourage you to pass the list around your family and friends.  Let’s get the word out and increase the accountability for this group of powerful politicians who abuse their office and the public trust.

Until next week…

In September 2012 the Pentagon Inspector General investigating charges the Obama administration leaked classified details to the filmmakers behind Zero Dark Thirty, a movie about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, made a startling criminal referral to the Holder Department of Justice (DOJ). This referral, coming just two months before the presidential election, implicated Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers in the improper release of classified information.

Specifically, Vickers is alleged to have improperly provided the name of at least one operative to the filmmakers. And what did Eric Holder do with this referral?  As best as I can tell – absolutely nothing.

As you well know, Judicial Watch has been aggressively investigating the Zero Dark Thirty leaks, filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The documents we have uncovered helped spur the Inspector General investigation and criminal referral.  Again, it wasn’t the media that obtained the smoking gun documents and it wasn’t Congress – it was Judicial Watch – your independent watchdog in Washington.

But we’re not finished.  And over the last week or so, as news reports emerged detailing the criminal referral against Vickers, JW filed a brief with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. JW asked the court to force the Obama administration to release to the public the names of the five CIA bin Laden raid operatives disclosed to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the director and writer of the film respectively.

The administration has not legally justified its withholdings.  We want the information that the filmmakers were given and, given the intense public interest in the film, what virtually every other news organization wants.  The Obama gang could, if they wanted, say the filmmakers shouldn’t have been given the names and the information is classified.  But they haven’t done so and have danced around the issue (the administration has told the court that the names were not “classified in isolation”).  They could easily end the dispute by asserting the names are now classified.  But to do so would be admission of wrongdoing with the original leaks.  I’ve seen a lot of FOIA litigation:  the gamesmanship in this one is notable.

And don’t get me started on how the DOJ could be considering a criminal investigation on one hand while playing defense on the same issue in our case.

After all, if it is appropriate to release this information to Hollywood filmmakers, shouldn’t the American people be granted access to the same information? The Obama administration says not a chance. Consistent with its track record, the Obama administration releases details when it suits their interests and keeps them secret when it does not.

For example, documents previously uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal that the Obama administration sought to have “high visibility” into bin Laden-related projects, and granted Boal and Bigelow unusual access to agency information in preparation for their film. They wanted to assist projects that made the president appear “gutsy” in the pursuit of bin Laden.

The Obama administration officials also disclosed in sworn court documents related to this lawsuit that the sensitive information released to Bigelow and Boal could cause an “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk” if released to the public. The admissions seem to contradict the public statement by Obama White House spokesman Jay Carney regarding the controversy: “We do not discuss classified information,” Carney told reporters.

In its reply brief filed on December 17, 2012, Judicial Watch reiterated that the Obama administration cannot have it both ways:

In its responsive brief, the government says it wanted to facilitate an accurate movie portrayal of the people involved in the hunt for bin Laden, but it still wishes to keep secret the identities of those individuals who will be accurately portrayed. These desires appear to be mutually exclusive.  Just as Plaintiff predicted in its opening brief, within the past week the privacy of at least one of these government employees has been eroded by media outlets seeking to satisfy the overwhelming public interest in the making of this critically acclaimed and controversial film. This should have been foreseeable a year ago when the government agreed to allow filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal to interview the men and women behind the search for bin Laden for a quasi-journalistic movie based on their efforts.

Judicial Watch’s brief also took issue with the Obama administration’s attempts to dissuade the judge from considering the film itself, as well as the ongoing Inspector General investigation into the matter, as it determines whether to order the release of the information:

Despite the government’s plea that the Court not consider Plaintiff’s evidence of Congressional or Inspector General investigations, or take notice of the movie itself in considering the remaining privacy interests, this Court can and should consider “all of the circumstances” surrounding the disclosures in deciding whether the public interest favors the release of personal information….If the public knows which names were shared with the filmmakers (and by deduction, which were not), it will shed light on how and whether the government was trying to influence the narrative of an “accurate” theatrical portrayal.

With respect to Undersecretary for Defense Michael Vickers and his role in aiding Zero Dark Thirty, McClatchy, which broke the news about the criminal referral, notes that the Holder DOJ refuses to act and refuses to explain why it is dragging its feet:

Pentagon investigators concluded that a senior Defense Department official who’s been mentioned as a possible candidate to be the next CIA director leaked restricted information to the makers of an acclaimed film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and referred the case to the Justice Department, according to knowledgeable U.S. officials.

The Justice Department received the case involving Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers in September, but so far it’s declined to launch a criminal prosecution, said two senior U.S. officials who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

So, in sum, the documents we uncovered implicate the White House, the CIA, and the Pentagon in the bin Laden movie leaks. And the fact that the Holder DOJ sat on a criminal referral until after the election is utterly disgraceful. This story is about to get even worse for this administration. Rest assured that we will continue to fight the Obama administration’s stonewalling on this scandal in federal court.

Now, in separate litigation related to the bin Laden raid, Judicial Watch again asked the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn a U.S. District Court ruling and instruct the DOD and CIA to release 52 images from the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound and the terrorist mastermind’s burial at sea.  Again, the Obama crowd is happy to release information to the bin Laden filmmakers but won’t give basic information about bin Laden’s killing to the American people!

The appeals court is expected to hear oral argument on this effort to release the bin Laden photos and video on January 10, 2013, the day before the national release of the Zero Dark Thirty film.

JW Responds to First Lady Michelle Obama’s Accusations of Voter Suppression in 2012

Of all the problems with the last election cycle, so-called “voter suppression” wasn’t one of them. But don’t tell that to First Lady Michelle Obama. On the Tom Joyner Radio Show last week, Mrs. Obama actually made the outrageous statement that, “Voter suppression was in full force in so many states all over this country.”

I couldn’t let that one go unanswered. So here’s a statement I offered to the press in response:

Mrs. Obama’s accusations about minority vote suppression are racially divisive and show a dangerous disregard for the truth.  We are aware of no evidence of actual voter suppression.  If Mrs. Obama has some, it should be disclosed.

The fact is that early exit polls reflected a pro-Obama turnout by minorities that in some key states actually exceeded numbers seen during his historic election in 2008. As MSNBC reported, ‘Non-white voters delivered a wake-up call to Republicans Tuesday night. Turning out in droves for Obama, Latino voters alone split 71% for Obama compared to Mitt Romney’s 27%. High voter turnout by minorities reflected a huge demographic shift that Republicans ignored at their own peril.’

Voter ID requirements are widely supported and are no impediment to voting.

The first lady’s reckless remarks are part of the Obama administration’s continued assault on voter ID and election integrity. This is despite that fact that an election night survey of voters by Judicial Watch, in partnership with Breitbart.com, showed a large majority of respondents (65%) “strongly support” voters being required to show an official government ID when voting. Support cut across racial lines, with 52% of Blacks and 64% of Hispanics strongly believing that IDs should be required.

On the last point, Judicial Watch defended voter ID laws in Pennsylvania and South Carolina last year. And now these laws will take effect beginning after the New Year. We are also in the middle of a battle over a voter ID law that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On December 14, we filed an amicus curiae brief with the High Court regarding the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to declare that Arizona’s Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, violated the NVRA.

We filed the brief on behalf of former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, the driving force behind Prop 200, also known as the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Projection Act. (You may recall, JW previously represented former State Sen. Pearce in support of another piece of legislation he authored, SB 1070, Arizona’s tough illegal immigration enforcement law. The Supreme Court upheld key provisions of that law on June 25, 2012.)

Prop 200, which passed in 2004 with 56% of the vote, provides that 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 Prop 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 Prop 200.

With its amicus curiae brief Judicial Watch maintains that the Ninth Circuit erred when ruling that the federal law prohibited states from requiring additional documentation to protect election integrity:

The NVRA . . . 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.”

Folks, this is a major case that will have ripple effects across the country.

To emphasize this point, in an October 21, 2012, story on the importance of the pending Supreme Court ruling, UPI said that “an eventual Supreme Court decision will help shape the voting landscape of the future … Seventeen states have enacted laws requiring the presentation of a government-issued photo identification, such as a driver’s license. The Brennan Center for Justice said those 17 states account for 218 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. If the laws are implemented, the center said, millions of voters would be affected.”

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. And you should note the Holder DOJ intervened against Arizona at the last minute in this litigation.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the Obama administration is perfectly happy to allow ineligible aliens – both legal and illegal – to vote in our elections.

Our client Russell Pearce, the author of Prop 200 also issued a strong statement:

The Ninth Circuit Court ruling ignores the rule of law, common sense and states’ rights. This court 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. The Justice Department had given Arizona’s Proposition 200 a thumbs-up and found no conflict with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  I am pleased this case is finally going to the Supreme Court where we expect to win as we did with the Legal Arizona Workers Act in 2011 and SB1070 in 2012.

As part of its 2012 Election Integrity Project, Judicial Watch conducted an investigation demonstrating that voter rolls in the following states contained the names of individuals ineligible to vote: Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, and California. Judicial Watch put these states on notice that they must clean up their voter registration lists or face Judicial Watch lawsuits. Judicial Watch and True the Vote subsequently filed lawsuits against election officials in Indiana and Ohio, and prompted the state of Florida to remove dead and other ineligible voters from its registration lists.

I noted this last week, but it bears repeating. The non-partisan Pew Charitable Trust concluded in February 2012 that approximately 24 million active voter registrations throughout the United States – or one out of every eight registrations – are either no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.

And dirty lists equal fraudulent election results. As the New York Post noted last election season, “Current voter-registration systems are flawed, with huge numbers of dead or disqualified voters still on the rolls. And, since voter-ID enforcement is poor, in many places a person can simply claim to be one of those people and vote in their name with no one the wiser.”

And this is precisely the way the Obamas and their Attorney General Eric Holder would have it. The Obama DOJ forced states to register greater numbers of voters on public assistance in 2012 (Obama’s “Food Stamp Army”), while ignoring a stipulation in the National Voter Registration Act requiring states to clean up voter registration lists. The DOJ also opposed voter ID laws and other election integrity measures that Judicial Watch fought to uphold.

This election integrity work is now one of Judicial Watch’s most important priorities moving forward. I hope you will consider joining us in this effort by making a tax-deductible donation so we can continue our work to stop voter fraud.

Best Christmas Wishes     

JW got a bit of an odd Christmas present today.  I learned today that New York Times best-selling book, Corruption Chronicles: Obama’s Big Secrecy, Big Corruption and Big Government, had made the Daily Beast’s “The Great Obama-Loathing Canon” of books, a list of “high-priced hardcover bile!”  A slam from Tina Brown’s leftist publication is a badge of honor and one more reason to put the book on your list of things to get (or even give as a last minute Christmas gift).

