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Tom Fitton's Judicial Watch Weekly Update

CIA Helped Biden Election?

Judicial Watch Sues CIA Over Pre-Election Letter Attacking Hunter Laptop Story
Maxine Waters Celebrates Hip Hop Music Promoting Violence, Misogyny, Drugs

 

Judicial Watch Sues CIA Over Pre-Election Letter Attacking Hunter Laptop Story

Acting CIA Director Michael Morell was up early on October 19, 2020, furthering a scheme that would significantly affect the outcome of the presidential election. 

U.S. House investigators are quite curious about that, and so are we. 

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for all communications of the spy agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) regarding an October 19, 2020, email request to review and “clear” a letter signed by 51 former intelligence community officials characterizing the Hunter Biden laptop story as having “all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign” (Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:23-cv-01844)).

In October 2020, in the run-up to the presidential election, the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, contained embarrassing and possibly incriminating information about the Biden family. In a May 10, 2023, report the House Judiciary Committee revealed that on October 19, 2020, three days before the second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Joe Biden, then-acting CIA Director Michael Morell sent the PCRB the finalized letter for review, calling it a “rush job,” and quickly secured its approval.

We sued after the CIA failed to respond to a May 11, 2023, FOIA request for:

Records and communications of the Prepublication Classification Review Board, Central Intelligence Agency, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, cables, voice recordings, correspondence, statements, letters, memoranda, reports, presentations, notes, or other form of record, regarding an October 19, 2020, email request to review and “clear” a letter involving the Hunter Biden laptop story potentially having Russian involvement or being a Russian disinformation plot.

In a May 16, 2023, letter to CIA Director William Burns, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Michael R. Turner stated that the committees were conducting oversight of the October 2020 “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” signed by 51 former intelligence community officials. Jordan and Turner wrote:

The CIA has documents responsive to our requests and necessary to our oversight. On October 19, 2020, at 6:34 a.m., Morell submitted the statement to the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB), instructing it was “a rush job, as it needs to get out as soon as possible.” The PCRB staff responded at 7:11 a.m. that it had received the statement, and cleared it for publication at 12:44 p.m. on the same day.

Morell speculated that the quick turn-around from the PCRB was because “[t]hey are probably afraid I’m coming back” as CIA director. On May 9, 2023, the CIA produced to the Committees two emails: Morell’s email to the PCRB early on October 19, 2023, and the PCRB’s response at 12:44 p.m. However, the Committees have reason to believe additional documents remain in the possession of the CIA.

The Committees have received evidence that the CIA, or at least an employee of the CIA, may have helped to solicit signatories for the statement about Hunter Biden. According to former CIA employee David Cariens, he spoke with the PCRB in October 2020 regarding the review of his memoir and during that call a CIA employee “asked” him if he would sign the statement. As Cariens explained:

When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter. The person asked me if I would be willing to sign. . . . After hearing the letter’s contents, and the qualifiers in it such as, “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement . . .’ I agreed to sign.

If accurate, this information raises fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA in helping to falsely discredit allegations about the Biden family in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

A House Judiciary Committee report details the testimony of former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos and criticized the CIA’s handling of the letter:

Q. Does what [Former CIA official David Cariens] described there, that interaction with the [Prepublication Classification Review Board], sound like a quid pro quo to you?

A. I can’t comment on this. This is—to me, this is something that the [Prepublication Classification Review Board] in my experience would never engage in something like that. They are just straightforward back and forth in terms of approval. The idea they would have a comment on any other thing that they were working on, that to me is not even close to what I’ve experienced with them.

Q. Does that concern you?

A. If it’s true, it would concern me, for sure. But I just—I have a hard time believing that occurred. If it did, that’s incredibly unprofessional.

Congressional testimony also confirms that the Biden campaign was behind the creation of the infamous Hunter laptop letter promoted by the CIA.

The Deep State CIA, it seems, engaged in election interference and a political operation against the American people to help Joe Biden and hurt Trump. And now the CIA is ignoring FOIA law to cover up its role in the scandal, censoring and suppressing the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden laptop story just before the presidential election.

We have multiple federal lawsuits focused on Biden family corruption:

In July, w  sued the DOJ for records from the Office of the Attorney General and Office of the Deputy Attorney General regarding the Internal Revenue Service investigation of Hunter Biden.

In June 2023, we filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice for a copy of the FBI FD-1023 form that describes “an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.” Judicial Watch also asked for communications about the FD-1023.

In May 2023, we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the National Archives for Biden family records and communications regarding travel and finance transactions, as well as communications between the Bidens and several known business associates.

