CRISIS: Biden Admin ARRESTS Trump!

Trump Indictment: A Naked Threat and Act of Intimidation
Judicial Watch Challenges Maine’s Policy Restricting Use of Statewide Voter List
Judicial Watch Seeks Supreme Court Review for Group Exposing Abortion Business

Trump Indictment: A Naked Threat and Act of Intimidation

The Biden administration has left the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution behind with its latest indictment of President Trump for daring to dispute the 2020 presidential election, as is his God-given right as a president, a citizen, and a candidate under state, federal and constitutional law.

This sham indictment is perfectly consistent with the partisan and political abuse I suffered at the hands of Jack Smith’s prosecutors for hours as they argued with me before their grand jury using Democratic talking points on the election controversy.

Let’s be blunt: This indictment is a naked threat and act of intimidation by the Democratic Party against any and all their political opponents. The message from the Biden regime is: “We will put you in jail if you dispute elections.” A free and fair 2024 election is officially impossible.

And, of course, Joe Biden and his political appointee Merrick Garland at the Justice Department want to distract from the conclusive evidence of Biden’s personal corruption by trying to jail and turn Trump into a political prisoner.

It is well past time for Congress to do everything possible under the law to undo this attempt to wreck our republican form of government.

Let’s hope the courts finally step up and shut down this unprecedented prosecutorial abuse.

In the meantime, Judicial Watch will continue to expose and hold accountable the criminal elements in the Biden administration seeking to undo our republican form of government.

Judicial Watch Challenges Maine’s Policy Restricting Use of Statewide Voter List

States continue to resist the law requiring transparency (and reasonable clean-ups) with respect to their voter rolls.

As America’s leading election law watchdog, we just filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief against Maine’s illicit secrecy supporting the sensible decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s voter registration list (Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna Bellows (No. 23-1361).

The lawsuit, citing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), is now in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. We point out:

In the last ten years, no organization public or private has obtained more statewide settlement agreements or consent decrees against chief state election officials for violations of the NVRA. As part of its list maintenance enforcement efforts, Judicial Watch also routinely requests public records of voter registration activities in various states under Section 8(i) of the NVRA, and has sued on its own behalf and on behalf of others to enforce it.

Our legal team explains:

The public disclosure provision of the NVRA embodies Congress’ intent that Americans’ right to vote “must not be sacrificed to administrative chicanery, oversights, or inefficiencies.” … The NVRA’s public disclosure provisions mandates that “State officials labor under a duty of accountability to the public in ensuring that voter lists include eligible voters and exclude ineligible ones in the most accurate manner possible.” … The NVRA provides an avenue for citizens to check that and to ensure that only eligible registrants remain on the rolls by providing the full voter registration list open to public inspection. “Without such transparency, public confidence in the essential workings of democracy will suffer.”

Judicial Watch details how Maine’s defense for their secrecy has been rejected repeatedly by other courts:

No court has adopted Appellant’s [State of Maine] argument here. Rather, all courts presented with this issue have found that the voter registration list is a record subject to disclosure under the NVRA. This Court should reject Appellant’s argument.

According to a national study conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration rate was 101% of eligible voters.

Federal law mandates voter roll transparency. Given Maine’s refusal to release its voter roll information, it’s reasonable to think that cleaning up voter rolls is not a priority. Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections.

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads its election law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of states.

We recently settled a federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois Conservative Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its director, which grants access to the current centralized statewide list of registered voters for the state for the past 15 elections.

In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled with us and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch. The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next five years.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed to settle a Judicial Watch NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit we filed in 2017.

We settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter registration lists.

Kentucky also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, we settled a voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive registrations from its voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor of our challenge to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme” congressional gerrymander.

As we can see in Maine, the fight for cleaner elections is far from over and Judicial Watch will not rest in the battle to ensure Americans have free and fair elections.

Judicial Watch Seeks Supreme Court Review for Group Exposing Abortion Business

The selling fetal parts and organs from human beings killed by abortion is a practice that many don’t want you to know about.

And those who expose the truth face punishment from the extremists benefitting from this monstrous activity.  Judicial Watch was forced  filed two amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and its founder David Daleiden.  CMP and David have been targeted by the pro-abortion movement for exposing their marketing of the fetal organs and body parts.