The Update, unless news developments warrant, will take a break next week.  In the beginning of the New Year, you can expect to receive our list of Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.

In the meantime, on behalf of all of us here at Judicial Watch, I wish you and yours all the peace and joy of Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

We achieved a significant legal victory this week – and it may lead to cleaner elections.  On December 10, 2011, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division, denied Indiana’s motion to dismiss our historic election integrity lawsuit (Judicial Watch, et al. v. King, et al. (No. 1:12-cv-00800)). We allege that the state of Indiana failed to maintain clean voter registration lists as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), and now we will have our day in court. Make no mistake, this is a HUGE victory for election integrity.  True the Vote, the grassroots clean elections watchdog, is both our client and co-plaintiff in this important lawsuit.

The State ofIndianahad feebly offered the argument that Judicial Watch did not have standing to bring the lawsuit and, therefore, could not sue Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson and Indiana Election Division Directors J. Bradley Kind and Trent Deckard in their official capacity. But Judge Lawrence was having none of it, and ruled that the lawsuit can proceed in its entirety.

By way of review, this case began on February 6, 2012, when Judicial Watch notified Indiana election officials by letter that the state was in violation of the NVRA, having failed to clean its voter records to the extent that “the number of persons registered to vote exceeded the total voting population in twelve Indiana counties.”

The Judicial Watch letter also requested that the State of Indiana make available for public inspection all records concerning “the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency” of official lists of eligible voters, per Section 8 of the NVRA.

And what was the state’s reply? Indiana election officials summarily dismissed these concerns about the rolls and flatly refused to produce documents about this issue. And so, on June 11, 2012, Judicial Watch filed suit, leading to our recent court victory.

In its denial of the motion to dismiss, the District Court first ruled that the Judicial Watch and True the Vote had sufficiently fulfilled NVRA notification requirements, stating, “[T]he Court finds that the Letter satisfied the pre-suit notice requirement, inasmuch as the Letter, when read as a whole, makes it clear that Judicial Watch is asserting a violation of the NVRA and plans to initiate litigation if its concerns are not addressed in a timely fashion.”

In denying the defendants’ allegation that Judicial Watch and True the Vote did not have standing to sue, the Court ruled that Judicial Watch “has satisfied this burden by alleging that its members who are registered to vote in Indiana are injured by Indiana’s failure to comply with the NVRA list maintenance requirements.” True the Vote, the court ruled, “has suffered injuries because of the Defendants alleged failure to comply with the NVRA and therefore has standing to bring its List Maintenance Claim.”

Needless to say, this is a major victory for the people of Indiana and everyone who values the integrity of the ballot box nationwide. Indiana’s election officials who shirked their responsibility to maintain clean voter registration lists have been put on notice that their lackadaisical attitude is no longer acceptable. This victory should put other states on notice that they need to take reasonable and responsible steps to remove dead and ineligible voters from the rolls. The Obama Justice Department has been AWOL on this issue so we will stand in the gap for election integrity. Actually, it’s worse than that. (The Department of Justice has, at times, behaved more like an enemy combatant against election integrity.)

Our client, True the Vote, was also excited by this victory. Here’s a statement from the organization’s President, Catherine Engelbrecht:

This is excellent news for Americans concerned with the integrity of our elections. Election officials, from local offices to secretaries of state, cannot wash their hands of the federal requirement to maintain accurate voter rolls for any reason. This decision should serve as clear evidence that citizens can and will hold our election system accountable.

Monday’s decision set a standard for private citizens wanting to make a difference. Bloated voter rolls are clear evidence that election officials are not doing the jobs they were hired to do. With this early victory, True the Vote and Judicial Watch will continue to expose and correct any instance of failure to maintain our voter rolls. Hopefully the parties can reach a settlement that fixes the problem and saves Indiana taxpayers from the needless cost of litigation.

If you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you know that election fraud is a massive problem nationwide.

According to research published by the non-partisan Pew Charitable Trust in February 2012, approximately 24 million active voter registrations throughout the United States – or one out of every eight registrations – are either no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.

And dirty lists equal fraudulent election results. A recent article in the New York Post makes the point: “Current voter-registration systems are flawed, with huge numbers of dead or disqualified voters still on the rolls. And, since voter-ID enforcement is poor, in many places a person can simply claim to be one of those people and vote in their name with no one the wiser.”

For all of these reasons, Judicial Watch officially launched its Election Integrity Project earlier this year, an effort that now continues into 2013 and beyond. JW conducted an investigation demonstrating that voter rolls in the following states contained the names of individuals ineligible to vote: Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, and California. Judicial Watch put these states on notice that they must clean up their voter registration lists or face Judicial Watch lawsuits.

Judicial Watch and True the Vote subsequently filed lawsuits against election officials in Indiana and Ohio, and prompted the state of Florida to purge its registration lists of ineligible voters.  (We also defended Voter ID laws inPennsylvania andSouth Carolina, which will take effect beginning after the New Year.)

The Obama Justice Department, meanwhile, pressured states to register greater numbers of voters on public assistance in 2012, while ignoring a stipulation in the NVRA requiring states to clean up voter registration lists. The Justice Department also opposed voter ID laws and other election integrity measures.

And it appears the administration’s hostility to clean elections is only going to get worse. Just this week, per Bloomberg, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he favors “automatically registering” voters.  Let’s be clear:  the Left wants the federal government to force you to register to vote.  Obama isn’t satisfied with nationalizing your health care – he also wants a federal takeover of our election systems, which is contrary to the Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the states, not the federal government, the authority to “regulate the time, place, and manner of holding elections.”  Can you think of any threat greater to the security of your vote and elections than federal government bureaucrats – working with the ACORN network – compiling lists on your voting registration and behavior?

The great American patriot, Samuel Adams, who knew well that the right to vote was paid for by the blood of the American Revolution, said that when a person votes, “he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

The Obama administration and its leftist allies want to turn our voting processes into a chaotic mess where votes are not secure, dead people cast ballots and illegal and legal aliens flood the polls in record numbers. But Judicial Watch keeps battling.  And as our victory in Indiana shows, we will do it state by state, if necessary.

Three Police Officers Forced to Give DNA Samples

Our nation’s police officers are often attacked for supposedly violating constitutional rights. But who defends police officers when their constitutional rights are trampled?  In a murder investigation taking place in Phoenix, Arizona, three police officers have had their rights trampled by none other than the Phoenix Police Department (PPD). And Judicial Watch is battling in court to protect them.

This week we filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona on behalf of three Phoenix police officers forced by the City of Phoenix PPD to give DNA samples in the controversial “death unknown” case of fellow police offer Sergeant Sean Drenth. The lawsuit alleges that PPD management forced the officers to surrender their DNA in violation of their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Hang with me here as I walk through the details of this case, because they are critical to understanding why we have come to the aid of these officers.

The plaintiffs in our lawsuit are officers Daniel Bill, Bryan Hanania, and Michael Malpass. Each of these officers responded to an “officer down” call the night of October 18, 2010. Importantly, none of them came into direct contact with the slain officer, his vehicle, or weapons. The PPD has repeatedly stated that none of the plaintiffs are suspects in Sergeant Sean Drenth’s death, which makes the PPD’s behavior all the more odd.

Sergeant Drenth was found dead outside of his vehicle in a vacant lot one-half mile south of the State Capitol building.

Drenth had been shot in the head. His shotgun was lying lengthwise on his body, centered on his chest with the muzzle pointed towards his chin. A single bullet from the gun had entered just under his chin and burst out through the top of his skull. The sergeant’s secondary weapon was on the ground next to his right ankle, with his handcuffs, cell phone, and flashlight nearby.

Shortly after the discovery of Drenth’s body, more than 300 persons – including then-Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, PPD officers, City of Phoenix fire fighters, City of Phoenix personnel, and Arizona State Capitol police officers and security personnel – converged upon the area. As JW notes in its lawsuit, the officers were among the first responders, but did not come in close proximity to the body:

Plaintiffs Bill and Hanania entered the lot from S. 18th Avenue, but did not proceed beyond the deceased officer’s patrol car. At no point were Plaintiffs Bill and Hanania ever closer than fifteen (15) feet from Sergeant Drenth’s body. They never touched or were closer than fifteen (15) feet from the shotgun that lay across Sergeant Drenth’s chest or the secondary weapon that lay near Sergeant Drenth’s ankle. Nor did they ever touch or enter Sergeant Drenth’s patrol car.

Plaintiff Malpass did not enter the lot. He was never closer than thirty (30) feet from Sergeant Drenth’s body. He never touched or was closer than thirty (30) feet from the shotgun or the secondary weapon found with Sergeant Drenth’s body, and he never touched or entered Sergeant Drenth’s patrol car.

Later in the evening, when Drenth’s service weapon was found near the railroad tracks south of the vacant lot, according the complaint, “The team moved to the south side of the tracks in order to avoid disturbing the area near the service weapon.”

Subsequent to the searches, the teams in which the plaintiffs were included provided detailed reports as to their actions and whereabouts throughout the evening of Sergeant Denth’s death on October 18.

According the complaint, “These reports were readily available to PPD management.” Beginning on December 3, 2010, the PPD begin requesting DNA samples “for exclusionary purposes” from all PDD officers at the crime scene, including officers Bill, Hanania, and Malpass.

In April 2011, PPD employees, including the plaintiffs, who had declined to provide DNA were delivered a memo requesting immediate compliance. That memo was presented to Officers Bill, Hanania, and Malpass on April 18, 2011, at which time each of the officers again informed the investigating detectives of their specific locations and activities on the night of Sergeant Drenth’s death.

On August 8, 2011, the PPD requested and received orders from the Maricopa County Superior Court to detain officers Bill, Hanania, and Malpass in order to take samples of their DNA. One week later, the PPD detained Bill, Hanania, and Malpass and obtained the DNA samples against their will. Under Arizona law, the DNA samples can be kept for up to 55 years.

So, in sum, our clients were never near Sergeant Denth’s body. The PPD has said they are not suspects in the death of Sergeant Denth. And yet, the PPD forced the officers to submit DNA samples against their will and in violation of their rights.

According to the Judicial Watch complaint filed on December 7, 2012, PPD management “[D]eprived Plaintiffs Bill, Hanania, and Malpass of their rights under the U.S. Constitution by subjecting them to buccal swabs for purposes of DNA analysis without obtaining search warrants, without probable cause, and without having a non-law enforcement special need.”

