Tom Fitton's Judicial Watch Weekly Update | July 12, 2024

Foreign Nationals Registered to Vote in DC!

Records Reveal 583 Foreign Nationals Registered to Vote in Washington, DC
Hearing Held in Suit Over Mississippi Post-Election Day Absentee Ballot Counting
Judicial Watch Sues for January 6 DC Police Bodycam Videos
Judicial Watch Sues Treasury Dept. for Foreign Purchases of U.S. Farmland Records
Packs of ‘Fighting Age Males’ in Military Uniforms Entering U.S.

 

Records Reveal 583 Foreign Nationals Registered to Vote in Washington, DC

According to federal law, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, but a growing number of state and local elections allow non-citizens to vote. Among them are San Francisco and Oakland, California, along with some cities in Maryland and Vermont. In February, a state appeals court ruled a similar New York City law violates the state constitution.

In May 2024, we received records from the District of Columbia, explaining to illegal aliens and other noncitizens how they can register to vote in local elections.

Now we have a better picture of voters in your nation’s capital.

We received records showing that as of June 583 foreign nationals are registered to vote in Washington, DC. The records from the Board of Elections also confirm that noncitizens can be election workers.

We received the documents in response to a May 14, 2024, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records regarding the number of noncitizens registered to vote in Washington, DC, under the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act.

In 2022 the DC Council amended the District of Columbia Election Code of 1955 “to expand the definition of the term qualified elector for the purpose of local elections to include otherwise eligible non-citizen residents.” The act went into effect in 2023 and allows noncitizens to vote in local elections for positions including mayor, attorney general, city council member, State Board of Education member or Advisory Neighborhood Commission member. Non-citizens can also vote on local referendums, ballot initiatives and recalls.

An analysis of DC voter registration records made available to us shows that on June 13, 2024, the makeup of registered voters in DC was:

• Total Voters: 457,302
• US Citizens: 456,719
• Foreign Nationals: 583
• Democrats: 353,048
• Republican: 23,482
• No Party Affiliation: 73,760
• Other: 7,012

DC records also show that noncitizens can work at the polls if they are:

• A DC resident
• At least 16 years of age
• Attend or has graduated from a public or private secondary school or institution of higher education
• Are able to speak English

The records describe a virtual town hall meeting on April 30, 2024, that explains voting to noncitizens (previously disclosed by Judicial Watch). Among the topics:

• What offices can non-citizens vote for? Which ones can they not vote for?
• Voter Registration and Voter Rights/Responsibilities
• How does voter registration work? Steps and options on how to register to vote.
• What kind of language access resources does DCBOE provide for voter registration?
• Ballots: show a sample
• Language Access
• General language access overview
• Election Day resources for Language Access: what does the DCBOE [Board of Elections] provide?
• Election must knows
• Important dates and deadlines including ballots mailed, voter registration, party affiliation, Early Voting hours, and Primary Election Day

The records we obtained include a Board of Elections meeting transcript that explains that noncitizens are not required to have an ID to vote. If they do not have proof of residence when they go to register to vote or vote for the first time they can still vote by “Special Ballot.” Also, prisoners are also welcome to vote, according to a “Voting Guide for Incarcerated Residents:”

As a District of Columbia resident, you have the right to vote, even if you are incarcerated.

Even if you are in a correctional facility outside of the District of Columbia, if you are registered, you do not lose your residency status and you have the right to vote.

Once you are properly registered, you will be mailed a ballot prior to any District of Columbia election for which you are eligible.

If your ballot was mailed to your place of incarceration and you were released prior to receiving it, you can still vote at any Vote Center during Early Voting or on Election Day.

The fact that over 500 foreign nationals can vote in local elections in Washington, DC, is a national scandal and an insult to every American citizen. Congress can and must stop this attack on the voting rights of citizens.

 

Hearing Held in Suit Over Mississippi Post-Election Day Absentee Ballot Counting

Federal law requires an Election Day, not an “Election Week.” This week we continued our challenge of a Mississippi election law permitting absentee ballots to be received as late as five business days after Election Day. That’s illegal, violates the civil rights of voters, and encourages fraud.

