From Blaze Media:

The U.S. African Development Foundation, a foreign aid agency that poured millions of taxpayer dollars into African initiatives over the past four decades, desperately fought the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency and audit its finances.

Months after government watchdog Judicial Watch sued the USADF for records regarding its expenditures and in the wake of allegations that agency officials were abusing their positions and misusing funds, the USADF’s director of financial management, Mathieu Zahui, is now admitting wrongdoing.

Read more here..

The post ‘USADF is garbage’: Senior US foreign aid official will plead guilty to taking kickbacks, lying to feds appeared first on Judicial Watch.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Public Corruption Unit’s investigation of Donald Trump codenamed “Arctic Frost.” The investigation was part of an unprecedented effort by the Biden administration to prosecute and jail Trump for questioning Biden’s controversial election victory (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00163)). 

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the FBI failed to respond to an October 7, 2025, FOIA request for the Washington Field Office’s Public Corruption Unit (the “CR-15” squad) investigative reports on Operation Arctic Frost, Justice Department approvals for investigative steps or techniques, and communications with former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office. 

Arctic Frost was opened in April 2022 under the Biden administration.

In January 2025, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) publicized records about the targeting of Trump:

Internal FBI emails and predicating documents provided to Grassley and released jointly by the two senators show Timothy Thibault, a former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) who was forced to retire from the Bureau after Grassley exposed his public anti-Trump bias, authored the initial language for what ultimately became Jack Smith’s federal case against Trump regarding the 2020 presidential election. Records show Thibault essentially opened and approved his own investigation.

On October 6, 2025, Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that he had obtained an explosive FBI document which shows the Biden FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phones for “tolling data” as part of the Arctic Frost investigation.

 After the revelations were made public, FBI Director Kash Patel abolished the CR-15 squad.

“Judicial Watch is fighting for a full account of how the Biden team weaponized the full weight of the federal government to target their political foes,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch is a national leader in exposing the lawfare and abuse targeting Trump and other American citizens.

In January 2026, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for communications of FBI agents regarding the prosecution of former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:26-cv-00079)).

In November 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for the emails of former Special Counsel Jack Smith with officials in Georgia and New York and with the White House, congressional and law enforcement offices regarding his investigation into Trump (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-03849)). 

In September 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for communications between former Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and the anti-Trump organization American Oversight (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv–02556)). 

In July 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for records about the FBI’s “Arctic Frost,” investigation (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-02011)). 

In June 2025, Judicial Watch sued Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes for her communications with Smith (Judicial Watch v. Kristin Mayes and Arizona Department of Law (CV 2025-020674).

In March 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for details of any investigations, inquiries, or referrals concerning potential misconduct of any person working for Smith (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-00801)). 

Also in March, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis was ordered to turn over 212 pages of records to a state court judge. The court also ordered Willis to detail how the records were found and the reason for withholding them from the public. The records were belatedly found in response to a Judicial Watch request and lawsuit for communications with Smith and the House January 6 Committee (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)). 

In January 2025, a federal court ordered the Justice Department to provide Judicial Watch information on communications between Special Counsel Jack Smith and Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis regarding the prosecution of Trump. In May, the Justice Department was directed to search text messages from the Special Counsel’s Office for responsive records (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 23-cv-03110).

Also in January 2025, records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed it and the FBI warning that law enforcement agencies should be prepared for a surge in threats from so-called Domestic Violence Extremists (DVEs) following the August 8, 2022, FBI raid on former Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (1:22-cv-03275)).

In May 2024, Judicial Watch uncovered a recording of a phone message left by an FBI special agent for someone at the Secret Service in the context of the raid on Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:22-cv-03147)).

In February 2024, the Justice Department asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that was targeting Trump and other Americans (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01485)). 

In August 2022, Judicial Watch successfully sued to unseal the search warrant affidavit used to justify the unprecedented raid on the home of then-former President Trump (U.S. v. Sealed Search Warrant (No. 9:22-mj-08332)).

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The post Judicial Watch Sues for FBI Public Corruption Unit Records on Lawfare against Trump appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Justice Dept. Admits Criminal Investigation of USADF in Judicial Watch FOIA Case
Maryland Democrats Still Trying to Gerrymander Congressional Districts
Judicial Watch Sues ODNI for Records on China Corruption Report
Judicial Watch Urges Justice Dept. to Investigate Florida County for Woke Quota Scheme

Justice Dept. Admits Criminal Investigation of USADF in Judicial Watch FOIA Case

After years of whistleblowing by Judicial Watch clients Jasmine Battle and Mateo Dunne, the U.S. Department of Justice publicly announced an ongoing criminal investigation of the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF). The news came in a status conference hearing in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

In August last year we sued the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) after it failed to respond to a July 2025 FOIA request for records of its expenditures and deposits related to allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse committed by senior officials, contractors, and grantees.