Simply because officers swear their allegiance to uphold the law doesn’t mean they surrender their rights to be protected under it. The Fourth Amendment cannot be selectively applied by the City of Phoenix.  Citizens have a right to be secure in their persons – and this includes their DNA. (Judicial Watch’s Arizona counsel is Bob Kavanagh.)

This is a cutting-edge lawsuit that has received tons of media coverage in Phoenix.  It is a case that deserves nationwide attention.

JW Joins With Ethics Groups To Call on Congress to Get Back to Work on Ethics

On Wednesday, Judicial Watch’s Director of Investigations and Research, Chris Farrell, joined with representatives of other watchdog organizations at a press conference to deliver a very simple message to House Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: Act now to keep the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) running without interruption.

Roll Call covered the story:

Time is dwindling for House leaders to find and appoint candidates to fill at least four impending openings on the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics before year’s end so its investigative work can continue uninterrupted.

The vacancies, combined with House Republicans’ delay appointing a House Ethics Committee chairman for the next Congress after the heads of other panels were announced, has government-accountability groups worried that ethics issues may be marginalized.

(In addition to Judicial Watch, the groups included: Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Common Cause, National Legal and Policy Center, Public Citizen, Sunlight Foundation and U.S. PIRG.)

Despite assurances from both members of Congress that they remain committed to the OCE, time is running out to do what is necessary to protect it.  As I told Roll Call, “Practically speaking, [the Republican House leadership] is late. There are a lot of things on their plate, but it’s not like it’s a surprise that these appointments are required.”

As Judicial Watch and the other good government groups noted in a letter to Boehner and Pelosi, dated December 12, 2012, there are very specific steps that must now be taken:

The terms of four members of OCE’s board will expire at the end of this year, leaving just the two chairmen – Porter Goss and David Skaggs – as sitting board members. OCE cannot function without an active board of directors…. It is the responsibility of solely your two offices to agree upon and appoint board members for the expired terms in the 113th Congress ….

As you may recall, Judicial Watch played a key role in the creation of the OCE. I testified before Congress on the issue of House ethics reform and we worked with then-Speaker Pelosi to establish the system now in place. It hasn’t functioned perfectly, but as we noted in the December 12^th letter, the OCE “provides a critical yet non-intrusive link between the public and the important work of the House Ethics Committee.”

The OCE doesn’t make judgments on ethics cases. (That’s the job of the House Ethics Committee.) It merely serves as an independent fact-finding body that reviews allegations of improper conduct made against Members of Congress and congressional staff. “…In the course of its investigative reports, the agency [offers] useful evidence and insights and helps the public better understand the nature of specific cases,” the letter stated.

(For an in-depth review of how the OCE operates, visit the official OCE website.)

Among the members of Congress investigated by the OCE: Reps. Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Laura Richardson (D-CA), Don Young (R-AK), and former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL).

Owing both to its mission and the bi-partisan manner in which the OCE has approached its work, the OCE has been on shaky ground from the beginning. It passed Congress in 2008 by a narrow margin. House Democrats were unhappy with some of the supposedly “tough” sanctions that resulted from the OCE’s work in its early days. The Congressional Black Caucus also took offense to the attention given to its membership by the OCE. And Republican leaders didn’t like the idea from the get-go. (There was even talk at the beginning of the 112^th Congress of weakening the OCE or doing away with it altogether.)

Thus far, it has survived these attacks, but at the writing of this update, the OCE’s future is somewhat in doubt. As we note in our letter, if the OCE is allowed to go defunct, enforcement of congressional ethics will be at “dire risk.”

Clearly, the demise of the OCE would not go over well with the American people.

According to a Judicial Watch/Breitbart News Election Day 2012 poll conducted in partnership with Public Opinion Strategies, corruption in the federal government was cited as a serious concern among voters, with 85% saying they are “concerned” and 53% saying they are “very concerned.” And members of Congress wonder why they have a 20% approval rating.

Suffice to say, House Speaker Boehner and Speaker Pelosi would be wise to make the OCE, and ethics in general, a priority in the 113^th Congress. Rest assured Judicial Watch will be ever present in reminding them of this obligation to combat corruption among the ranks of Congress.

Until next week…

The bin Laden raid film Zero Dark Thirty opens later this month in limited release.  It has received favorable “buzz” and reportedly focuses on characters that seem based upon the very individuals at the CIA and Pentagon to whom the Obama administration gave the filmmakers, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, access.  So why are Obama administration lawyers desperately trying to dissuade a federal judge from watching the film?

Why indeed.

By way of review, Judicial Watch is suing the Obama administration to gain access to records detailing the cooperation between the Obama CIA, the Department of Defense (DOD), and Hollywood filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal regarding their bin Laden epic. Records we’ve already uncovered demonstrate that the Obama administration gave Bigelow and Boal unprecedented access to information about the raid and those involved.

And Obama administration officials also admitted that if the information released to the filmmakers were to be publicly known, it would cause an “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk.”

The government continues to stonewall the release of records that could shed more light on this “partnership,” and our investigation continues.

In our efforts to gain access to records related to Zero Dark Thirty, Judicial Watch made an argument in a recent court brief that we believe should be common sense. In determining what information should and should not be released, the court might actually want to review the film at the center of its lawsuit:

In light of the fact that much of the government’s argument hinges on the assertion that the individuals in question will have a continued privacy interest in their names after this film is released, a viewing of Zero Dark Thirty after its theatrical release on December 19, 2012 may ultimately be…illuminating.

Obama lawyers, however, are trying to dissuade the judge from actually watching the film. According to an Obama administration court filing filed earlier this week: “…the CIA and DOD disagree with [Judicial Watch's] implication that the Court needs to view the movie to decide this case…The CIA and DOD therefore would oppose any additional attempts by plaintiff to extend the briefing of this case until the movie’s release.”

I should point out that limited release for the film is set for December 19. Judicial Watch’s final brief is due on December 17. Any delay required for the court to review the film would be negligible. By the way, we first asked for these documents in August of last year and had to sue in January of this year after months of delay.  So the Obama administration’s new found concern about “delay” is laughable.

And the court might not need to wait until the public release of the film. Zero Dark Thirty has already been publicly screened, having recently won the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Picture.

There can really only be one reason why Obama administration lawyers would try to keep the judge from seeing the film – they believe it will weaken their case.

Here are a couple of other tidbits from the government’s response brief worth noting. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues that “It is pure conjecture on [Judicial Watch's] part that characters in the movie will in fact be based on these individuals [interviewed], and in such a way that reveals their identities.” But DOJ lawyers never suggest Judicial Watch’s conjecture is incorrect. Where is the evidence to the contrary typical for a motion seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit?

Similarly, the DOJ argues that JW lacks “proof” that the CIA agents signed a release waiving defamation claims for the use of their likeness and characters in a film.  They do not say the CIA operatives failed to sign it. They simply argue that JW doesn’t have proof, which, I might point out, is very difficult to obtain so long as the Obama administration continues stonewalling the release of records.

As I say, JW previously obtained records from the DOD and the CIA regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and the filmmakers. According to the records, the Obama administration sought to have “high visibility” into bin Laden related projects, and granted Boal and Bigelow unusual access to agency information in preparation for their film. (The disclosures made to the filmmakers are now part of an investigation by the DOD Inspector General.)

They got their wish.

In return for this visibility, the DOD and the CIA shared the names of five CIA and military operatives involved in the bin Laden operation with the filmmakers, but have continued to withhold this information. Judicial Watch has identified the precise emails containing the information it wishes to obtain, and in sworn declarations Obama administration officials conceded that this information was provided to Bigelow and Boal.

According to sworn testimony from CIA Information Review Officer Martha Lutz, releasing of this type of information could provide an “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk:”

Nonetheless, I can represent to the Court that the absolute protection for officers’ identities that Congress provided in the CIA Act is extremely important to the functioning of the Agency and the safety and security of its employees. This is true even for the identities of officers who are not undercover, and it is also true with respect to the first names of undercover officers. While such identifying information may not be classified in isolation, the widespread public release of this information creates an unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk for the Agency and its officers.

The key question is this: Why did the Obama administration share allegedly sensitive information with filmmakers that, if known, could harm national security!? The Obama administration can’t have it both ways. Either the information was too sensitive to share with the filmmakers, and the Obama administration was in error, or the information is not sensitive and should therefore be released.

Certainly the movie itself could provide some hints about what the Obama administration leaked to the filmmakers.  In my view, the fact that the Obama administration doesn’t want the court to consider the movie is a good indication that the court should do exactly the opposite.

JW Uncovers Taxpayer Cost for Malia Obama’s Spring Break Trip to Mexico

Spring Break is a common ritual for students across the country and First Daughter Malia Obama is no exception. But, of course, there is an important difference between the First Daughter and other students. When Malia Obama takes a trip, the American taxpayers get stuck with a hefty bill. How hefty? That’s what we’ve been trying to find out.

As you know, JW has kept close watch for the American people on the First Family’s extravagant personal trips since we’re the ones footing the bill. And this week we released records detailing the government funds expended on Malia’s March 2012 Spring Break vacation to Mexico. According to the records, obtained from the U.S. Secret Service as a result of a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on September 20, 2012, the total cost of the trip amounted to $115,500.87.

The following is a breakdown of the costs as detailed in the documents, which are available in full here:

Ground transportation:$23,964.81
Lodging: $21,682.92
Airfare: $47,767.34
“Vouchers”: $21,636.14 (not itemized)
Support Charges: $449.66 (travel for one from Mexico City to Oaxaca, not itemized)

Now as I pointed out in this space when we filed our lawsuit, Malia Obama’s Spring Break trip evoked a significant amount controversy after the Obama White House reportedly ordered the removal of press reports detailing the trip.

On March 19, 2012, numerous online press outlets reported on Malia Obama’s Mexico trip, noting the fact that she was accompanied by 25 U.S. Secret Service Agents and as many as 12 of her friends. However, shortly after the press reports surfaced they were quickly removed from the Internet.

As reported by Politico: “The AFP, the Huffington Post and other websites have scrubbed a report about first daughter Malia Obama’s school trip. On Monday, the AFP reported that Obama’s daughter was on a school trip along with a number of friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story was picked up by Yahoo, the Huffington Post, and the International Business Times, as well as UK publications like the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and other overseas publications like The Australian. But on Monday night, the story had been removed from those sites.”

In an update to this story, Politico published a statement issued by Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, indicating that the removal of these news stories was “a White House effort:”

“From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.”

The trip reportedly took place shortly after the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a statement advising students on Spring Break “to avoid Mexico.”

I think we can all agree that in these economic times, with huge public debt and high unemployment, spending $115,000 in taxpayer funds on a Spring Break trip to Mexico is inappropriate. Is this what Americans are being asked to pay higher taxes for?