A federal court hearing was held before Judge Louis Guirola, Jr., in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, Southern Division.

In February of this year, we filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi (Libertarian Party of Mississippi v Wetzel et al. (No. 1:24-cv-00037)). The court consolidated the case we filed with one filed by the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, and other complainants.

Our lawsuit details:

Under federal law, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year is election day (“Election Day”) for federal elections.

Congress recently reaffirmed a single national Election Day when it enacted the Electoral Count Reform Act (“ECRA”).

Under the recent Congressional amendments, no extension of Election Day shall be allowed unless there are “force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic” that justify extension.

Despite Congress’ unambiguous and longstanding statement regarding a single and uniform national Election Day, Mississippi extended Election Day by allowing five additional business days after Election Day for receipt of absentee ballots.

No “force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic” currently exist in Mississippi to justify extending the ballot receipt deadline for the November 5, 2024 federal election for Presidential and Vice-Presential Electors.

We argue that holding voting open for five days past Election Day violates the constitutional rights of voters and candidates:

Counting untimely, illegal, and invalid votes, such as those received in violation of federal law, substantially increases the pool of total votes cast and dilutes the weight of votes cast by Plaintiff’s members and others in support of Plaintiff’s federal nominees.

Our complaint points out that, based on the reported numbers, as many as 1.7% of votes cast in Mississippi in 2020 were received after Election Day.

In 2022, on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two other registered voters, we sued Illinois to prevent vote-by-mail ballots (even those without postmarks) to be counted if received up to 14 calendar days after Election Day, if the ballots are dated on or before Election Day. The case is now on appeal.

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of our work, we 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.

In December 2023, notice letters were sent to election officials in the District of Columbia, California, and Illinois, notifying them of evident violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The letters point out that these jurisdictions publicly reported removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letters threatened federal lawsuits unless the violations were corrected in a timely fashion. In response to Judicial Watch’s inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.” NVRA lawsuits subsequently were commenced against California and Illinois.

In July 2023 we filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, supporting the 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). According to a national study conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration rate was 101% of eligible voters.

In July 2023 we 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 now 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 us. 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 our NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide us with the most recent voter roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed the 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-districts gerrymander.

 

Judicial Watch Sues for January 6 DC Police Bodycam Videos

Our investigation of January 6 continues.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the District of Columbia for all bodycam footage captured by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Officer Michael Fanone and all audio/video captured by MPD officers who responded to the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (Judicial Watch v. District of Columbia (No. 2024-CAB-003453)).

We filed suit after the Metropolitan Police Department denied our August 2021 request for:

All audio/video recordings captured on body-worn cameras from MPD officers during their response to protest activities in and around the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.

All body worn camera video captured by Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone when responding to protests at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.

The DC Metro Police rejected our request because the videos are “part of an ongoing investigation and criminal proceeding” and their release would result in an “invasion of privacy.”

We appealed the denial, stating, “[T]he records in question are of great public interest, which outweighs any asserted privacy interests. Furthermore, the assertion of an ongoing criminal investigation does not preclude the release of the requested video, as police body-worn camera video is routinely released pending the conclusion of law enforcement proceedings.”

The Metropolitan Police acknowledged receipt of the appeal but did not respond further.

In May 2021, CNN claimed to have received “exclusive footage” of DC Metropolitan Police Officer Fanone being “assaulted while defending the U.S. Capitol” during the protest on January 6, 2021, which it subsequently aired.

In July 2021, Fanone gave testimony to a House Select Committee in which he stated, “My body camera captured the violence of the crowd directed toward me during those very frightening moments. It’s an important part of the record for this Committee’s investigation and for the country’s understanding of how I was assaulted and nearly killed as the mob attacked the Capitol that day, and I hope that everyone will be able to watch it.”

Fanone, then 41, retired from the police at the end of 2021 and went on to write a book and become a contributor for CNN.

The American people deserve the full picture from the incident at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. What are they hiding? The DC Metropolitan Police Department should be transparent and release these secret January 6 videos.

We are extensively investigating the events of January 6.

In February 2021, we filed a lawsuit under the common law right of access to public records against the U.S. Capitol Police for emails and videos concerning the January 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.

