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Government watchdog group Judicial Watch last week filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department. The group believes prominent conservative journalists, public figures and those with ties to President Donald Trump were being monitored by the State Department in Ukraine under the direction of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was appointed to her post by President Barack Obama. "Judicial Watch has obtained information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using State Department resources," the watchdog group said in a press release. "Yovanovitch reportedly ordered...

Judicial Watch Investigates if Obama Ambassador Ordered Monitoring of Journalists, Trump Allies University Funds and Gives Intellectual Property Rights to Chinese Institute Judicial Watch Investigates if Obama Ambassador Ordered Monitoring of Journalists, Trump Allies Was President Obama’s Ambassador to Ukraine unlawfully tracking articles, reports, and social media postings of conservatives? Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the story . Judicial Watch is investigating if prominent conservative figures, journalists and persons with ties to President Donald Trump were unlawfully monitored by the State Department in Ukraine at the request of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama appointee. Yovanovitch testified “in...

A little more than a year ago, Prashant Singh was an engineer at Microsoft's Mountain View campus working on projects including Internet-connected televisions and the Xbox. But for the past year, his career has taken a civil service turn. The 31-year-old engineer spent 2012 designing a public transit tool and other technology for the city of Detroit. Through the San Francisco nonprofit Code for America, Singh took a sabbatical of sorts. As fellows of the effort nicknamed the "Peace Corps for geeks," Singh and 25 other techies fanned out for a year across the United States to help municipalities develop...

One of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests has just uncovered more anti-Israel rhetoric from the Obama Administration, specifically Clinton’s inner circle. This time it’s coming from one of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aides – one with questionable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Through our FOIA lawsuit, originally filed against the Obama State Department, the ACLJ has just obtained an email from Huma Abedin, the former Deputy Chief of Staff under Hillary Clinton at the State Department, in which she was told that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was very interested in having former...

Full title: Judicial Watch Obtains Records of 14 Referrals of FBI Employees for Leaking Sensitive or Classified Information (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received records of 14 referrals of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees to the organization’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) for the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive or classified information. The disclosure comes off the heels of Judicial Watch’s uncovering a FBI report detailing fired FBI Director James Comey kept FBI documents on President Trump at his house. Comey also admitted to leaking these documents. Although the FBI’s OPR does not have its own website,...

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday pressed Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers on why the public shouldn’t be allowed to see redacted portions of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, suggesting that he may be willing to consider releasing at least some of the restricted document. Judge Reggie Walton, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, posed the questions during a hearing on a pair of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits seeking the redacted portions of the report. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold filed the lawsuits earlier this year....

The ACLJ has just obtained previously unreleased documents related to the Clinton investigation and immunity agreements given to top Clinton aids. These agreements reveal that James Comey’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice (DOJ) granted immunity to Hillary Clinton’s aids and lawyers, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, from prosecution for anything found on their laptops violating multiple felony criminal statutes governing the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records, including Espionage Act provisions. Further, the DOJ and FBI also agreed to evade the statutory requirements of the Freedom of Information Act...

Judicial Watch announced today that John Hackett, the former Director for Information Programs and Services (IPS), which handles records management at the State Department, testified under oath that he had raised concerns that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff had “culled out 30,000” of the secretary’s “personal” emails without following strict National Archives standards. The full deposition transcript is available here. John Hackett, as part of a series of court-ordered depositions and questions under oath of senior Obama-era State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, also revealed that he believed there was interference with the formal Freedom of Information...

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has lost a confidence vote in parliament, removing him from office over a political scandal that brought down his coalition government. The no-confidence motion on May 27 was backed by lawmakers from the Social Democrats and the far-right Freedom Party, which was in coalition with Kurz until the chancellor ended their alliance last week. The political crisis was triggered last week by a 2017 video purportedly showing his vice chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, offering contracts to a potential Russian benefactor in exchange for political donations. Strache, with the Freedom Party, announced his resignation from the government on...

Recently release FOIA documents into the special counsel team of Robert Mueller reveal the remarkable trail of a 2017 entrapment scheme conducted by Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann to target George Papadopoulos. [Hat Tip to Undercover Huber and Rosie Memos who have been reviewing documents.] Before digging into the details it is important to note this is a DOJ/FBI entrapment operation being conducted in 2017 by the special counsel; this is not prior to the 2016 election. The detail surrounds a series of events previously discussed {Go Deep} where George Papadopoulos was approached by a known CIA operative named Charles Tawil. In...