One brief asks for review of the Ninth Circuit Court’s affirmation of a monetary award against CMP (Center for Medical Progress et al. v Planned Parent Hood et al. (22-1168)). The other asks for review of an injunction granted to the National Abortion Federation that prevents CMP from publishing more abortion-related videos (Center for Medical Progress et al. v National Abortion Federation (22-1135)).

In 2015, The Center for Medical Progress released videos that exposed employees of Planned Parenthood engaging in negotiations for the sale of fetal tissue and body parts for use in medical research.

On October 21, 2022, the United States Ninth Circuit affirmed most of a 2019 lower court jury verdict that declared that a series of undercover videos produced by The Center for Medical Progress harmed Planned Parenthood, and that CMP was not protected by the First Amendment, requiring CMP to pay millions in damages to Planned Parenthood.

The Judicial Watch brief highlights how the lower court’s awarding of monetary damages for these accurate videos is a fundamental threat to First Amendment protections.

Separately, in August 2022, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the ruling of a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that granted National Abortion Federation a permanent injunction barring The Center for Medical Progress from releasing recordings and materials obtained at National Abortion Federation’s meetings. The injunction also forbids CMP from talking about the videos or using them in the defense of CMP’s Founder and President David Daleiden in his criminal case.

In our brief we state:

The ability to inform the public on matters of genuine and profound public interest is an essential aspect of free speech rights. The Ninth Circuit’s erroneous decision upholding the lower court’s permanent injunction amounts to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination that must be corrected. In addition to the constitutional injuries Petitioners will continue to suffer, the public continues to suffer as well, by being purposefully prevented from learning the facts regarding an exceptionally important issue. Abortion affects not only personal choices, but national choices like elections, federal funding, and agency regulations. It is absolutely essential that the public have the full story of what transpired on Petitioners’ videos.

Judicial Watch argues that upholding the Ninth Circuit decision would have a “chilling” effect on the First Amendment:

The Ninth Circuit’s decision to uphold the district court is a blow to First Amendment rights that rises to the level of significant public importance. The Ninth Circuit’s decision to rubberstamp viewpoint discrimination has caused substantial adverse consequences for the Petitioners in this case, including an especially unjust and onerous monetary award, the inability to use the videotapes as evidence in their criminal trial, and a chilling of their First Amendment rights. But the damage of the Ninth Circuit’s decision goes far beyond the Petitioners. The decision has also caused substantial adverse consequences for the public in general. The freedom of speech logically incorporates the right to receive the speech as well. The right to speak is rendered meaningless without an audience free to listen.

Our attorneys also argue these videos and what they exposed are a matter of public interest:

By permanently silencing the Petitioners’ speech, the general public is subsequently harmed by not being able to receive the information contained on the videotapes. The importance of the information on the videotapes being suppressed by the Ninth Circuit cannot be overstated. As Amicus will demonstrate, the videotapes that were released changed the national and state landscape in dramatic ways. The general public was largely unaware of the shocking underbelly of the abortion lobby which Petitioners exposed through the release of the videotapes. Petitioners videos changed federal and state laws, spurred federal and state investigations, changed private business changes, and led to severe public backlash. By suppressing the further release of information, the Ninth Circuit effectively blocked access to information the public had a right to know. Absent this Court’s intervention, the Petitioners and public are left with no avenue for legal relief for the adverse consequences they have suffered and will continue to suffer.

We have repeatedly fought to expose the sale of human fetal tissue obtained by killing unborn human beings through abortion.

In March 2021, we filed two separate FOIA lawsuits against Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for grant applications related to the use of human fetal tissue.

In August 2021, we and The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) received records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that revealed nearly $3 million in federal funds were spent on the University of Pittsburgh’s quest to become a “Tissue Hub” for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 weeks gestation.

Through a separate lawsuit, in September 2021, we exposed records and communications from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) involving “humanized mice” research with human fetal heads, organs and tissue, including communications and contracts with human fetal tissue provider Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR).

The Center for Medical Progress exposed the horrors of the sales of fetal body parts, and the courts effectively joined the abortion industry in trying to destroy the Center for telling the truth about this nightmarish conduct. The Supreme Court should step in and protect the First Amendment right of citizens to expose and criticize the dark secrets of the abortion industrial complex.

Until next week,