Tag: Americas

Court Orders Justice Department to Commit on Releasing Biden Audio Tapes
Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department Again Over Hunter Biden Investigation Cover-Up
CBP Agent Charged with Smuggling, Trafficking in Major Cartel Corridor

 

Court Orders Justice Department to Commit on Releasing Biden Audio Tapes

A federal court ordered the Department of Justice to declare whether it intends to continue denying our request for the full audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.

We hope the Trump Justice Department accepts what seems like an invitation from a federal court to end the Biden regime’s cover-up of Biden’s apparent dementia.

Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote:

In light of the recent change in administration, it is hereby ORDERED that Defendant shall, by February 19, 2025, file a status report confirming that its position outlined in its [34] Motion for Summary Judgment and [46] Memorandum in Opposition remains unchanged.

We filed the first FOIA lawsuit and are the lead plaintiff asking for the Biden audio recordings of his interviews in Special Counsel Hur’s criminal investigation of Biden’s theft and disclosure of classified records (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-00700)).

This lawsuit has already forced the Biden administration to confess that the transcripts of the audio recordings have been altered and are not accurate.

The then-Biden Justice Department fought to keep the audio recordings secret and asked the court to ignore precedent and rewrite FOIA law. The former Biden agency demanded that a law enforcement/executive privilege exemption be rewritten to help Joe Biden; wants to change FOIA law to protect (after 50 years of being a politician) President Joe Biden’s privacy in his voice; and sought to potentially end FOIA with a new argument that the possible “AI” alteration of the Hur recordings was reason to keep the keep the recordings and any government record a secret from the public.

We argued that the recordings should be released “because an open question remains about whether Special Counsel Hur’s conclusion that President Biden should not be prosecuted for his mishandling of classified records [and] is supported by the evidence.”

Further, the audio would educate the public about “whether Special Counsel Hur appropriately pursued justice by recommending to the attorney general that criminal charges should not be brought against President Biden concerning his mishandling of classified materials.” This question “is of even more import these days because another special counsel (with approval by Attorney General Garland) is currently prosecuting President Trump for allegedly engaging in similar actions. In addition to President Trump being both President Biden’s former political opponent and the current Republican nominee in the upcoming Presidential election, President Trump is the only former president or vice president to be prosecuted for such actions.”

We also criticized the Biden Justice Department’s reliance on a case that allowed the withholding of the audio of the dying cries of the Challenger astronauts as simply “repugnant.”

On February 5, 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur issued the “Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”

In the report, Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to charge Biden with a “serious felony:”

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

Prior to the finalization of the report, the White House issued a letter to the Special Counsel’s office attacking the report’s “treatment of President Biden’s memory,” and added “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions …”

The White House admitted to the court that the transcript of President Joe Biden’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Hur is not accurate and is missing “filler words (such as ‘um’ or ‘uh’)” and words that “may have been repeated when spoken (such as ‘I, I’ or ‘and, and’)” which were sometimes “only listed a single time in the transcripts.”

The Heritage Foundation and a CNN-led media coalition have been joined with our lawsuit.

 

Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department Again Over Hunter Biden Investigation Cover-Up

Judicial Watch renewed a key legal battle on details of the Biden regime’s “investigation” of Hunter Biden.

We filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice for records and communications regarding the Internal Revenue Service’s investigation of Hunter Biden (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:24-cv-03387)).

Wed filed an earlier FOIA lawsuit in July 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a May 2023 FOIA request for access to the public records of Special Counsel Jack Smith. During the course of this suit, the Justice Department invoked FOIA  Exemption 7(a) to withhold records due to an ongoing law enforcement proceeding regarding Hunter Biden, and the suit was dismissed.

In light of the recent pardon issued by the president to Hunter Biden, no open law enforcement proceedings remain. However, the original FOIA request remains open, and we filed the new complaint stating:

[T]he Justice Department has failed to produce the requested records or demonstrate that the requested records are lawfully exempt from production; notify Judicial Watch of the scope of any responsive records it intends to produce or withhold and the reasons for any withholdings; or inform Judicial Watch that it may appeal any adequately specific, adverse determination.