Now this is far from the first time the Obamas have taken advantage of the American taxpayer to enjoy expensive vacations.

We previously obtained records from the United States Air Force and the United States Secret Service detailing Michelle Obama’s February 2012 President’s Day weekend ski vacation to Aspen, Colorado, with her two daughters. The records indicate U.S. Secret Service costs, including accommodations at the Fasching Haus deluxe condominium and the Inn at Aspen, were $48,950.38.

Judicial Watch also obtained documents from the United States Air Force and the United States Secret Service detailing costs associated with Michelle Obama’s controversial August 2010 vacation to Spain. According to a Judicial Watch analysis, the records indicate a total combined cost of at least $467,585.

Judicial Watch also obtained documents detailing costs of a June 21-27, 2011, trip taken by Michelle Obama, her family and her staff to South Africa and Botswana. Judicial Watch received mission expense records and passenger manifests for the Africa trip that described costs of $424,142 for the flight and crew alone. Other expenses, such as off-flight food, transportation, security, etc. were not included.

That’s a total of four trips at a cost of almost $1 million. And these are the trips we know about.

Rest assured, JW will continue to monitor these First Family excursions in a second Obama term. I suspect they will continue.

Could Benghazi-Tainted Ambassador Rice be the Next Secretary of State?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly will leave the Obama administration as soon as a replacement is found. And who is reportedly topping the list of replacements? None other than Benghazi-tainted UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

According to The Washington Post:

The partisan political divide over the potential nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to be secretary of state intensified Sunday with Republicans questioning her fitness for the job and Democrats defending her.

Republican senators said they remain deeply concerned over Rice’s statements about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, and suggested her motive was to help President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.

As you recall, Rice was out in front when the Benghazi scandal exploded into the press. In interview after interview, Rice said the attacks on the U.S. Consulate were in reaction to a low-grade anti-Muslim internet video blamed for widespread protests in Cairo.

For example, on ABC’s “This Week” program, Rice said that the murders of Ambassador Stevens and three others in Libya was “a spontaneous – not a premeditated - response to what had transpired in Cairo.” (Click over to The Daily Caller for more false statements from Susan Rice.)

This, we now know, was blatantly false, and the evidence is now overwhelming that the Obama administration knew it was false from the beginning. Former CIA director David Petraeus has said that he noted the al Qaeda link in his talking points. Someone inside the administration then scrubbed the al Qaeda link to the attacks out of the CIA’s talking points – the talking points Rice says she used for her interviews.

But as both Senators Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) pointed out on the Sunday talk shows this week, Rice went off script and beyond the talking points in uttering false statements.

Per thePost: “For one, [Sens. Graham and Ayotte] noted [Rice] had said that security at the Benghazi mission was ‘strong, substantial and significant.’” The multiple requests for security enhancements at the U.S. Consulate, which went unanswered, prove this statement false. Overall, Senator Graham stated that Rice’s statements represent “‘a treasure trove of misleading statements that have the effect of helping the president.’”

There are so many layers to Benghazi-Gate, and the more we learn, the more disturbing this all seems. There are the lies about the links to al Qaeda. There are the reports that the Obama administration denied multiple requests for enhanced security prior to the attack. There are reports of requests for support during the attacks denied by the Obama administration.

And now, there is even speculation regarding the weapons used by the Benghazi terrorists.

As Breitbart noted yesterday, “The New York Times is now reporting that US-approved arms that were supposed to go to Libya rebels went to Islamist terrorists. Even more importantly, the Obama administration knew about it before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks.”

The Times is quick to point out we do not yet have evidence U.S. weapons were used in the attacks, but reports that the CIA provided “little oversight” of the weapons, and that they no doubt ended up in the hands of Islamic radicals.

So many questions unanswered and the Obama administration isn’t helping.

This week a drone video of the attack confirms that the assault had nothing to do with any demonstration.  According to Bloomberg News, the classified video of the attack was shown to House members:

“People showed up at the gate very quickly, breached it, and poured inside,” said Representative Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who attended a closed-door briefing today with James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, on the Sept. 11 attack.

Now that everyone on the Hill has seen this damning video, perhaps the taxpayers might be given access?

In particular, Judicial Watch has a number of inquiries ongoing as we attempt to get to the bottom of a scandal that has become every bit as serious as Fast and Furious.  The mainstream media may not care about this story but I can tell you, especially on this December 7, that Judicial Watch won’t look the other way from this scandalous cover-up of this attack on America.

Until next week…

As I’ve said many times in this space, the Obama administration has no problem releasing classified secrets to the public if they believe it will make them look good or serve the liberal agenda. But if the administration believes it would be embarrassed by a certain disclosure, it is held tightly under lock and key.

We saw this when the Obama administration went against the recommendations of senior intelligence officials and selectively released details regarding “enhanced interrogation techniques” (the so-called torture memos), while withholding information showing the effectiveness of these techniques. (JW ultimately obtained these records and set the public record straight.)

And we’re seeing it again now with the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden.

Last week, I told you that in response to a JW Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Obama administration admitted that its revelations of sensitive information to the producers of the soon-to-be-released bin Laden film Zero Dark Thirty could cause “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risks.” This runs counter to public pronouncements from, among many others, White House spokesman Jay Carney.

And why take such a risk? Because the Obama administration was under the impression that the film was going to help President Obama look “gutsy” with respect to his role in bin Laden’s capture and killing. (The film was reportedly originally slated for release just before the 2012 elections.)

But now the Obama administration is fighting your Judicial Watch in court to keep secret the details surrounding bin Laden’s burial at sea. Why? Because, one might surmise, the details of bin Laden’s burial might be a great source of embarrassment for the administration. Thankfully, once again, JW is on the case.

We recently obtained bin Laden burial records from the United States Navy as a result of a July 18, 2012, FOIA lawsuit that sought “any funeral ceremony, rite, or ritual” confirming that the slain terrorist was given full Islamic burial honors. Following the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL raid that led to bin Laden’s capture and killing, the al Qaeda leader was reportedly transported by the USS Carl Vinson and buried at sea in accordance with Muslim law.

The new documents we uncovered confirm the honors given bin Laden at his burial, including a prayer in Arabic and ritual cleansing of his remains, but the American people still don’t have the full picture because the Obama administration is fearful of offending terrorists.

Let me explain. First let’s discuss the burial itself.

The documents, including 31 pages of heavily redacted emails, contain a paragraph describing the bin Laden interment at sea:

Traditional procedures for Islamic burial was [sic] followed. The deceased body was washed (ablution) then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag. A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flatboard, tipped up, whereupon the deceased’s body slid into the sea.

Now what the documents did not include were the “prepared religious remarks” read at bin Laden’s burial as sought in the JW FOIA request. The U.S. Navy told JW, in a letter accompanying the documents, that a search did not produce any documents in response to the request for the “remarks.”

However, if U.S. Navy regulations were followed, the remarks could have included the Muslim prayer, “O Allah, forgive him, have mercy on him, pardon him, grant him security, provide him a nice place and spacious lodging, wash him (from his sins) with water, snow, and ice, purify him … make him enter paradise and save him from the trials of grave and the punishment of hell.”

I can imagine that this prayer might upset more than a few Americans.

And that’s likely why we see the secrecy. The emails indicate that “less than a dozen” members of military leadership on board were informed of the burial and that “no sailors watched.”

The Obama administration continues to withhold bin Laden burial documents under the “foreign policy” exemption in FOIA law, which protects information relating to national security and defense. President Obama has said publicly he does not want to release information pertaining to bin Laden’s capture and killing for fear of offending radical Islamists.

The documents suggest that preparations for receipt of bin Laden’s body were considered three days before the raid, which as Catherine Herridge at Fox News notes, “raises an interesting question over whether the administration’s statement that it was first and foremost a capture mission was accurate.”  (By the way, Judicial Watch’s release of these records garnered international headlines.)

The documents supplied to Judicial Watch by the U.S. Navy also failed to include the bin Laden post-mortem photos and videos as sought in a seperate FOIA request. The Obama administration continues to withhold these records citing national security concerns.

As I say, the two cases present quite a contrast. On the one hand, the Obama administration relies heavily on FOIA exemptions to withhold information from the American people while at the same time openly embracing filmmakers producing a bin Laden assault film that, at the time, was expected to praise the president’s role in the affair.

We don’t care whether the president looks good or bad. And we’re not after any details that would compromise the security of our men and women in uniform. We just want the truth so we can complete the public record on one of the most significant military operations (and successes) in United States history.

Scandal Ridden Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Resigns from Congress

Another of Judicial Watch’s “Ten Most Wanted” corrupt politicians is now out of Congress – Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. He now joins a list that includes former Reps. Laura Richardson (D-CA), Barney Frank (D-MA), Tom Delay (R-TX), former Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and John Edwards (D-NC), to name just a few Top Ten alumni no longer in power.

Per the New Jersey Star Ledger:

The once-promising political career of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. came to a crashing end Wednesday, when the Illinois Democrat announced he would resign his seat in Congress immediately amid treatment for mental illness, stories of marital infidelity and a pair of federal investigations.

The Illinois Democrat, the son of the civil rights icon the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., has been absent from the House since June 10, when he cast his last vote and then disappeared from public view, only to emerge later under treatment for bipolar disorder.

Jackson Jr., 47, has been under federal investigation for alleged campaign finance improprieties, including reportedly using donor dollars to remodel his home and purchase personal gifts, a potential criminal violation.

Jackson acknowledged in his resignation letter that he made his “share of mistakes.” That’s certainly true. And here’s just one of his alleged “mistakes” currently under investigation to add to the list cited above.

Jackson was one of the major figures implicated in the massive scandal involving disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich, who was brought to justice in 2011 for a number of crimes, including his efforts to “sell” President Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.

The evidence suggests Jackson was one of those bidders.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. directed a major political fund-raiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate.”

How much cash?

The Chicago Sun Times reported a figure of $1.5 million in its initial reports. But according to Jackson’s fundraiser, Raghuveer Nayak, the Illinois Congressman asked him to offer not $1.5 million, but a whopping $6 million in campaign cash to Blagojevich to secure the Senate seat!

(In 2010 Jackson was also nailed for conducting an improper and potentially criminal relationship with a female “social acquaintance.” Nayak told investigators that Jackson asked him to pay to fly a Washington, DC, restaurant hostess named Giovana Huidobro…to Chicago to visit him. Nayak reportedly did so twice.)

In addition to the federal probes, the House Ethics Committee continues to investigate the Blagojevich matter. In 2011, the committee released an initial report from the Office of Congressional Ethics that said there was “probable cause” to believe that Jackson either directed a third party or had knowledge of a third party’s effort to convince the since-convicted Blagojevich to appoint Jackson in exchange for campaign cash.