We also wanted records regarding its retaliation against whistleblowers and its attempt to block Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audits (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. African Development Foundation (No. 1:25-cv-02623)).

An independent agency, the foundation was created in 1980 to provide development assistance to underserved and marginalized populations in conflict and post-conflict areas in Africa.

The Justice Department said at the hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that it would immediately begin producing documents related to those allegations with some redactions.

Mateo Dunne became general counsel of the foundation in October 2021 following a distinguished legal career in both private practice and public service. Jasmine Battle, an accomplished administrative professional, became executive assistant to the agency’s president and CEO in March 2022. Together, they raised internal alarms regarding misconduct and ultimately became whistleblowers after facing resistance and retaliation.

Battle and Dunne pursued every lawful avenue to expose corruption at USADF, including providing information to the U.S. Senate. Their disclosures resulted in a formal letter from Senator James E. Risch, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requesting an investigation into the agency.

As Senator Risch wrote in November 2023:

According to whistleblower complaints received by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC)—complaints that I understand have also been shared with the [Office of Inspector General]—current President and CEO Travis Adkins, former President and CEO C.D. Glin, Managing Director for Finance and Administration Mathieu Zahui, Chief Program Officer and former Acting President and CEO Elisabeth Feleke, and Chairman of the Board of Directors Jack Leslie are aware of, and may be complicit in, corrupt and potentially unlawful practices …

The whistleblower allegations that Senator Risch brought to light included misuse of official funds, conflict of interest and inappropriate partnerships, discriminatory employment practices, and retaliation against employees who dared to raise questions about this misconduct.

For years, Battle and Dunne cooperated with law enforcement, including the Department of Justice, resulting in the public announcement of an ongoing criminal investigation. For speaking out against a corrupt agency, they have been retaliated against, mistreated, and maligned. The systems that were created to protect them as whistleblowers, like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Inspector General, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, have thus far failed them. This news of Justice Department involvement is vindication for the years they’ve spent exposing government corruption.

Maryland Democrats Still Trying to Gerrymander Congressional Districts

 You almost have to admire Maryland Democrats for their foolhardy persistence.

Our analysis of a Democrat-proposed 2026 congressional redistricting plan for Maryland shows that it is in key respects identical to the unconstitutional gerrymander struck down in a prior Judicial Watch lawsuit—but is even more partisan and less compact than the invalidated 2021 map.

The proposed 2026 plan re-creates the same distorted configuration rejected by Judge Lynne A. Battaglia for Maryland’s First Congressional District, which shares 97 percent of the geographic area of the unconstitutional 2021 district. As before, the district again crosses the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to link disparate regions—an arrangement the court previously found unlawful.

Our analysis also found that the proposed 2026 plan is less compact than both prior maps under all three compactness measures relied upon by Battaglia in invalidating the 2021 plan—directly violating the Maryland Constitution’s compactness requirement.

Additionally, the proposed redraw substantially increases county and municipal splits compared to the 2022 remedial map—another factor Battaglia cited in concluding the 2021 plan was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

Using the widely accepted efficiency gap metric, we determined that the proposed 2026 map is more partisan than both the 2021 map struck down as unconstitutional and the current 2022 remedial map now in effect.

We ascertained that the boundaries of Congressional Districts 2, 3, and 7 in Baltimore City closely track racial demographics, raising serious concerns about impermissible race-based districting.

Maryland is currently operating under a congressional map adopted in 2022, following our successful lawsuit on behalf of 12 registered Maryland voters. That suit challenged the state’s 2021 redistricting plan as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that diluted voters’ rights.

The current redistricting effort began in August after Governor Wes Moore suggested revisiting the state’s map amid national redistricting disputes. Republicans have warned that the proposal is designed to eliminate Maryland’s lone Republican member of Congress, Rep. Andy Harris—by resurrecting the same district configuration already ruled unconstitutional.

This is a rerun of an unlawful gerrymander that a court already threw out. Maryland Democrats appear determined to entrench partisan power at the expense of constitutional limits and voters’ rights. We are watching these developments closely.

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 election law efforts are led by Senior Attorney Robert Popper, who previously served in the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he managed voting rights investigations and litigation across dozens of states.

In January 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 7–2 in favor of granting standing in a historic case we filed on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors. The case challenges an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.

