The Intelligence Community Withheld Election-System Vulnerabilities
U.S. to Intervene in Lawsuit to Force California to Clean Up Voter Rolls
Judicial Watch Sues for FBI Memorandum on FISA Targeting
Taxpayer-Funded NIH Grant Backed Gender-Affirming Care for Youth
The Intelligence Community Withheld Election-System Vulnerabilities
In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that included a directive to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to review the security of electronic voting systems.
In an April 2025 White House Cabinet meeting, then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard indicated that voting machines are susceptible to hacking and capable of changing votes. “We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time, and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast.”
We’re on the case.
We forced the release of 8 pages of documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show that an ODNI task force stated that the Intelligence Community identified election-system vulnerabilities that could be exploited by U.S. adversaries and withheld information about those vulnerabilities from the American people.
We filed the lawsuit after ODNI failed to respond to an April 2025 request concerning vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (No. 1:25-cv-03526)).
In an April 9, 2025, message containing proposed talking points, the press secretary for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence writes:
The DIG [Director’s Initiatives Group] has uncovered indications of bias and politicization within the intelligence community’s election security assessments. Specifically, the DIG has uncovered indications that intelligence community [redacted] had identified election system vulnerabilities that could be exploited by our adversaries and proceeded to withhold or [redacted] this information from the American people.
(The Director in the meeting yesterday asked for the ugly truth hard-hitting information)
The DIG is working overtime interviewing whistleblowers and reviewing documents necessary to declassify election related IC products.
An April 10, 2025, email chain, from a person whose name is redacted to the deputy chief of staff for ODNI states:
1. The DIG is conducting a broad review of all election related IC products, assessments, and reports for political bias and suppression of critical intelligence.
2. The DIG is conducting a fresh assessment of voting systems security leveraging cutting edge technology and cyber experts.
3. The DIG is supporting on-going DOJ investigations with a nexus to election security and interference.
***
The DIG is pursuing an inquiry into open-source information from the State Commission of Elections for Puerto Rico that Dominion voting machines produced hundreds of vote total discrepancies, machines reversed totals, under counted votes, and/or reported zero votes for some candidates. This appears to be the best real-world example of Dominion voting machines doing exactly what the company claimed was impossible to do from a reputable state entity.
***
The DIG met with US Attorney Muldrow and his team today … to coordinate DIG support to on-going DOJ investigations looking specifically into foreign influence, election interference, counterintelligence, corruption, money laundering, and drug trafficking.
The DIG inquiries … will continue to conduct a proper hand-off and/or criminal referral to DOJ via our FBI detailee.
***
It does not appear Dominion has a good excuse for what happened and we want to get our hands on the machines before potential evidence is erased. I feel this may be our best opportunity to document how election rigging “is” occurring and then use that signature to walk back through IC records to search for the same fingerprints.
We urge the Trump administration to release all documents under law about its findings on electronic voting machine vulnerabilities. Our democracy may be at stake.
We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced election law attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently filed a motion to intervene in our federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a California political candidate and a state political party against the State of California due to its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In May 2026, we filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a California political candidate and a state political party against the State of California due to its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
Our lawsuits and legal actions have caused the removal of six million ineligible names from voter lists nationwide.
Earlier this year, we earned a victory at the Supreme Court upholding the right of candidates to challenge ballot counting rules that allowed the counting of late-arriving ballots. In a 7-2 decision, the court held that Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors had standing to challenge an Illinois law allowing ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day to be counted.
U.S. to Intervene in Lawsuit to Force California to Clean Up Voter Rolls
Here’s confirmation that we’re on the right track in California.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a motion to intervene in our federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a California political candidate and a state political party against the State of California due to its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
The United States filed its motion and a proposed complaint in intervention in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in our May 2026 lawsuit (Don Wagner et al. v. Shirley N. Weber, in her official capacity as California Secretary of State (No. 8:26-cv-01263)).
The Justice Department is right to follow our lead. It is on target in calling California’s voting rolls ‘among the worst in the nation.’ Our lawsuits and legal action have already caused the removal of six million dirty voter names from the rolls. Another million or so must be cleaned.
The Justice Department’s proposed complaint in intervention names California Secretary of State Shirley Weber as a defendant and states the intervention was filed “to enforce provisions of the National Voter Registration and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).”
Federal law requires most inactive voter registrations to be removed after two general federal elections. Our lawsuit alleges, based on admissions in prior Judicial Watch litigation, that 873,092 California voter registrations have remained continuously inactive for at least three federal elections, and some for much longer. Of these registrations, 326,808 have remained continuously inactive through at least three consecutive federal general elections, while 151,202 have remained inactive through at least four consecutive federal general elections.