Because Jackson refused to resign before the November elections, Illinois taxpayers will now be faced with costs of a special election, estimated to cost $5.1 million.

So let the mad scramble begin! The Associated Press noted the list of would-be replacements has swelled to a dozen or so names.  Among them is former defense attorney who represented the convicted felon Rod Blagojevich. Another name being floated — Jackson Jr.’s brother, Jonathan Jackson, who, along with Jesse Jackson Sr., was sued by Judicial Watch on behalf of JW client Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson over an alleged assault.

The Chicago Way in motion once again!

Records Show Obama State Department Invited American Terrorist to Embassy

One of the main arguments against the Obama plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the president’s attempts to bring “justice” to terrorists in the civilian courts is that upon release these individuals become doubly dangerous. (We know this from Bush era records we obtained from the Obama administration.)

Well, according to records recently obtained by Judicial Watch, one of the beneficiaries of the government’s “catch and release” program for terrorists was none other than Anwar al-Aulaqi, the U.S. citizen assassinated by a U.S. drone on September 30, 2011.

You may recall that 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 Department of Justice had previously determined that targeting and killing of U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law.)

The heavily redacted documents received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Judicial Watch on September 30, 2011, show that the known terrorist had been in custody and that the Obama State Department hatched an incredible plan to invite him to one of our embassies. The following are highlights from the records:

• The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, was asked on March 24, 2011, to issue a communication to al-Aulaqi, requesting him to “appear in person” to pick up an important letter at the “post.” The letter issued by the embassy, which included a partial address for al-Aulaqi, was a revocation of his passport: “The Department?s [sic] action is based upon a determination by the Secretary that Mr. al-Aulaqi [sic] activities abroad are causing and/or likely to cause serious damage to the national security or the foreign policy of the United States.” The embassy was instructed not to inform al-Aulaqi when he came to the embassy that the “important letter” was a passport revocation.

• The documents include two “Privacy Act Release Forms” issued by the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, signed by al-Aulaqi. One was dated November 14, 2006, and the other July 2, 2007 –which indicates that he was held for at least eight months. (Press reports had indicated that al-Aulaqi’s arrest was in relation to an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. government official.) The documents do not show how long al-Aulaqi was detained or why he was released.

• A September 30, 2011, email from Stephanie A. Bruce, Consular Section Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa to Elizabeth L. Perry, Team Lead for CA/OCS/ACS/NESCA at the State Department, included the following statement: “Elizabeth, I wanted to let you know that the Yemeni Defense Ministry reported that AMCIT Anwar al-AwLaki [sic] was killed in Yemen today.” Except for the added observation, “The statement is being cited in international and regional press reports,” the rest of the email is redacted.

• Documents from a related FOIA request that was submitted on October 26, 2011, include records concerning the death of Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, Anwar al-Aulaqi’s son, who was killed on October 14, 2011. Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi’s death certificate was recorded on November 14, 2011. He is noted on the death certificate as being the 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Aulaqi. The documents also include a “Report of Death of American Citizen Abroad” dated December 20, 2011. The cause of Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi’s death on the form is “unknown.” Press reports indicate Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi was born in Denver, Colorado, and was killed by a U.S. drone strike two weeks after his father was killed.

In addition to the arrest noted by the documents in 2006 and 2007, Anwar al-Aulaqi was detained at New York’s JFK airport on October 10, 2002, under a warrant for passport fraud, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. However, the FBI ordered al-Aulaqi’s release, even though the arrest warrant was still active at the time of his detention as reported by the Fox News Channel’s Catherine Herridge. Once released, al-Aulaqi then took a flight to Washington, DC, and eventually returned to Yemen.

And how dangerous was he?

Since September 2009, according to the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, 26 terrorism cases have been tied to al-Aulaqi, including an association with blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, currently in prison for his role in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Anwar al-Aulaqi was also known to have been in email contact (19 email exchanges) with Major Nidal Hasan, charged with 13 murders during the Fort Hood massacre on November 5, 2009, and allegedly had contacts with at least three of the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

So allow me to sum up what these records and reporting detail. The Bush administration had Anwar al-Aulaqi in custody. Then it released him. The Obama administration tried to revoke his passport and concocted some Keystone Cop scheme to get him to come to the embassy for notification. (I mean, the idea of inviting al-Aulaqi – a known terrorist – to our embassy in Yemen in order to revoke his passport is beyond belief.) Then President Obama makes the unprecedented decision to assassinate him via drone, later killing his son as well.

Look, there aren’t many people who will mourn the killing of this terrorist. But that’s not the point of this story. The point is that the federal government (under both Bush and Obama) bungled attempts to bring justice to terrorists, placing the American people at risk.

Anwar al-Aulaqi is just one high-profile example. How many other terrorists have benefited from the incompetence and permissiveness of our government? How many more drones will have to be sent to clean up the mess?

Again, we should all give kudos to Catherine Herridge of the Fox News Channel for some excellent reporting on al-Aulaqi, a topic that has been largely ignored by other so-called mainstream press outlets.

Our disclosures this week led to some tough questions for the Obama State Department.  According Josh Gerstein of Politico:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland indicated Wednesday that the embassy did reach out to Al-Awlaki, but he never responded.

“He chose not to answer our request for him to come to the embassy,” Nuland said at the daily press briefing. She said that had he come in officials planned to offer him a “one-way passport back to the United States” to face criminal charges. She didn’t specify the charges.

Nuland did not respond directly to a provocative question from the Associated Press’s Matthew Lee about whether the U.S. believes it would have had the legal right to kill Al-Awlaki on the spot.

“Are you obligated not to kill someone who is responding to such an invitation?” Lee asked.

“I’m not going to entertain the notion that we would be calling him to the embassy for that purpose,” Nuland replied.

Forgive me for tooting our own horn, but what a great job for government accountability Judicial Watch is doing in this age of Obama!  As we see politicians of both parties run for the exits or think of ways to spend our money rather than exercise oversight of this out-of-control government, you can see the indispensable role that Judicial Watch has in holding Washington to account.

Until next week…

And now this week, another new (and related) scandal has emerged, ensnaring the nation’s top spy, retired four-star General David Petraeus. General Petraeus was forced to resign this week after news leaked of his long-term extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, a writer and military analyst who penned a Petraeus biography. 

This scandal, which is mushrooming by the minute, also ensnared the top commander in Afghanistan, four-star General John Allen. General Allen reportedly exchanged inappropriate emails with Jill Kelley, the woman whose complaint to the FBI about harassing emails eventually led to the FBI’s uncovering of the Petraeus affair. 

Now, I know it’s tempting to get caught up in the salacious nature of the details. But given the sensitive nature of Petraeus’ position, and the all-too-convenient timing of the revelation, coming both after the election and just days before Petraeus was scheduled to testify on Benghazi, this scandal is about much more than sexual shenanigans. 

Investigators have already searched and removed files from Broadwell’s home. And the press has focused on a speech Broadwell gave at the University of Denver last month, during which she referenced a secret prison in Libya, raising concerns she had access to classified information. “I had access to everything, it was my experience not to leak it, not to violate my mentor, if you will,” Broadwell said.

Reports also indicate that the emails turned over to the FBI from Jill Kelley include information about the CIA director’s movements, information not available to the public for obvious reasons.

Nonetheless, President Obama said in a press conference on Wednesday that he has “no evidence” classified information was leaked to Broadwell. This is hardly reassuring considering the numerous leaks flowing from the federal government on his watch. (See our next story for just one example.)

In my experience, public officials caught in sex scandals usually have abused their public office in some way to advance their personal relationships.

Regarding the timing of the announcement of Petraeus’ forced resignation, evidently Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of the affair in late summer, but his Department of Justice only got around to telling Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Election Day. Clapper then reportedly told the president.

What took so long? Is it believable that Eric Holder, the most unethical and politically driven attorney general in a generation, would withhold news of an investigation of the CIA director from the White House for four months, until the very night of the election?

Charles Krauthammer has a theory that he expressed on Fox News. Krauthammer believes the Obama administration may have led Petraeus to believe the scandal could be kept quiet and that he might even keep his job in exchange for toeing the administration line on Benghazi when he was called before Congress to testify in the matter on September 13, 2012.

It appears General Petraeus will get a second chance today to testify to Congress, albeit behind closed doors. While many feared that the Petraeus resignation would take his testimony off of the table, the former CIA director says he is willing to testify.  As if to remind General Petraeus of the risks of truth telling, the CIA announced a new inquiry into Petraeus’ conduct.

As I say, this scandal seems to run much deeper than a relationship between Petraeus and Broadwell. The whole thing is a mess and it shows, at a minimum, that Obama and his appointees are incapable of running a government that is ethical and trustworthy.  At this point, we shouldn’t trust any Obama agency to “investigate” anything.  This crisis of confidence is roiling Washington and is bound to launch a thousand congressional hearings that will shed more heat than light. 

But you can count on JW to independently investigate this scandal. I will keep you posted. 

Dangerous Leaks?

I have a shocking development to report about our lawsuit to obtain information about the Obama administration’s collusion with the filmmakers behind Zero Dark Thirty, a film about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama administration officials have now admitted in sworn declarations that the details leaked to the filmmakers, if publicly known, would cause an “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk.”

But as we noted in a recent countermotion for summary judgment filed with the court on November 12, 2012, in our continuing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) and CIA, here’s what we know for certain: The government cannot have it both ways in this case.

You can read the disclosures for yourself here, but let me just share a couple of excerpts.

Mark Herrington, Associate Deputy General Counsel for the Office of General Counsel at the Department of Defense (DOD), testified that the military officers’ “identities would be threatened” if publicly disclosed but admitted that Under Secretary of Defense Mike Vickers released one of the names to Mark Boal.

Moreover, according to sworn testimony from CIA Information Review Officer Martha Lutz, releasing this type of information could provide an “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk”:
 

Now, compare these declarations with the public statement to reporters by Obama White House spokesman Jay Carney regarding the controversy: “We do not discuss classified information.” The government claims that the information shared is not necessarily classified, in fact the Obama administration now claims that the leaked information is not necessarily classified “in isolation,” and implies that the information should be effectively “classified” in aggregate.

Something does not add up.

JW previously obtained records from the DOD and the CIA regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and Kathryn Bigelow, the Academy Award-winning director of The Hurt Locker, and screenwriter Mark Boal in preparation for Zero Dark Thirty. According to the records, the Obama administration sought to have “high visibility” of bin Laden related projects, and granted Boal and Bigelow unusual access to agency information in preparation for their film, now scheduled for release in January. The disclosures made to the filmmakers are now part of an investigation by the DOD Inspector General.