In November 2025, the Supreme Court granted review in a landmark election integrity case we brought on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi. The case seeks to uphold a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which struck down a Mississippi law unconstitutionally allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day.

Federal courts in Oregon, California and Illinois have ruled that Judicial Watch’s lawsuits against those states to force them to clean their voter rolls may proceed.

We announced in May 2025 that our work led to the removal of more than five million ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide.

Judicial Watch Sues ODNI for Records on China Corruption Report

In March 2025, after more than a year of delays and repeated pressure from lawmakers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) finally released a congressionally mandated unclassified report on the wealth and corrupt activities of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership.

To try to understand what was going on, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for records of its preparation of the report (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (No. 1:26-cv-00199)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Director of National Intelligence failed to respond to a March 7, 2025, FOIA request for:

• All records relied upon during ODNI’s preparation of its report regarding the wealth and corrupt activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For purposes of clarification, the report was mandated by Sec. 6501 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (P.L. 117-263).
• All communications between ODNI personnel involved in the preparation of the report and any official or employee of the Department of State regarding the report, or its submission to Congress.
• All communications between ODNI personnel involved in the preparation of the report and the Executive Office of the President regarding the report, or its submission to Congress.

The 2022 legislation mandating the report gave a deadline of December 2023.

In June 2024, China was reported to have lobbied strongly against the report’s release. The report was not delivered until March 2025 – after Donald Trump had become president and a new director of national intelligence was in place.

The seven-page report, titled “Wealth and Corrupt Activities of the Leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” states:

Corruption is an endemic feature of and challenge for China, enabled by a political system with power highly centralized in the hands of the CCP, a CCP-centric concept of the rule of law, a lack of independent checks on public officials, and limited transparency.

***

Corruption within China is primarily due to structural features that centralize power, eschew independent checks or accountability—especially at the provincial level—and produce perverse incentives for political advancement and financial enrichment.

There is heavy resistance to transparency when it comes to what the Deep State knows about the Chinese Communist Party. The long delay of this intelligence report on China’s corruption and systemic graft reflects poorly on the Biden-era intelligence community.

We have reported extensively on China’s influence in the United States.

In November 2025, we sued the U.S. Department of Education for records on the University of Michigan’s connections to China, including related communications with the U.S. Department of Justice.

In July 2025, we received records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about Gov. Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A DHS and FBI counter-intelligence investigation into Walz’s CCP connections determined that “China [was] happy” with Walz being selected as Kamala Harris’s running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket. Walz’s connections to the CCP were extensive and a concern to the intelligence community, according to the documents produced.

In July 2024, we sued 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, including China and other foreign powers.

Our investigations and FOIA lawsuits uncovered much is publicly known about Covid-19’s connections with China, including FBI records released in April 2024 referencing an April 2020 email exchange with several officials in the bureau’s Newark Field Office referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China as including “gain-of-function research” which “would leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation.”

Judicial Watch Urges Justice Dept. to Investigate Florida County for Woke Quota Scheme

 The Board of County Commissioners in Hillsborough County, Florida, created a Diversity Advisory Council – and they decided to staff it on the basis of race, sexual preference, gender identity, and disability.

We have submitted a formal request to the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for an investigation of this scheme. This woke racism and sexism is a textbook violation of the Constitution. Government bodies exist to serve all citizens equally—not to segregate Americans into woke identity groups. The Trump Justice Department should take action.

In the letter sent to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, we assert that Hillsborough County’s Diversity Advisory Council violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

Judicial Watch requests the Office of Civil Rights investigate Hillsborough County, Florida’s Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) for its use of race, sexual preference, gender identity, and disability to appoint members to its Diversity Advisory Council. This practice violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The [Commissioners] created the Diversity Advisory Council as a governmental body structured around explicit identity-based classifications.

The Diversity Advisory Council is explicitly structured around identity classifications, requiring representation from specific racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and disability groups. Council members are appointed in fixed numbers by identity category, with vacancies filled group-by-group rather than through a race-neutral or merit-based process.

In addition to arguing that the appointment process violates racial and sex discrimination law, we argue that the Diversity Advisory Council’s structure rests on impermissible stereotyping rejected by the Supreme Court, assuming individuals’ viewpoints are defined by their sex or gender identity:

[T]he criteria sort applicants into preferred identity groups without any meaningful connection to the substance of the advice sought. Such arbitrary distinctions, untethered to any legitimate government objective… therefore violate the equal protection clause.