In April 2024, we received records from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, showing that the FBI opened a criminal investigation of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt after her killing and listed four “potential violations of federal law,” including felony rioting and civil disorder.

In January 2024, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of Aaron Babbitt and the Ashli Babbitt Estate against the U.S. Department of Justice for all FBI files on Ashli Babbitt.

In September 2023, we received records from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, a component of the Department of Justice, in a FOIA lawsuit that detailed the extensive apparatus the Biden Justice Department set up to investigate and prosecute January 6 protestors.

A previous review of records from that lawsuit highlighted the prosecution declination memorandum documenting the decision not to prosecute U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd for the shooting death of Babbitt.

In January 2023, documents from the Department of the Air Force, Joint Base Andrews, MD, showed U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In November 2021, we released multiple audio, visual and photo records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the shooting death of Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building. The records included a cell phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police interview of the shooter, Byrd.

In October 2021, United States Park Police records related to the January 6, 2021, demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol showed that on the day before the January 6 rally featuring President Trump, U.S. Park Police expected a “large portion” of the attendees to march to the U.S. Capitol and that the FBI was monitoring the January 6 demonstrations, including travel to the events by “subjects of interest.”

 

Judicial Watch Sues Treasury Dept. for Foreign Purchases of U.S. Farmland Records

Chinese and other foreign purchases of U.S. farmland could pose a significant threat to U.S. national security. That the Biden administration is hiding records about this concerning issue is not reassuring.

We’re acting. We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury for records of communication between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding the purchase of U.S. farmland by foreign entities (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of the Treasury (No. 1:24-cv-01811)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Treasury Department failed to respond to an April 10, 2024, FOIA request for:

Any and all records of communications between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture concerning, regarding, or relating to the purchase of U.S. agricultural real estate by foreign entities.

On January 19, 2024, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report which found significant gaps in information collection and timely information sharing between the Committee on Foreign Investment and other government agencies, including the USDA, concerning foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land.

The GAO report concludes:

Recent national security risks related to foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land have highlighted the importance of CFIUS’s reviews. CFIUS is the main authority to address the national security ramifications of foreign investment in the United States, according to Treasury and DOD officials. However, we found that CFIUS does not currently have regular and timely access to detailed AFIDA [Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act] information, the nation’s most comprehensive data on foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land, according to USDA officials.

For example, according to a Fox News report, in February 2023, the city council in Grand Forks, North Dakota, voted unanimously to strike down Chinese-owned food manufacturer Fufeng Group’s proposed corn mill on 300 acres of farmland it purchased which is 12 miles from the U.S. Air Force’s Grand Forks base.

In a January 2023 letter to North Dakota’s U.S. senators, Air Force Assistant Secretary Andrew Hunter pointed to the proposed corn mill’s proximity to Grand Forks Air Force Base as a major risk:

Thank you for meeting with Department of the Air Force representatives last month regarding the Fufeng Group’s proposal to build a large com milling processing plant approximately 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base. Based on the briefings provided, you asked for the Department’s view of the national security implications of the Fufeng Group Limited’s proposed activity.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) considered an October 2022 filing by the Fufeng Group to acquire certain assets in the vicinity of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Grand Forks Air Force Base is the center of military activities related to both air and space operations.

While CFIUS concluded that it did not have jurisdiction, the Department’s view is unambiguous: the proposed project presents a significant threat to national security with both near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area.

 

Packs of ‘Fighting Age Males’ in Military Uniforms Entering U.S.

Arizona is beleaguered by illegal aliens pouring across the border, and we should all be worried about the unvetted people who are being distributed throughout our country. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has some new troubling details.

As the nation’s largest southern border crossings finally receive mainstream media coverage years into an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis, untold numbers of “fighting age males” dressed in military uniforms are entering the United States through remote areas with no Border Patrol presence. It is a palpable security lapse unlikely to be reported by most news outlets and local, federal, and state law enforcement sources have provided Judicial Watch with detailed accounts, reports, diagrams, and photos of the situation which is terrorizing residents in a once harmonious Arizona town just a few miles from Mexico. They blame the Biden administration’s catastrophic open border policies for the serious problems that have gripped the area in the last few years.