The DOD and the CIA have continued to withhold information concerning the names of five CIA and military operatives involved in the bin Laden operation, which were shared with the filmmakers. Judicial Watch has identified the precise emails containing the information it wishes to obtain, and in sworn declarations Obama administration officials conceded that this information was provided to Bigelow and Boal.
 
In its brief seeking to deny Judicial Watch access to the leaked names, the government asserts that it had protected the operatives’ confidentiality by asking the filmmakers not to share the names. In its cross motion, however, JW responds that the government has provided no evidence that it asked the filmmakers to sign a non-disclosure agreement, or any other contract that would prevent them from sharing the names as required under law. In addition, the government has provided no evidence that either Boal or Bigelow underwent background checks or received security clearances before being provided the information the DOD and CIA now claim is too sensitive for public disclosure.
 
The Obama administration now confirms to a federal court that it released sensitive information to help with a film that was set to portray Barack Obama as “gutsy.” If this is true, then the Obama administration was lying to the American people when it said the leaks were no big deal. The public has a right to get to the bottom of this scandal and the Obama administration should comply with the open records law and disclose the names that were leaked.

By way of review, Judicial Watch initially launched its investigation of the filmmakers’ meetings with the Obama administration following press reports suggesting that the Obama administration may have leaked classified information to the director as source material for Bigelow’s film.

In August 2011, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that the information leak was originally designed to help the Obama 2012 presidential reelection campaign: “The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made ‘The Hurt Locker’ will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds.”

Now we’re in court and we’ve exposed the Obama administration’s dishonesty on bin Laden leaks. Stay tuned…

JW Monitors 9/11 Terrorist Tribunals at Guantanamo Bay

More than 11 years after terrorists flew planes into the twin towers and the Pentagon, murdering 3,000 people, those responsible for this attack have yet to face justice, due largely to the incompetence of the Obama administration. (Remember, it was the president’s ludicrous idea to bring the terrorists into a civilian court in New York until public opposition forced an “about face.”

Finally, after a long wait and many delays, the military tribunal for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed co-conspirators Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi took place in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last month. And our senior investigator Lisette Garcia was on the ground to observe in person the military commission proceedings.

Family members of Paul Acquaviva, Andrea Haberman, Michael Noeth, Randy Scott, and Amy Toyen who were among the 2,976 Americans killed on September 11, 2001, also attended the pre-trial hearing during which 18 motions were argued, two were resolved by the parties, and seven more were held in abeyance pending a military judge’s ruling on the handling of evidence and witnesses going forward.

The following are excerpts from Lisette’s first-hand report:

• On Mon., Oct. 15, 2012, U.S. Army Judge Col. James Pohl ruled on whether the defendants had to be present for all phases of the proceeding. Ultimately, Judge Pohl ruled that the defendants could waive their right to be present on a daily basis until the trial begins in earnest around the year 2014.

• On day two of the weeklong session, Judge Pohl decided whether the defendants could dress as they wished. During the defendants’ unruly arraignment in May, the Joint Task Force commander who runs the detention facility where all al Qaeda suspects are housed, had denied Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s (KSM) request to wear either a camouflage jacket or an orange jumpsuit to court, saying the field jacket had cargo pockets that posed a security threat and that the jumpsuit was not proper courtroom attire. The defendants had also reportedly been forcefully extracted from their cells when they declined to come to court on prior occasions.

• Taking advantage of the judge’s ruling regarding optional attendance at the hearing, agreed to come to court around 5:00 a.m. Wed., Oct. 17, then changing his mind around 9:00 a.m. while in a holding cell adjacent to the courtroom, then asking to rejoin the proceedings after midmorning prayer.  Because the defendants are heavily guarded, the movement of any one accused is labor and time intensive, although the Joint Task Force guards appeared to handle each transition in a very orderly fashion.

• Once in court in his preferred attire, KSM seemed unsatisfied to sit and listen.  Just before 3 p.m. Wed., Oct. 17, KSM raised his hand to remark on a debate underway about the extent to which national security information relevant to the trial ought to remain secret.  The judge admonished KSM to confer with his civilian attorney, David Nevin of Boise, prior to speaking out in court.  Nevertheless, after a brief conference, KSM (through an interpreter) said the following:

When the government feels sad for the death or killing of 3,000 people who were killed on September 11, we also should feel sorry that the American government, who is represented by General Martins and others, have killed thousands of people – millions. . . . I don’t want to be long, but I can say that the president can take someone and throw him in the sea under the name of national security. And so – well, he can also legislate the killings, assassinations under the name of national security, for the American citizens. . . .

My only advice to you, that you do not get affected by the crocodile tears. Because your blood is not made of gold and ours is made out of water. . . .

• In contrast to the patience he exhibited toward KSM, Judge Pohl told the government’s attorney: I understand this case. I understand that people died. I have got that. I am sensitive to that. I have got all that. But this is not the time to make that argument. Please restrict your argument to facts relevant to the issue before me.

• Another major issue that arose as the week came to a close was whether the civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution apply to these “unprivileged alien enemy belligerents,” despite the fact that they are being prosecuted for war crimes in a military tribunal rather than in federal court under the U.S. criminal code.  General Martins hedged, refusing to answer Judge Pohl’s pointed questions directly, replying instead that it was too soon to tell. However, the judge’s five-month delay in even asking this question, as well as the government’s refusal to answer it, raised doubts about the commission’s commitment to a speedy trial.

Judicial Watch was pleased to be able to monitor these proceedings on behalf of the American people and to counterbalance the coverage of leftist special interest groups and their allies in the “mainstream” press.

Until next week…


Tom Fitton
President

We can expect more secrecy, more unconstitutional czar appointments, and more wasteful taxpayer funded bailouts. We can expect more Solyndras and other green energy boondoggles and more illegal alien amnesty policies. We can expect more election fraud and more taxpayer support flowing to corrupt leftist groups like ACORN and Project Vote. We predict the ever greater expansion of raw government power but less respect for both the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

And if you don’t believe me, just listen to the words of one Obama aide, who bragged to The Washington Post that bypassing our U.S. Constitution, Congress and the will of the American people will be the “new normal” in a second Obama term.

Reuter’s put it this way: “Obama – now unfettered by not having to face voters again – is in position to pursue an ambitious agenda that could leave his mark on government for a generation or longer, including a move to revamp the nation’s immigration laws.”

Now that is a frightening thought. Without another election facing him, the president clearly feels unrestrained. Remember when the hot mike caught Obama telling a Russian official that he would be more flexible after his last election? We’re about to see what he meant by “flexibility” in more ways than one.

In fact, take a moment and click here to see the programs that have been initiated under this “We Can’t Wait Initiative” referenced by The Washington Post. You will see that one “success story” listed is the unconstitutional appointment of radical leftist Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). That will give you some idea of the types of power grabs that will be justified under this initiative.

In sifting through the numbers from Election Day, it is obvious for anyone to see that we have an extremely divided electorate. We are essentially a 50.  The numbers show that Obama has no mandate for his corrupt socialism.  Not to understate Obama’s victory, but a hundred thousand votes here and a hundred thousand votes there in a few swing states would have resulted in a Romney presidency. 

Voters may be divided on our nation’s leadership, but not on our nation’s core values.

Judicial Watch, in partnership with Breitbart.com, commissioned an election night survey of voters (conducted by the respected firm, Public Opinion Strategies). The voter survey showed near unanimity on some key Judicial Watch areas of concern. Here are some of the highlights:

• A large majority of likely respondents (65%) “strongly support” voters being required to show an official ID when voting. The issue cuts across party lines, with 94% of Republicans, 59% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 76% of overall voters believing that IDs should be required.

• A majority of voters (61%) favor laws requiring local law enforcement officials to verify the immigration status of people they reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally. 43% strongly favor such laws, while only 23% strongly oppose.  Interestingly, 40% of Hispanics support this Arizona-style enforcement approach to illegal immigration, which is 13% more Hispanics than supported Romney!  This seems to undermine the politically-correct crazy talk by some that conservatives should now embrace amnesty to appeal to the “Hispanic” vote.
  

• Corruption in the federal government is a serious concern among voters, with 85% saying they are “concerned” and 53% saying they are “very concerned.” When asked if they agree or disagree with the statement, “The larger the size of government, the more opportunities it creates for corruption,” 71% strongly agree. Asked which party they felt could do a better job of “cleaning up corruption in Washington,” 37% chose Democrats, 34% chose Republicans.

• Asked if they or any member of their immediate family is currently receiving government benefits, such as unemployment, school lunches, food stamps, Medicaid, or other public assistance, 76% said “no.” Of the 23% said who “yes,” 9% said “self,” 10% said “other,” and 4% said “self and other.” Of the 23% of voters who reported receiving benefits, 46% who said “yes” voted for Romney and 51% for Obama.

Let me just take a break from the data for a moment to make a point. The numbers regarding public assistance tell us that voters receiving government assistance are not solid supporters of the President, since he won them by just a little over two points, similar to what he got nationally. It may mean, however, that Romney’s “47%” statement hurt him with younger voters between the ages of 25 and 44, 36% of who said they receive government assistance.

Now back to the data points:

• In terms of government transparency, the majority of voters (48%) said they expected the new administration to be no different from the current administration, with 29% saying they expected it to be more transparent.

• A combined total of 57% of voters said they considered the economy and jobs to be the top issues when casting their votes (44% the economy, 13% jobs). 17% said they considered health care to be the most important issue. And none of the social issues scored above 5%.

• The news media did not fare well with voters in the JW survey. Asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “The press is more likely to favor one candidate for office over another at the expense of their journalistic objectivity,” 77% of the voters agreed and only 19% disagreed. A full 57% strongly agreed with the statement.

Overall, the Judicial Watch/Breitbart/Public Opinion Strategies poll reflected an electorate strongly supportive of protecting both the integrity of the country’s electoral process and our national sovereignty.  In both cases, they overwhelmingly disagree with the directions in which the Obama Administration has gone. The 85% of Americans who cite corruption in the federal government as a major concern, along with the 71% who ‘strongly agree’ that a larger government tends to be more corrupt, should give the President pause as to where he seems intent upon leading the country.

(Public Opinion Strategies interviewed 800 voters nationwide. The margin of error for the poll is +/- 2.45%.  Results with cross tabs are also available.)