We previously submitted public records requests in June and December 2025 for documents related to the Commissioners’ use of these unconstitutional eligibility criteria and now urge the Justice Department “to open a formal investigation into Hillsborough County’s Board of County Commissioners and take appropriate remedial actions.”

We frequently go to court to argue against unconstitutional diversity practices.

In May 2025, we uncovered records from the U.S. Military Academy West Point, revealing that speakers at the March 2024 “Founders Day” event were instructed to “AVOID saying ‘removed,’ ‘replaced,’ ‘deleted’ [when referring to the new mission statement] – just refer to the ‘updated mission statement and reinforce that the motto remains unchanged.” [Emphasis in original] The records also tied Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts to the mission statement controversy.

In January 2025, the City of San Francisco, CA, in a 7-3 vote by the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, authorized a settlement agreement in a taxpayer lawsuit we brought against the City, agreeing to discontinue its discriminatory guaranteed-income program funded by taxpayer money in favor of transgender individuals with a preference for biological black and Latino men who identify as women. The agreement commits the city to pay $3,250 in attorney fees and costs and not to create a new guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria.

In November 2024, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of War for information regarding the rebranding of West Point’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) office to “Office of Engagement and Retention.”

In July 2023, we exposed records from the U.S. Air Force Academy, a component of the War Department, which included instructional materials and emails that addressed topics such as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives Matter.

In March 2023, records from the War Department showed the Air Force Academy had made race and gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.

Until next week,

The post Judicial Watch Forces Justice Dept to Admit USADF Probe appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Whistleblowers’ Years-Long Efforts Vindicated

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that, in a status conference hearing today related to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking documents regarding corruption at the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF), the U.S. Department of Justice publicly announced an ongoing criminal investigation related to the agency. This announcement comes after years of whistleblowing by Judicial Watch clients Jasmine Battle and Mateo Dunne.

Judicial Watch sued the agency in October 2025 for records regarding its expenditures and deposits related to credible allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse committed by senior officials, contractors, and grantees and retaliation against whistleblowers as well as its attempt to block Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audits (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. African Development Foundation (No. 1:25-cv-02623)).

The Justice Department said at today’s hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that it would immediately begin producing documents related to those allegations with some redactions.

Mateo Dunne became general counsel of the U.S. African Development Foundation in October 2021 following a distinguished legal career in both private practice and public service. Jasmine Battle, an accomplished administrative professional, became executive assistant to the agency’s president and CEO in March 2022. Together, they raised internal alarms regarding misconduct and ultimately became whistleblowers after facing resistance and retaliation.

Battle and Dunne pursued every lawful avenue to expose corruption at USADF, including providing information to the U.S. Senate. Their disclosures resulted in a formal letter from Senator James E. Risch, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requesting an investigation into the agency.

As Senator Risch wrote in November 2023:

According to whistleblower complaints received by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC)—complaints that I understand have also been shared with the [Office of Inspector General]—current President and CEO Travis Adkins, former President and CEO C.D. Glin, Managing Director for Finance and Administration Mathieu Zahui, Chief Program Officer and former Acting President and CEO Elisabeth Feleke, and Chairman of the Board of Directors Jack Leslie are aware of, and may be complicit in, corrupt and potentially unlawful practices …

The whistleblower allegations that Senator Risch brought to light included misuse of official funds, conflict of interest and inappropriate partnerships, discriminatory employment practices, and retaliation against employees who dared to raise questions about this misconduct.

Institutions designed to protect whistleblowers — including the USAID Office of Inspector General, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — failed to provide meaningful protection or relief.

“For years, Battle and Dunne cooperated with law enforcement, including the Department of Justice, resulting in today’s public announcement of an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “For speaking out against a corrupt agency, they have been retaliated against, mistreated, and maligned.  The systems that were created to protect them as whistleblowers, like the USAID Office of Inspector General, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, have thus far failed them.  Today’s announcement is vindication for the years they’ve spent exposing government corruption.”

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The post Justice Dept Admits to Criminal Investigation into U.S. African Development Foundation Following Judicial Watch Lawsuit appeared first on Judicial Watch.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for records of its preparation of a congressionally mandated report on the wealth and corrupt activities of the Chinese Communist Party (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (No. 1:26-cv-00199)).

Judicial Watch sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Director of National Intelligence failed to respond to a March 7, 2025, FOIA request for:

• All records relied upon during ODNI’s preparation of its report regarding the wealth and corrupt activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For purposes of clarification, the report was mandated by Sec. 6501 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (P.L. 117-263).

• All communications between ODNI personnel involved in the preparation of the report and any official or employee of the Department of State regarding the report, or its submission to Congress.

