Judicial Watch Sues ODNI for Documents Exposing 2020 Election Corruption
Judge Orders Hearing in Lawsuit Against the CIA for January 6 Records
Taxpayer-Funded Health Care Hit With $17.5 Billion in Fraud in One Year
Judicial Watch Sues ODNI for Documents Exposing 2020 Election Corruption
Trump administration agencies are withholding documents that were left haphazardly by the Biden administration. They may well expose that administration’s corruption.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for Biden-era documents discovered by former Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard after she took office, which she said contain information regarding corruption of the 2020 election (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Case 1:26-cv-03277)).
We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the ODNI failed to respond to a July 31, 2026, FOIA request “for records concerning the discovery, location, contents, and handling of the materials referenced by Director Gabbard, as well as communications about their discovery and records about any inquiry into why the materials were designated for destruction.”
On August 26, 2025, Gabbard confirmed to President Trump during a cabinet meeting that ODNI had identified burn bags containing information regarding corruption in the 2020 presidential election. “We are finding documents literally tucked away in the back of safes in random offices, in these bags and in other areas—which, again, speaks to the intent of those who are trying to hide the truth from the American people.” She added that the documents revealed the politicization of intelligence and caused immeasurable harm to the American people.
We say in our suit:
As of the date of this Complaint, ODNI has failed to: (i) determine whether to comply with the request; (ii) notify Plaintiff of any such determination or the reasons therefor; (iii) advise Plaintiff of the right to appeal any adverse determination; or (iv) produce the requested records or otherwise demonstrate that the requested records are exempt from production.
There is no legitimate reason to continue sitting on these documents that will likely add further evidence of the corruption at the top of the Biden administration.
We have another similar suit pending.
In August, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to provide answers about nearly 2 million pages of FBI records discovered in a “hidden room” at FBI headquarters, including whether the records have already been reviewed in response to other Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and whether the newly uncovered records had been stored in other government record systems.
In July, the FBI told a federal court that, at a rate of 500 pages a month, processing records from the “hidden room” at FBI Headquarters would take approximately 158 years. The room — now dubbed the “burn bag room” — holds over 2 million pages of records, according to the FBI’s own filing. Then-Deputy Director Bongino said in May 2025 that some of the records were found stashed “in bags.”
In February, we filed the FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice concerning the discovery and contents of “burn bags” found in a secured Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Washington, DC.
Judge Orders Hearing in Lawsuit Against the CIA for January 6 Records
We appeared this week before a federal judge in Washington, DC. who ordered a status conference in our lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for all records related to events on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol. The status conference was held Thursday, September 24.
U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb ordered the hearing at our request in our August 2024 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for all records related to any shots fired inside the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and records of requests for CIA support including bomb technicians and bomb-detecting dogs placed on standby or used in response to the massive protests in and around Washington, DC (Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:24-cv-02172)).
In March 2024, we received 88 pages of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Department of Justice in a FOIA lawsuit that show the CIA deployed personnel to Washington DC on January 6, 2021.
The records include a series of text messages under the heading “January 7 Intel Chain” in which two separate references to participation by the CIA are made. One states that “two CIA bomb techs” are assisting with “a pipe bomb scene on New Jersey and D ST SE.” Another record references “several CIA dog teams on standby.”
In a Joint Status Report filed with the court on September 2, 2026, we argue:
More than two years after this lawsuit was filed, the agency states that it is still not finished with its search. Notably the agency does not claim that this is because the request was overbroad or otherwise unmanageable. It simply has not finished the search after more than two years.
***
Accordingly, pursuant to the Court’s June 15, 2026 Minute Order, Plaintiff proposes that the agency be ordered to provide a detailed description of the status of its efforts, including but not limited to descriptions of the searches conducted and remaining to be conducted, and a date certain when the searches will be complete. The agency also should be ordered to disclose the number of records located and reviewed, the rate at which the records are being reviewed, and a date certain when the review will be complete. Finally, the agency should be ordered to provide a date certain when interim productions will begin. Alternatively, Plaintiff requests an in-person status conference to further address these matters.