But here’s the real headline from Election Day and JW’s survey: Your Judicial Watch is needed now more than ever! We have a Congress hopelessly divided along partisan lines and with virtually no public confidence, a reckless and radical president who does not care a whit about the rule of law and a Justice Department that is politicized and complicit in the outright violation of the law. This, my friends, is the perfect storm for corruption and abuse of power. And it must be confronted aggressively and immediately.

Judicial Watch is uniquely positioned to do this work. We are up to the task. I know many of you are disappointed in the outcome of the election. But you also support Judicial Watch (which takes no sides in election battles), so you know that we are obligated to police our government and work to protect our constitutional system no matter who is in office. 
   
Judicial Watch Brings New Movie “District of Corruption” to Phoenix, AZ

Last week I told you our new movie “District of Corruption” scored the second highest per-screen average at the box office on its opening weekend. The film, distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures, averaged $7,374 over three theaters, finishing behind one other debut film, vaunted film festival favorite, “The Loneliest Planet.”

And based on this success, I’m happy to report that we’re now bringing the film to the southwest. Tonight, the film will open in Phoenix, Arizona at the AMC Desert Ridge 18. Additional cities are under consideration, and you can track the progress of the film here.

(As I mentioned last week, we opened in Texas, Florida and Ohio on October 26th. In addition to the Phoenix theater, the film also continues to screen at the AMC Lennox Town Center 24 in Columbus, OH.)

“District of Corruption” puts the spotlight on Judicial Watch’s battle against government scandal, secrecy and corruption through the last three presidential administrations, with specific emphasis on the current scandals of the Obama administration, including Operation Fast and Furious, illegal alien amnesty, election integrity, crony capitalism and bailouts, and Solyndra (see trailer here).

The film is written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon, the writer/director of “Occupy Unmasked” and the Sarah Palin film “The Undefeated,” and produced in association with Constant Motion Entertainment. Rocky Mountain Pictures, which distributed the documentary sensation, “Obama 2016″ is distributing the film. (And Movie to Movement, the grassroots group that helped turn out box-office-busting numbers of moviegoers for “Obama 2016,” is helping to drive turnout.)

We are extremely proud of this film. And, as I say, it is a must-watch for anyone who wants to know what we’re up against over the next four years with Barack Obama in the White House. Believe me, the problems are only going to get worse in a second Obama administration.

Our film comprehensively exposes the Obama administration’s “greatest hits,” including: Operation Fast and Furious; crony capitalism; Solyndra and other “green energy initative;” federal bailouts and earmarks; ACORN and voter fraud; illegal alien amnesty as well as new attacks on government transparency and accountability. And it also discusses some of the warning signs on the horizon, such as election fraud.

(The film is a companion piece to my New York Times best-selling book, The Corruption Chronicles, Obama’s Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government,  which was released in July by Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions.)

As you know, Judicial Watch has filed 950 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and more than 90 lawsuits against the Obama administration on issues ranging from Obamacare to the continued funding of the criminal ACORN network; from tracking Wall Street bailout money to the unconstitutional use of czars; and to the attacks on the integrity of our nation’s elections.

The number of FOIAs is likely going to shoot through the roof as we continue to keep tabs on the inner workings of the Obama administration.

For his part, Stephen K. Bannon is the award-winning filmmaker behind critically acclaimed documentaries and feature films such as: “In The Face of Evil, Still Point in a Turning World,” “The Undefeated,” and The Tea Party Trilogy: “Generation Zero,” “Fire From the Heartland,” and “Battle for America.” Again, I’m biased, but I believe this is his best film yet. It is fast-paced and entertaining, but also highly educational.

If you’re in Columbus or Phoenix, please see the film this weekend. If you have friends in those cities, please encourage them to see it, too.

JW Sues HUD for Failure to Release Records Re: Obama Administration Involvement in Housing Discrimination Case

On November 2, 2012, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colombia against the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). JW is asking the court to force HUD to comply with our April 4, 2012, FOIA request for documents relating to possible collusion between the Obama administration and the city of St. Paul, MN, in withdrawing a “disparate impact” appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. HUD has refused all JW FOIA requests for public records, even after JW paid in advance for the information.

This case is complicated but, at its heart, goes to serious scandal and legal issues, so hang with me.

First off, let’s try to define “disparate impact theory.”  As I understand it, this theory argues that certain practices can be considered discriminatory if they have a disproportionate adverse impact on a minority group, irrespective of any intentional bias.  So if a bank has a neutral policy on credit that disproportionately affects minority customers, the liberal world view is the policy is discriminatory per se, even if there is no intended racial bias.

Now this particular disparate impact case arose out of a lawsuit by a St. Paul minority contractor claiming that the city’s aggressive enforcement of city housing code against rental units reduced the availability of low-income rentals, especially for African American tenants. The Eighth Circuit found in the contractor’s favor, after which the city appealed to the Supreme Court.

And here’s where it gets a bit fishy.

The Department of Justice intervened, apparently persuading St. Paul to take the unusual step of withdrawing its case from the Supreme Court docket. On February 13, the Wall Street Journal published an article explaining that various federal officials had asked the City of St. Paul to withdraw its petition for certiorari in a controversy that had already been slated for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Now why would they do that?

Many federal agencies, especially now that they are run by radical appointees of President Obama, rely on the “disparate impact theory” to secure out-of-court settlements in the consumer lending and family housing arena and they were reluctant to risk a change in the legal landscape.

They were afraid that the “disparate impact theory” might either: 1) harden into law as used by the landlords who had won at the state level or 2) be eviscerated entirely.

So the next day, the parties to the case titled Magner v. Gallagher withdrew their case by mutual consent. And the evidence suggests they did so at the behest of the Obama administration.

Judicial Watch separately obtained documents under the Minnesota Data Practices Act, showing that St. Paul City Attorney Sara Grewing arranged a meeting between the notorious chief of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez, and Mayor Chris Coleman a week before the city’s withdrawal from the case. Following Perez’s visit, the city withdrew its case and thanked DOJ and officials at the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) for their involvement.

On April 4, Judicial Watch sent a FOIA request to the U.S. Departments of Justice and Housing & Urban Development. Here’s what we’re after:

• All communications with or about St. Paul, Minnesota, its residents, landlords, low-income properties or employees, specifically those exchanges:

• relating to the city’s recent petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the petition’s withdrawal in February 2012;

• regarding “disparate impact” theory or analysis in the housing, landlord-tenant, or mortgage arena;

• involving any member of the U.S. Senate’s Democratic Policy & Communications Committee, the House Democratic Caucus, or the White House, and their respective staffs; and,

• involving third parties such as the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Thomas Goldstein, or Walter Mondale and their respective staffs;

• All invoices for travel, food, lodging, communications, or entertainment expenses incurred in connection with any “disparate impact” lawsuit against St. Paul, Minnesota.

In filing its FOIA request, Judicial Watch requested a waiver of both search and duplication fees, citing its role as a member of the news media and public interest in the case. On June 11, 2012, HUD denied Judicial Watch’s waiver request, informing JW that it would be required to pay a $1,024.43 fee before HUD would release any records.

On June 21, 2012, JW appealed HUD’s denial of a waiver request. On July 23, HUD denied JW’s appeal, and on July 31, JW paid the waiver fee in full.

That’s right we made the decision to pay the Obama administration so the public could benefit from the disclosure of records about this important issue.  And yet, we still have no documents. 

It is quite apparent the Obama administration improperly and successfully pressured St. Paul city officials to take the rare action of withdrawing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Obama administration and its liberal activist allies are desperate to protect their ability to use an extreme theory on race discrimination in lawsuits in order to shakedown businesses and reward allies.  The liberal media won’t investigate this and Congress is AWOL.  We’re happy to provide the leadership in exposing this dressed-up race baiting, abuse of public office and subversion of law.

Until next week…

Here we are just a few days before Election Day and the Obama machine continues to work overtime to try to “fix” the elections to re-elect Barack Obama. And they are doing it with the full weight of the Obama administration behind them.

Never before has the line between a presidential administration and a presidential campaign been so indistinct. And never before has a Department of Justice (DOJ) been so hostile to election integrity laws.

Case in point: The Obama administration’s multi-pronged strategy to increase the number of illegal voters in 2012 in order to ensure the president’s re-election – a strategy that includes:

 1.Using Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to register greater numbers of voters on public assistance, a key Obama campaign demographic. (I call it Obama’s “Food Stamp Army.”)

 2.Ignoring Section 8 of the NVRA, which is designed as a counter-balance to Section 7 to ensure that states maintain clean voter registration lists.

 3.Blocking states from implementing reasonable election integrity provisions, such as voter ID laws, even going so far as to file lawsuits against state election officials.

 4.Failing to enforce our federal laws against illegal immigration and effectively ending the deportation of illegal aliens, thereby swelling the population of potential illegal voters.

 5.Deploying thousands of lawyers to challenge voting results that do not favor the Obama campaign on Election Day.

To this list I might add a sixth component: Fighting to suppress the military vote, a demographic widely seen as critical to Governor Romney’s chances to win the White House.  (Some polls cite a double digit advantage for Governor Romney with military voters.)

In Ohio, for example, the Obama DOJ filed a lawsuit to reverse the state’s long-standing early voting policy for members of the Armed Forces. Some have also accused the Obama administration of allowing the government’s military voter assistance programs, initiated in 2009 to boost military voting numbers, to languish.

The result?  Requests for absentee ballots for military voters are down – way down. In the battleground state of Virginia, for example, press reports show the number of requests for absentee ballots by military voters is just 30% of what they were just four years ago.

Judicial Watch has made election integrity a centerpiece of its activities. Judicial Watch neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office. But we have a deep and sincere interest in making certain that every vote cast is legitimate. And we will work to stop any attempt by a political campaign – no matter the political party – to undermine the integrity of the voting process.

For this reason, we initiated our 2012 Election Integrity Project, which was launched with an in-depth investigation that exposed a dozen key states that have the dirtiest voter registration lists.  We put election officials in these states on notice that they must either clean them up in accordance with the law, or face a Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In some states, Judicial Watch’s warning letters got action. Lincoln County, West Virginia, for example, immediately initiated an effort to clean up its lists following a warning letter from JW, an effort that will continue right up through Election Day. Judicial Watch also prompted the State of Florida to clean up its voter registration lists and now is in court to try to help the state beat back a challenge from the Obama Justice Department, which objected to this critical election integrity initiative.

And we filed historic lawsuits against states that refused to follow the law and clean up their voting rolls.

Judicial Watch, in partnership with True the Vote, filed lawsuits against Ohio and Indiana, when election officials in those states failed to heed Judicial Watch’s warning and initiate steps to make sure its voter registration lists were clean in accordance with the law.