This is a perfect opportunity for the Trump Justice Department to expose the extent of IRS/DOJ corruption to cover up Biden family corruption. The Justice Department is lawfully required to release all responsive records we requested.

We have multiple federal lawsuits focused on Biden family corruption:

In June 2024,we received records from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) showing Mike Morell, former acting CIA director under President Obama, requesting CIA permission to publish a letter by former intelligence community leaders stating that they believed the laptop emails exposing Hunter Biden’s connections to Ukraine were Russian disinformation. Morrell’s request for prepublication review was approved in just six hours by the CIA.

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 the Justice Department 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.

In December 2020, State Department records obtained through a Judicial Watch 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.

 

CBP Agent Charged with Smuggling, Trafficking in Major Cartel Corridor

The profits from illegal activities along the border are a great temptation, even for law enforcement. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has a telling example.

A federal agent in a border region long known as a major corridor for Mexican cartels smuggling narcotics and Islamic terrorists into the United States has been arrested and charged with alien smuggling and drug trafficking. The case involves a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer in El Paso, Texas, where Judicial Watch years ago uncovered an unprecedented partnership between Mexican drug cartels and jihadists as part of a decade-long investigation into crime, terrorism and corruption in the southern border. Back in 2017 Judicial Watch also produced an investigative documentary detailing an elaborate narco-terrorist cell operating out of El Paso, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confirms is a primary hub for Mexican opioids and methamphetamine enroute to every corner of the U.S.

Corruption within the law enforcement ranks has also been a problem in the region at both local and federal levels, Judicial Watch investigations show, with a number of federal agents caught taking bribes over the years. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported on the criminal indictment of Jesus Campa, the chief deputy of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office (EPCSO), a Texas agency responsible for patrolling more than 1,000 square miles with a population of about 870,000. After nearly two decades with the agency, he left abruptly amid allegations of embezzling $5.6 million in Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) funds. His boss, Sheriff Richard Wiles, was embroiled in several scandals. Besides looking the other way as one of his trusted deputy chiefs embezzled millions of dollars, Wiles attended a fundraising event at the home of a convicted felon with connections to the illegal drug trade while serving his third term as sheriff.

The recent CBP case involves an agent, Manuel Perez, who federal authorities say has helped smuggle illegal immigrants and cocaine for six years on the El Paso border. In multiple instances the disgraced 32-year-old agent admitted vehicles driven by illegal immigrants at the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso as part of human smuggling operations, according to a statement issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Additionally, Perez conspired to possess cocaine from 2019 to February 2025 as part of an operation to distribute the drug throughout Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and elsewhere in the country. The officer is charged with one count of conspiracy to bring aliens to the United States for financial gain, three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for financial gain, and one count of conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute. He faces decades to life in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

Perez’s case indicates that little has changed since Judicial Watch first traveled to El Paso over 10 years ago to expose the reality gripping a city long promoted by local officials as one of America’s safest. The truth is that the municipality, which sits along the Rio Grande across famously violent Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is a key smuggling route for Mexican drugs, illegal immigrants, and Islamic terrorists. Cartels smuggle foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso by using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, Judicial Watch reported a decade ago. We also broke astory in 2015 about an ISIS training cell just a few miles from El Paso in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Law enforcement and intelligence sources on both sides of the border confirmed to Judicial Watch that cartel-backed “coyotes” help smuggle ISIS terrorists through the desert and into the U.S. between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. The areas are targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces and the relative safe havens the terrain provides for unchecked large-scale drug smuggling.

With four years of open borders under the Biden administration and corrupt federal agents like Perez, there is no telling how many terrorists have entered the country to plan attacks. After all, in 2016 Judicial Watch uncoveredan operation in which Mexican drug traffickers helped Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks and among them was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who at the time lived in Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to information provided to Judicial Watch by government sources.