In addition, 33,922 voter registrations have remained continuously inactive through at least five consecutive federal general elections — dating back at least ten years, to before the November 5, 2016, presidential election.
Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), states are required to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters from the voter rolls, including those who have died or moved. The lawsuit also alleges, again citing admissions by California officials, that the state takes no effective action to require counties to comply with the NVRA. As a result, they do not comply.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Don Wagner, an elected member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and candidate for California Secretary of State, and the American Independent Party of California.
We are assisted by the Benbrook Law Group of Sacramento, California.
We are a national leader in election integrity and voting rights litigation, with a record of successful lawsuits enforcing constitutional redistricting standards and cleaning voter rolls nationwide.
Our lawsuits and legal actions have caused the removal of six million ineligible names from voter lists nationwide.
Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads our 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.
In April 2026, we announced a settlement in our federal lawsuit against Oregon election officials, which confirms800,000 ineligible voter names are slated for review and removal from voter registration lists.
Colorado recently removed 372,000 ineligible voter names thanks to a Judicial Watch lawsuit and settlement addressing the state’s compliance with federal voter list maintenance requirements.
In Kentucky, state election board officials reported that “roughly 735,000 ineligible voter registrations” have been removed from voter rolls, as part of a 2018 consent decree settling a Judicial Watch lawsuit.
As part of its 2022 settlement, New York City alone has removed 918,139 ineligible names from its rolls: data show 477,056 removals between March 2023 and February 2025, which is in addition to the 441,083 previously reported removals.
Our legal pressure also resulted in election roll clean-ups in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio.
A federal court in Illinois has ruled that our lawsuit to force the cleaning of voter rolls may proceed in that state.
In January 2026, in a historic case we filed, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors who were before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.
Judicial Watch Sues for FBI Memorandum on FISA Targeting
We’re wading deeper into the Deep State swamp.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for an interagency memorandum of understanding between the FBI and an agency the name of which is redacted regarding the targeting and minimization procedures referenced in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-02407)).
We sued after the FBI failed to respond to a March 10, 2026, FOIA request for a copy of the memorandum that is cited in a footnote on page 87 of an opinion by Judge Rosemary Collyer filed on April 26, 2017.
The footnote we reference states:
The improper access granted to the [redacted] contractors was apparently in place [redacted] and seems to have been the result of deliberate decisionmaking. [Redacted] Compliance Report at 92-93 ([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted]). Despite the existence of an interagency memorandum of understanding (presumably prepared or reviewed by FBI lawyers), no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016. Of course, such a memorandum of understanding could not override the restrictions of Section 702 minimization procedures.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence explains that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)Section 702 is a U.S. intelligence provision that “only permits the targeting of non-United States persons who are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. United States persons and anyone in the United States may not be targeted.” Further, “all Section 702 targets must be non-United States persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States … such targets may send an email or have a phone call with a United States person. For this reason, Section 702 requires specific procedures to minimize the acquisition, retention, and sharing of any information concerning United States persons.”
The Obama FBI had officially opened its investigation, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane,” into the campaign of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on July 31, 2016. The court’s 99-page opinion documents significant compliance failures involving FISA surveillance during the same period, raising concerns about the handling of raw intelligence information and compliance with court-ordered minimization procedures.
This undisclosed FBI agreement was in effect during one of the most controversial periods in U.S. history, when Crossfire Hurricane and other FISA-related activities were under way. The American people should not have to wait one more day for transparency.
We have led efforts to uncover much of what the public knows about Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate, which involved a long list of Democratic political figures, lawyers, and staffers who shaped the narrative around the Trump-Russia hoax.
In January 2026, we sued the Justice Department for fully unredacted records and previously withheld or missing portions of former Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate investigation.
In October 2020, we uncovered heavily redacted email communications among top-level State Department officials and a U.S. ambassador expressing skepticism about reports by Christopher Steele’s London-based private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. (Steele was the author of the Clinton-funded, anti-Trump dossier.) The emails show one assistant secretary of state saying some of Steele’s reports sound “extreme” and others “do not ring true,” while the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine called some of the Steele reports “flaky.”
In May 2020, we forced the declassification and release of the “electronic communication” used to launch Crossfire Hurricane, written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.
In April 2020, we obtained emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, including an email dated January 10, 2017, in which Strzok said that the version of the Steele dossier published by BuzzFeed was “identical” to the version given to the FBI by McCain and had “differences” from the dossier provided to the FBI by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and Mother Jones reporter David Corn. January 10, 2017, is the same day BuzzFeed published the anti-Trump dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele. The emails also show Strzok and other FBI agents mocking President Trump a few weeks before he was inaugurated. In addition, the emails revealed that Strzok communicated with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about the “leak investigation” tied to the Clinton Foundation (the very leak in which McCabe was later implicated).