The Obama White House Tracked a FOIA Request for Clinton Emails Why Is Qatar Funding Texas A&M, a Public University? Holdover Obama Appointee Fires Journalists Over Soros Report The Obama White House Tracked a FOIA Request for Clinton Emails We now have further evidence that the Obama White was in on the lies about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email use. In late April we announced that E.W. (Bill) Priestap , assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, had admitted in writing and under oath that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the...

‘WH called – have we received a FOIA request’ – State Department (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained 44 pages of records from the State Department through court-ordered discovery revealing that the Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records concerning then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system. Months after the Obama White House involvement, the State Department responded to the requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed. Judicial Watch’s discovery is centered upon...

If we needed more proof (atop the media panic) that President Trump nominated the right SCOTUS candidate here it is: “Kavanaugh represented, on a pro bono basis, six-year-old Elian Gonzalez after the Immigration and Naturalization Service decided to return him to Cuba. Kavanaugh was among a series of lawyers who sought legal injunctions to stop INS…from sending the boy back to Cuba…” Whoops! I already hear the caterwauling about “separating immigrant children from their parents!” So let’s clear that up first: The genuine issue during the Elian Gonzalez circus had NOTHING to do with “parental rights,” as the Castro/Fake News...

A late day submission to DC Circuit Court in a FOIA case previously discussed, reveals the content of Mueller’s probe & use of multiple, previously unknown, James Comey memos. Additionally, within the filing we discover how Comey documented multiple events, meetings and information surrounding the FBI investigation of Donald Trump. The documents surface as part of the FOIA case [Backstory Here] where DC Court Judge James E. Boasberg -an Obama appointee and also a FISA judge- asked the FBI to file an opinion about the release of Comey memos to the public. There are two issues: (1) can the memos...

Intelligence IG Details ‘Hundreds’ of Classified Emails and Suggests Entire ‘Collection’ Could Be Classified(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it uncovered 422 pages of FBI documents showing evidence of “cover-up” discussions related to the Clinton email system within Platte River Networks, one of the vendors who managed the Clinton email system. The documents also show Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Charles McCullough forwarding “concerns” about classified information in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. The new documents uncovered by Judicial Watch also contain Clinton’s 2009 classified information Non-Disclosure Agreement bearing her signature. An October 2016 Judicial Watch...

Full title: Judicial Watch Sues State Department for Obama Ambassador Victoria Nuland’s Communications Related to the Anti-Trump Dossier Ambassador Nuland reportedly initially connected the author of the anti-Trump dossier, Christopher Steele, to the FBI.(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for communications between Obama Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Ambassador Victoria Nuland and employees of Fusion GPS, as well as top ranking Department of Justice, FBI, and State Department officials. Nuland served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and...

Remember, kids. Democracy dies in darkness. But what the Washington Post’s catchphrase leaves unsaid is that no one is likely to notice the death if they don’t bother turning the lights on. At least for those of us who have to write about Washington politics on a regular basis, this story from the Free Beacon probably won’t come as much of a surprise. The liberal press has been up in arms ever since Donald Trump’s inauguration over how they have to provide proper oversight, ask all the right questions and nail down the most reliable sources. But have they always...

Judge Declares FBI’s Search for Peter Strzok Records Inadequate Judicial Watch Sues for Key Anti-Trump Coup Doc Judicial Watch Files Ethics Complaint Against Congressman Adam Schiff Clinton Email Scandal Witness Testimony Begins Judicial Watch is #1 on FOIA! Judge Declares FBI’s Search for Peter Strzok Records Inadequate A petulant child or employee will perform a task halfway and wait to see if he can get away with it. Such seems to be the strategy of the entire Deep State bureaucracy. The FBI is particularly good at this, and we are particularly good at calling them on it. Luckily for...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that since 2001 it has led all nonprofit organizations in filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, according to figures released late last year by The FOIA Project of Syracuse University. Judicial Watch makes this announcement in honor of “ Sunshine Week,” March 10-16, which is an “annual nationwide celebration of access to public information.” According to the FOIAproject.org’s most recent study, Judicial Watch was again number one on the top ten list of most frequent Nonprofit/Advocacy Groups (Jan 21, 2001-July 2018) challenging federal government withholding in court and for the Bush, Obama...

Full titlw: Judicial Watch Sues for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s Communications During Time of Comey Firing, Mueller Appointment (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communications of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein between May 8 and May 17, 2017. Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the DOJ failed to respond to a September 21, 2018, FOIA request ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00481)). Judicial Watch seeks: Any and all e-mails, text messages, or other records...