The Santa Cruz and Pima County regions in southwestern Arizona have been slammed with extraordinary violence and crime fueled by Mexican cartels—smuggling drugs and humans—that are victimizing fourth and fifth-generation cattle farmers who have captured thousands of illegal immigrants on security cameras passing through their property since Joe Biden became president. Sometimes they find dead bodies and drug paraphernalia. “Violent activity has drastically increased over the past three years since the border is now perceived to be wide open,” a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch this week, adding that in the communities of Amado and Arivaca American citizens feel much less safe than they did when Donald Trump was president. Both are cattle ranching towns with small populations that are diminishing because of the increased violence. Amado is nestled in the Santa Cruz River Valley about 29 miles from the Mexican border. Arivaca is situated southwest of Amado about 11 miles from Nogales, Mexico.

An unmanned Border Patrol checkpoint east of Arivaca worries residents deeply, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has no intention of deploying agents, according to multiple sources. In the meantime, law enforcement officials and residents confirm that young men are pouring in through the region in what appears to be an organized movement operated by Mexican cartels. “They are unemployed, the majority are fighting age males and there is a strong possibility some have undergone some level of insurgency training,” according to a law enforcement source familiar with the situation. The groups of men are usually dressed in “camouflage military uniforms, indicating a robust and well-funded supply network to ensure everyone is outfitted the same,” said an intelligence officer with extensive U.S. military training who provided Judicial Watch with pictures and graphs of recent crossings. The uniformed men also carry camouflaged backpacks and wear carpet booties to hide footprint tracks. Large piles of the disposed carpet booties litter ranches on the U.S. side, creating a hazard for cattle that consume the trash.

One longtime area rancher said that since Biden became president, he has recorded over 3,560 illegal immigrants on security cameras on his property, a tenfold increase from the previous administration. Another said he has not seen a Border Patrol agent for quite a while, likely because the frontline Homeland Security agency is overwhelmed with the onslaught of migrants in the last few years. “They have recommended we not travel to certain areas of our ranch, and we never go out there at night,” said the rancher, who does not want his name used out of fear for the safety of his family. Locals say the violence is causing the already small population of Arivaca to dwindle quickly. A few years ago, the town had 1,200 residents and now there are approximately 600. Authorities say those who leave are mostly relocating north to Green Valley, about 35 miles away, or Tucson which is around 60 miles away. The area has become so dangerous that the U.S. Forest Service told a rancher it would no longer travel there to monitor enclosure areas established to oversee endangered species.

The continuous stream of trash and human waste left behind by the staggering flow of migrants and smugglers has also devastated the local environment and livestock. Besides large piles of discarded carpet booties, mounds of plastic waste are having a detrimental effect on cattle because they eat it and become ill, ranchers said. Many also die after ingesting traces of drugs found in wrappings left behind by smugglers. To help illustrate how porous the border is in this region, one rancher said Mexican cattle regularly cruise into the U.S. side, creating a major risk of introducing illnesses to American cattle that, although inoculated, may be vulnerable to new strains and diseases that may prevail south of the border. “We removed 120 Mexican cattle over the past six months,” said a veteran rancher, who explained that it is a lot of extra work to keep the foreign livestock from mingling with local cattle to prevent unsafe beef being distributed throughout the U.S. food industry.

If Biden gets reelected the situation will likely worsen, say law enforcement officials and residents in the remote Arizona region. Other small towns are also suffering from the impact of this administration’s flagrant open border policies. Just a few months ago Judicial Watch wrote about another once tranquil border region that has been devastated by illegal immigration and drug smuggling. It is situated in Cochise County to the east of Amado and Arivaca in the picturesque Sonoran Desert surrounded by the scenic Huachuca Mountains. Human and drug traffickers regularly evade a meager force of Border Patrol agents in the mountainous region and local law enforcement officials say the addition of the new “American smuggler,” U.S. citizens, predominantly young adults from Phoenix and Tucson recruited by Mexican cartels through social media, has created deadly consequences in the communities where the American recruits often travel at dangerously high speeds through local roads and highways.

 

Until next week,