On October 14, 2022, we sued DOJ for all records in the possession of FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten regarding an August 6, 2020, briefing provided to members of the U.S. Senate. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) raised concerns that the briefing was intended to undermine the senators’ investigation of Hunter Biden.

We filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department on April 20, 2022, for messages sent through the SMART (State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolkit) system that mention Hunter Biden.

In December 2020, State Department records obtained through our FOIA lawsuit showed that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch had specifically warned in 2017 about corruption allegations against Burisma Holdings.

In October 2020, we forced the release of State Department records that included a briefing checklist of a February 22, 2019, meeting in Kyiv between then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Sally Painter, co-founder and chief operating officer of Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm which was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations. At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden was serving on the board of directors for Burisma Holdings.

I’ll be sure to let you know if and when the CIA ponies up any documents on this Biden election scandal, so be sure to check back here for updates on this and all our other cases.

 

Maxine Waters Celebrates Hip Hop Music Promoting Violence, Misogyny, Drugs

The drug-fueled violence in our inner cities is often reflected in “Hip Hop” music, which is known for graphic lyrics promoting violence and the abuse of women. Yet, we have a congresswoman praising this music, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports:

Keeping with her history of poor ethical and moral fitness, a veteran congresswoman who has publicly encouraged violence against presidential cabinet members and among police protestors is proudly commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop and rap, music famous for glamorizing violence, misogyny, drugs and lawlessness. Celebrating the milestone, California Democrat Maxine Waters claims that Hip Hop is an international culture-shaping force with a growing role in politics. “When I was elected to Congress in 1991, many politicians, including Black politicians, were either distancing themselves from Hip Hop artists altogether or trying to censor rap music,” the lawmaker says in the tribute statement issued this month. “Coming from one of the epicenters of this creative creation, Los Angeles, California, I saw the value in the artistry early on. These young people were a sight to behold as they were making art out of themselves and their conditions.”

Waters has long celebrated Hip Hop, a predominantly African American brand well known for graphic lyrics involving urban violence and the abuse of women. Songs often include profanity, offensive descriptions of women, gun violence and some encourage defying or attacking police. Among the most famous hits are tunes that brag about street warfare, promiscuity and the use of illicit drugs. Others incite hatred or violence. Some of the most famous Hip Hop artists in the U.S. have made headlines for domestic violence and sexual assault, offenses that seem to be widely accepted in the industry. One renowned singer, known as XXXTentacion, was charged with aggravated battery and false imprisonment against his pregnant girlfriend. Another artist, known as Fabulous, was slapped with multiple felony domestic violence charges after punching his longtime girlfriend in the face and knocking out two of her teeth. Other rap stars have been embroiled in serious criminal behavior involving guns and drugs. One highly popular singer, known as Tekashi69, was convicted of nine federal crimes, including racketeering and drug charges. A popular online news publication proclaims in a story that Hip Hop rewards rappers for abusing women.

This has not stopped Waters from adorning the artists and their peculiar brand of music. “These are our children and they’ve invented a new art form to describe their pains, fears and frustrations with us as adults,” according to the legislator, who has been embroiled in a multitude of controversies and ethics scandals throughout her tenure in the House of Representatives. “Just because we don’t like the symbols they use or the way they look, we should not allow that to cause us to embark on a course of censorship.” When some members of Congress tried to crack down on Hip Hop music decades ago, Waters encouraged colleagues to listen closely to rap lyrics assuring that they would hear “profound” words that tell a story of pain. “Rap was criticizing the way America treated its poor,” the congresswoman told fellow lawmakers. “Rappers were singing about poverty, police abuse, incarceration and other facets of their conditions. As legislators, these were the issues we should have been focusing on, not censorship.”

Waters is a divisive figure that has long abused her power to enrich family members and even got a communist dictator to harbor a cop-murdering Black Panther fugitive still wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The scandal-plagued politician sank to a new low by publicly encouraging violence against Trump administration cabinet members as well as anti-police protestors in an attempt to intimidate the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they are not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said at a summer rally in Los Angeles, referring to members of the Trump administration. Judicial Watch filed a House ethics complaint against Waters for inspiring violence against members of a presidential cabinet. During the Chauvin trial the congresswoman urged protestors to “get more confrontational” if the officer was not found guilty in the George Floyd case. “Well, we’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational,” Waters declared. “We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.” Judicial Watch also filed a complaint against Waters for violating House ethics rules in the Chauvin case.

 

Until next week,


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