In September 2019, we released State Department records revealing that Steele had an extensive and close working relationship dating back to May of 2014 with high-ranking Obama State Department officials including Jonathan Winer and Victoria Nuland.
In August 2019, we obtained “302” report material from 2016 FBI interviews of Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney Bruce Ohr, who was removed from his position in December 2017. (A Form 302 is used by FBI agents to memorialize interviews they undertake during an investigation.) In a November 22, 2016, interview, Ohr said that “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign, Jon Winer at the U.S. State Department and the FBI.” In a late September 2016 interview, Ohr described a person (likely Christopher Steele) as “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.” A report states that “Ohr knew that [Fusion GPS’s] Glen Simpson and others were talking to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department.”
In July 2019, we obtained records revealing a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.”
In August 2018, the Justice Department admitted in a court filing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the FISA spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.
In July 2018, we released records about FISA warrants targeting Page, which appeared to confirm that the FBI and DOJ misled the FISA court by withholding material information showing that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the court to approve the FISA warrants targeting the Trump team.
Taxpayer-Funded NIH Grant Backed Gender-Affirming Care for Youth
Despite President Trump’s executive order prohibiting federal funds from promoting gender ideology, a National Institutes of Health grant that began under the Biden administration continued to provide funding for research into gender-affirming care for youth living in rural communities. Our Corruption Chronicles blog exposes the details.
Charged with making important discoveries that improve health and save lives, the nation’s medical research agency gave a pediatrician and professor at a public university nearly half a million dollars to research gender-affirming care for youth in rural communities who identify as black, indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC). The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which annually disburses tens of billions of dollars in research grants, initiated the award during the Biden administration but some of the money flowed under Trump, even after the president banned taxpayer dollars for such initiatives advanced by the left. “Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” reads an order issued by Trump on the day of his 2025 inauguration. “Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.”
In this case the NIH, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded a Seattle doctor and professor at the University of Washington $428,296 to “advance health equity by increasing health services research involving transgender and gender diverse youth, youth who identify as black, indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC), and youth living in rural communities,” according to the grant announcement. The government spending data reveals that the agency disbursed $143,000 in fiscal year 2025, even though the president banned public financing for projects like this that clearly promote gender ideology. “Gender diverse youth (GDY) who identify as BIPOC, as well as those living in rural communities, are more likely to experience depression and anxiety than their peers,” the NIH grant states. “Additionally, BIPOC and rural GDY are disproportionately underrepresented in pediatric gender clinics, limiting their access to pediatric gender-affirming care, which has been shown to improve mental health outcomes.”
The doctor and professor of pediatrics, Gina Sequeira, who is conducting the study is the co-director of the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic and specializes in gender-affirming care for children. She was the focus of a lengthy 2022 article in a national news magazine that claimed pediatricians who serve trans youth face increasing harassment. “Lifesaving care could be on the line,” the story proclaimed, adding that only a small group of pediatricians provide gender affirming care in the United States. Sequeira is well-known for conducting research that identifies barriers to gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents and believes pediatricians should“open a door to have a conversation with young people about how they see their gender” during routine well-visits. “My hope is one day we get to a place where every clinician, regardless of their specialty, has the basic knowledge and skills to be able to conduct a visit with a transgender patient without hesitation and without the patient being made to feel uncomfortable or disrespected because of their identity,” Sequeira says.
Her recent NIH-funded study is supposed to examine how gender specialists who practice in large academic medical centers can connect with underage trans patients throughout the country. Sequeira will build on her existing research with transgender youth and their families to identify existing barriers preventing trans and BIPOC youth in rural communities from receiving gender-affirming care and design as well as implement access to care via telehealth. She is also charged with developing a technology-based enhanced gender support platform to facilitate a comprehensive gender-affirming care provision in the community pediatric setting. “Given few providers have received training in this area and most lack opportunities to consult with transgender specialists, telehealth modalities like telemedicine and electronic consultation show great potential in facilitating the provision of community-based gender-affirming care,” the NIH grant announcement states.
It is highly unlikely that American taxpayers will fund this type of research for the remainder of the Trump administration considering that earlier this year the White House officially ended the “Transgender for Everybody” insanity created by Democrats. Under the new policy the president declared it the official practice of the U.S. government that there are only two immutable sexes: male and female. “President Trump banned federal funding, sponsorship, or promotion of the chemical and surgical mutilation of minors—protecting children from irreversible harm and directing agencies to defund institutions engaged in these practices,” according to the White House press release outlining the policy in late March.
Until next week,