Judicial Watch was also a key player in a legal battle in Pennsylvania. Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson upheld the its new voter ID law in a ruling against a legal challenge from the Pennsylvania ACLU. Judge Simpson incorporated in his ruling much of the legal argument that Judicial Watch lawyers had made in a “friend of the court” brief JW filed in support of the Pennsylvania law. Ultimately, after a battle in the State Supreme Court, the voter ID law was upheld and is on track for enforcement in 2013 and beyond.

Judicial Watch undertook similar legal campaigns in South Carolina, which will implement its voter ID law in 2013 over the objections of the Obama DOJ, and Tennessee as well.

Judicial Watch continues to battle for records detailing the Obama administration’s sordid partnership with the allegedly defunct ACORN and Project Vote, President Obama’s former employer. Judicial Watch continues to fight in court to stop the Obama administration’s scheme to “legalize” illegal aliens through its amnesty initiatives, while opposing illegal alien sanctuary policies that entice greater numbers of illegal aliens to cross the border.

Now, as I say, liberals protest that voter fraud is a phantom problem. They contend that it doesn’t exist. It was invented out of thin air by conservatives to justify the disenfranchisement of minority voters, they say. But the problem for liberals is that the facts keeps proving them dead wrong.

For example, last week, I told you about the son of Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), who was reportedly caught on tape by an undercover reporter conspiring to commit voter fraud. Prior to that, in September, a Maryland Democratic congressional candidate was forced to leave the race after it was discovered she illegally voted in two states at the same time in previous elections.

Now how’s this for irony. As I explained above, the DOJ filed a lawsuit to stop the state of Florida from trying to ascertain whether non-citizens were on voter rolls, citing imagined concerns about the disenfranchisement of Hispanics.  (You will recall that JW prompted Florida’s voter clean-up effort and then, with True the Vote, is now seeking to defend Florida’s efforts in court against the DOJ’s legal assault.)

Are these cases real enough for you? And if Election Day 2008 is any indication, we haven’t seen anything yet. Dirty election lists and resulting voter fraud could tip the balance of the election and cast doubt upon the election result, no matter which candidate wins.

Again, we’ve looked at the numbers.  In key states, as much as one of every five names on the voting lists could be ineligible to vote (in many cases, for the simple reason that the voter is dead).  Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Colorado are just a few of the states where as much as 20% of the voting rolls could be ineligible to vote.  How can Americans have confidence of the outcome of an election in states with dirty voting lists?  Dirty voting lists can lead to dirty elections.

With this in mind, I’m going to suggest you do two things to prepare for Election Day 2012. First, click over to watch the election fraud panel I hosted just a couple of weeks ago. We assembled the nation’s leading election fraud experts to give the inside scoop about what is going to take place during the elections this year. Then, get your hands on a free copy of our special report “8 Things You Can Do Now to Help Stop Voter Fraud” and participate in helping to ensure clean elections.

If you don’t have time to take all of our suggestions in the report, in the least, please follow the “if you see something, say something” rule and alert election officials if you see something fishy or underhanded going on.

It is very important that our campaign, and your efforts, continue right up through November 6 – and beyond. Because after the votes are counted this year, the election fraud problem will not go away. Certainly, we have ample evidence that the political Left is determined to turn our elections into a banana-republic style system. The only antidote to this underhanded campaign is the rule of law.

Judicial Watch investigators are set to go immediately into areas where any serious election disputes occur.  We are independent of the political parties and campaigns, so you can count on Judicial Watch to stand watch for election integrity as the nation goes to vote next week.

JW’s Hard-Hitting Documentary District of Corruption Scores Big Box Office Numbers on Opening Weekend

Last Friday, I told you that I felt District of Corruption would be a big hit. But even I could not have anticipated the tremendous response the film received in its opening weekend.

JW and our producing partners, Victory Film Group and Constant Motion Entertainment, released District of Corruption in three cities. And the film scored the second highest per-screen average at the box office for a debut film!

Distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures, District of Corruption averaged $7,374 over three theaters, finishing behind only one other debut film, vaunted film festival favorite, The Loneliest Planet. Unlike The Loneliest Planet, and the other major studio offerings last weekend, our film relied on grassroots support and word of mouth. And we were able to beat out virtually every other major film this past weekend. Plans are to release the film in more markets on November 9. (Click here to get the latest on tickets and show times.)

District of Corruption puts the spotlight on our battle against government scandal, secrecy and corruption through the last three presidential administrations (see trailer here). Written and directed by the conservative movement’s most prolific filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon – the writer/director of Occupy Unmasked and the Sarah Palin film The Undefeated, among many other “Tea Party” films – District of Corruption is released nationally by Rocky Mountain Pictures, the distributors of the documentary sensation, Obama 2016.

As I say, our movie opened in the following select theaters on October 26:

• Old Mill Playhouse, Lake Sumter Landing Market Square, 1000 Old Mill Run, The Villages, FL
• AMC Lennox Town Center 24, 777 Kinnear Road, Columbus, OH
• Edwards Greenway Palace Stadium, 3839 Weslayan Street, Houston, TX

Given the success of the film last weekend, these theaters will still run District of Corruption again this week and weekend, so be sure to get the word out to your friends in these three cities to go see the film! The better the response we get in these markets, the more cities we can add to our national roll-out. And as I’ve said, this film is a “must watch” for every single American citizen, no matter their party affiliation. (We still have a limited number of free tickets, just email info@movietomovement.com for ticket information.)

To help drive the success of the film, Judicial Watch is partnering with Movie to Movement, the grassroots group that helped turn out box-office-busting numbers of movie goers for Obama 2016. That film was a phenomenal success and we feel like District of Corruption has similar widespread appeal.

The American people are hungry for the unvarnished truth about government corruption and the current crisis caused by the Obama administration. At the same time, with all of the competition in this 24 hour news cycle, and the never-ending stream of political advertisements flooding the airwaves these days, we had to get creative in packaging our message. And the result, thanks to the efforts of our director, Stephen K. Bannon, is a compelling, visually stunning and entertaining movie that will both shock and inspire.

Of course, this being election season everything is viewed through a political lens. But as Steve pointed out in his press statement following the film’s release, this film transcends politics and will have a long shelf life beyond November 6th:

District of Corruption brings together the nation’s most respected conservative voices to confront the most important issue of our time. The nation’s institutions of government are collapsing under the weight of government power, corruption and scandal. We know that much of what is in this film will shock the senses, but the American people must wake up to the reality of what is happening to their country. No election will end this crisis – that’s why we expect a strong market for this film to continue after Election Day.

All of the key government scandals of the last 15 years are included in this film, with special attention paid to the Obama administration’s “greatest hits:” Operation Fast and Furious; crony capitalism; Solyndra and other “green energy;” federal bailouts and earmarks; ACORN and voter fraud; illegal alien amnesty; and threats to the integrity of the 2012 elections; as well as new attacks on government transparency and accountability.

This film is a companion piece to our New York Times best-selling book, “The Corruption Chronicles, Obama’s Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government,”which was released in July by Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions. If you’ve already picked up your copy of the book, be sure to catch the film as well. While there is some overlap in terms of the territory we cover, these are two very different creative works – both equally important in our effort to rally public support for clean government.

We have always considered our public education efforts to be just as important as our lawsuits and investigations. That’s why we publish this weekly email every week, in addition to our newsletters, press releases, educational panels and special reports. But there is no question this year we have amped up these efforts – because the moment requires it.

As Steve said in his statement, the nation must “wake up” to reality. Our institutions of government, our traditional American values, our freedoms, are under a constant and vicious attack from the political Left. They intend to remake our country in their own distorted image. And they care nothing for the rule of law or our founding principles.  No matter the election outcome, these battles will not stop.

Please join our cause. See this film. Get your friends to see it as well.

JW Releases Comprehensive Special Report on California Death Penalty, California ‘SAFE Act’

While so much focus is on the presidential horse race this coming Tuesday, across the country there are numerous ballot initiatives under consideration that will impact the lives of all American citizens. JW has been active in a number of them. For example, we successfully defended the right of citizens to vote up or down on Maryland’s policy of providing discounted tuition for illegal aliens (with the help of our client, MDPetitions.com).

Well there is another key ballot initiative taking place next Tuesday which would eliminate the death penalty in the state of California. And in advance of Tuesday’s vote, this week JW released a special report, “The End of the Death Penalty Initiative,” which discusses the administration and impact of California’s death penalty and the campaign tactics of those attempting to abolish it through the Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California Act (SAFE Act) currently on the ballot.

Judicial Watch’s extensive investigation into California’s popularly supported death penalty initiative documents its cost, details obstacles to its effective administration, and cites its impact on both potential murderers and the families of murder victims. Currently, more than 700 inmates await execution on California’s death row, all of whom would escape the death penalty should the so-called SAFE Act Initiative be passed. (The full report is available here. And it is a must read, particular for those of you who reside in California.)

The most serious problem with the application of the death penalty in California, the JW study finds, is what it terms “the overt abuse” of the writ of habeas corpus process. (Habeas corpus is a legal action that requires an arrestee to be brought before a judge or into court.) The study states: “Not only does the defendant get to have a writ of habeas corpus in the state court, but he also is entitled to seek a writ of habeas corpus in the federal court … resulting in delays of five to ten years or more.”

“Because of that time lapse, the defendant can claim an infinite number of time problems: witnesses have died, records have been destroyed, memories have faded, and all types of similar allegations.”

The JW report also provides in graphic detail case summaries of more than a dozen California death row inmates whose death sentences would be commuted should the so-called SAFE Act Initiative be passed, as well as the statements of victims’ next of kin who strongly oppose death-penalty repeal. Included in the report is a lengthy summary of California’s “Night Stalker” serial murderer, whose death sentence would be set aside should the SAFE Initiative become law.

“The perpetrators of these crimes are among those now on California’s death row who would be spared should the so-called ‘SAFE Act’ be passed into law,” the JW report concludes. “Their victims received no such consideration.”

Rather than banning the California death penalty, the Judicial Watch study recommends reforming the process by (A) Prohibit[ing] any judge who is opposed to the death penalty from ever sitting on any death-penalty cases, and (B) Enact[ing] a law either by legislation or initiative to speed the appeal process.

“The safety of every California resident depends on the existence of the death penalty. You can improve it and have it take less time, but don’t destroy it,” said Sterling “Ernie” Norris, former Los Angeles County Prosecutor and head of Judicial Watch’s West Coast office. (Ernie authored the study and has first-hand experience prosecuting murderers.)

As I say, please take the time to read this report. Be forewarned that it contains graphic material. But it’s important to arm yourself with the facts about the death penalty, which are so often lost in the liberal-dominated media discussions over this issue.

Until next week…