The CIA has demonstrated absolute contempt for the people’s right to know what it was up to at the US Capitol on January 6. Why is the CIA stonewalling the release of any documents about this important issue for over half-a-decade?
We have pursued details of January 6 on several fronts.
In July 2026, we forced the release of over 1,000 hours of Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department body-worn camera footage from the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol event.
In April 2026, we filed a (FOIA) lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to obtain records related to possible improper targeting of January 6, 2021, Capitol protesters, their supporters, and related nonprofits.
In July 2025, we sued the U.S. Department of Justice for records on accelerated January 6 prosecutions after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2024.
In October 2023, we received the declaration of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at the U.S. Capitol.
In June 2025, we concluded a $4.975 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. Government filed on behalf of the family of Ashli Babbitt, the U.S. Air Force veteran who was shot and killed inside the U.S. Capitol by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021. Ashli Babbitt was the only January 6 homicide victim.
Taxpayer-Funded Health Care Hit With $17.5 Billion in Fraud in One Year
Our U.S. Treasury has been an open spigot for all manner of fraudsters, and nowhere is this more visible than in our healthcare programs. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
Fraud in taxpayer-funded health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid is so pervasive that the government identified a breathtaking $17.5 billion in scams in just one year, according to an analysis conducted by the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the agency bureau charged with safeguarding the nation’s financial system form illicit activity, money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The crimes occurred in all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C, and U.S. territories including Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A lengthy report made public this month identifies the largest number of offenders in California (3,141), followed by Florida (1,378), New York (989) and Minnesota (946) with some of the scams involving criminal networks connected to foreign entities.
“Health care fraud imposes enormous costs on U.S. taxpayers, increases the overall cost of health care in the United States, and puts patients at risk,” the FinCEN report states, identifying the offense as the act of knowingly and willfully executing, or attempting to execute, a scheme to defraud any health care benefit program or obtain by false or fraudulent means money or property of any health care benefits program. It frequently involves Medicare, the country’s health insurance program for those 65 and over, and Medicaid, which provides health care for low-income populations. Common schemes include filing false and fraudulent claims for reimbursement, double billing, phantom billing and upcoding. Others include fraudulently inducing patient referrals, the use of items and services with kickbacks and bribes, stealing patients’ health insurance identifiers, diverting legal prescriptions for illegal uses and impersonating health care professionals. The criminals make a lot of money considering Medicare and Medicaid spend about $1.9 trillion annually, according to government figures cited in the report.
The audit examines cases between March 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026, using reports filed by financial institutions under a law called Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to help detect and prevent money laundering in the U.S. Home health care business were the most frequently identified suspected fraudsters in BSA reports, followed by hospice care companies, mental and behavioral health and addiction treatment providers and medical equipment businesses. In many cases the public funds were illegally used for luxury purchases, travel, real estate, construction or unrelated private investments and some of the money was transferred internationally. “Suspected perpetrators employed a range of apparent money laundering techniques—from simple funds transfers to complex layering processes—before spending the obtained health care payments,” FinCEN’s probe found. “In many cases, proceeds of suspected health care fraud that did not appear to go through a complex funds transfer process were used on personal expenses and luxury goods.”
In one case more than $25 million in Medicaid payments filled the coffers of a fake Alaska “dentist’s office” with multiple owners who were not involved in dentistry and the payments were used for cash withdrawals, personal expenses and payments to the owners’ other businesses. In another, $20 million from Medicare Administrative Contractors (MAC), state health agencies and a pharmacy organization went to a New York City based pharmacy that later sent payments to numerous wholesale companies in Hong Kong. The government also paid approximately $2 million for home health care, hospice, medical transportation and pharmaceuticals to multiple California-based individuals, including one linked to organized crime, that sent the funds to shell companies and a real estate firm. A Minnesota adult daycare registered at a shuttered store front received $870,000 from a state agency and insurance companies that administer state health plans, and the money was transferred internationally to personal accounts and a shell company. A Kentucky health care professional with a previously suspended operating license received over $400,000 using the same claim number for multiple claimants and transferred the money to personal investment accounts. A Pennsylvania hospice business got more than $330,000 that was used to pay the owner’s credit cards and other personal expenses. The list goes on and on.
Until next week,