Until next week,

Source: Judicial Watch

Source: Judicial Watch

The frenzy over President Trump’s crackdown on flagrant waste at the nation’s scandal-plagued global aid agency is finally bringing widespread attention to the outrageous programs it funds with taxpayer dollars and many Americans may not realize it has been occurring for years under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Not surprisingly, the reckless spending skyrocketed under Biden with a multitude of problematic initiatives, including a costly ill-fated effort run by Vice President Kamala Harris to curb “irregular migration” from three targeted countries known as the northern triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The money, hundreds of millions of dollars, flowed continuously through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), even as illegal immigration from the targeted Central American nations shattered records. The former vice president insisted however, that the investment would help improve conditions in the three impoverished countries “so people do not feel compelled to leave their homes.”

Harris’ disastrous root causes experiment to curtail illegal immigration is just a snippet of controversial USAID spending that should alarm the nation’s tax paying citizens. For well over a decade Judicial Watch has reported and exposed rampant fraud and corruption at the famously bloated agency, which has a massive budget of around $40 billion with little oversight or accountability to supposedly provide global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. This has included hundreds of millions of dollars to promote leftwing billionaire George Soros’ radical globalist agenda in Latin America, a failed Clinton-backed port and power plant in Haiti, help Asians learn enough English to work in offshore call centers and a project to develop a Pakistani version of the iconic educational children’s program Sesame Street. Other USAID allocations have funded a condom strategy in Eswatini, bicycles for rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and racial equity.

The list goes on and on, perpetually cheating the American public year after year with highly questionable foreign projects that often operate in secrecy or fill the coffers of our enemies. USAID has funded a Scandinavian humanitarian group that helps Islamic terrorists and has provided monstrous amounts of aid without oversight to countries largely controlled by Islamic extremists, even after reports of widespread fraud, abuse and corruption by radical elements that limit the humanitarian assistance from reaching those in need. Among them is Syria, which has received billions from USAID despite federal audits documenting that for years the agency has “lacked a framework to manage fraud risks in humanitarian responses” in the Middle Eastern country that has appeared on the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism for over four decades. USAID also continues to send enormous amounts of aid to Afghanistan even though the funds go to the Taliban after the 2021 U.S. military withdraw. A federal audit slammed USAID for refusing to cooperate with an investigation involving efforts to ensure that U.S.-funded programs supporting the people of Afghanistan do not result in the illegal transfer of funds to the Taliban or the Haqqani Network.

Fraud and waste are so rampant in foreign programs that receive enormous amounts of money from USAID that a few years ago the U.S. government spent $30 million to counter corruption in the projects it already funds. The multi-million-dollar anti-corruption plan aimed to systemically address pervasive governance weaknesses that corrupt actors commonly exploit, according to a press release unveiling the initiative. “This funding will strengthen the systems and actors needed to close loopholes, detect illicit finance and dirty money, follow its movement across borders, and ultimately hold corrupt actors accountable,” USAID writes in the announcement that also says the investment will boost high priority reforms such as countering pervasive money laundering and enhancing asset recovery. “At the regional and global levels, this award will fund multi-country efforts to enhance international cooperation in tracking and blocking transnational corruption; and test tools and approaches that move anti-corruption practice forward.”

It was too little too late for a fraud-infested government agency long gripped by corruption and secrecy. Over a decade ago, Judicial Watch reported on a USAID scandal involving $60 million in Malaria drugs provided to Africa by the U.S. government that get stolen annually and sold on the black market. The agency leads a program called President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) that distributes the medication in Africa where the disease kills more than half a million people each year, but more than 20% of the drugs are diverted annually. Several years later U.S.-funded malaria drugs were still being sold on the black market in Africa and the problem got so bad that USAID launched “malaria hotlines” to offer cash rewards for information about the illicit operations that have fleeced American taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars.

A key issue that the Trump administration will hopefully address is that USAID does not divulge to whom millions of dollars in contracts and grants are being sent. In fiscal year 2024 and 2025 the agency has awarded at least $961 million in new funding to undisclosed recipients, with the largest contract of $447 million to provide “strategic technical and procurement advice” to Ukraine’s energy sector. Last year Judicial Watch sued USAID for failing to provide under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records involving $27 million in Gaza grants that went to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.”

Source: Judicial Watch