• All communications between ODNI personnel involved in the preparation of the report and the Executive Office of the President regarding the report, or its submission to Congress.

The 2022 legislation mandating the report gave a deadline of December 2023.

In June 2024 China was reported to have lobbied strongly against the report’s release. The report was not delivered until March 2025 – after Donald Trump had become president and a new director of national intelligence was in place.

The seven-page report, titled “Wealth and Corrupt Activities of the Leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” states: 

Corruption is an endemic feature of and challenge for China, enabled by a political system with power highly centralized in the hands of the CCP, a CCP-centric concept of the rule of law, a lack of independent checks on public officials, and limited transparency.

***

Corruption within China is primarily due to structural features that centralize power, eschew independent checks or accountability—especially at the provincial level—and produce perverse incentives for political advancement and financial enrichment.

“There is heavy resistance to transparency when it comes to what the Deep State knows about the Chinese Communist Party,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The long delay of this intelligence report on China’s corruption and systemic graft reflects poorly on the Biden-era intelligence community.”

Judicial Watch has reported extensively on China’s influence in the United States.

In March 2025, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records regarding Minnesota governor and 2024 Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

In November 2025, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Education for records on the University of Michigan’s connections to China, including related communications with the U.S. Department of Justice.

In July 2025, Judicial Watch received records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about Gov. Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). DHS and the FBI counter-intelligence investigation into Walz’s CCP connections determined that “China [was] happy” with Walz being selected as Kamala Harris’s running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket. Walz’s connections to the CCP were extensive and a concern to the intelligence community, according to the documents produced.

In July 2024, Judicial Watch sued 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, including China and other foreign powers.

Judicial Watch’s investigations and FOIA lawsuits uncovered much is publicly known about Covid-19’s connections with China, including FBI records released in April 2024 referencing an April 2020 email exchange with several officials in the bureau’s Newark Field Office referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China as including “gain-of-function research” which “would leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation.”

###

The post Judicial Watch Sues Director of National Intelligence for Records on China Corruption Report appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Proposed Map Is More Extreme Than the 2021 Plan Invalidated by Court; Targets Maryland’s Sole Republican District

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a Democrat-proposed 2026 congressional redistricting plan for Maryland is in key respects identical to the unconstitutional gerrymander struck down in a prior Judicial Watch lawsuit—but is even more partisan and less compact than the invalidated 2021 map.

Judicial Watch’s analysis found that the proposed 2026 plan re-creates the same distorted configuration rejected by Judge Lynne A. Battaglia for Maryland’s First Congressional District, which shares 97 percent of the geographic area of the unconstitutional 2021 district. As before, the district again crosses the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to link disparate regions—an arrangement the court previously found unlawful.

The analysis also found that the proposed 2026 plan is less compact than both prior maps under all three compactness measures relied upon by Battaglia in invalidating the 2021 plan—directly violating the Maryland Constitution’s compactness requirement.

Additionally, the proposed redraw substantially increases county and municipal splits compared to the 2022 remedial map—another factor Battaglia cited in concluding the 2021 plan was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

Using the widely accepted efficiency gap metric, Judicial Watch also determined that the proposed 2026 map is more partisan than both the 2021 map struck down as unconstitutional and the current 2022 remedial map now in effect.

Judicial Watch ascertained that the boundaries of Congressional Districts 2, 3, and 7 in Baltimore City closely track racial demographics, raising serious concerns about impermissible race-based districting.

Maryland is currently operating under a congressional map adopted in 2022, following Judicial Watch’s successful lawsuit on behalf of 12 registered Maryland voters. That suit challenged the state’s 2021 redistricting plan as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that diluted voters’ rights.

The current redistricting effort began in August after Governor Wes Moore suggested revisiting the state’s map amid national redistricting disputes. Republicans have warned that the proposal is designed to eliminate Maryland’s lone Republican member of Congress, Rep. Andy Harris—by resurrecting the same district configuration already ruled unconstitutional.

“This is a rerun of an unlawful gerrymander that a court already threw out,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Maryland Democrats appear determined to entrench partisan power at the expense of constitutional limits and voters’ rights. We are watching these developments closely.”

Judicial Watch is 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.

Judicial Watch’s election law efforts are led by Senior Attorney Robert Popper, who previously served in the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he managed voting rights investigations and litigation across dozens of states.

In January 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 7–2 in favor of granting standing in a historic case filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors. The case challenges an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.

In November 2025, the Supreme Court granted review in a landmark election integrity case brought on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi. The case seeks to uphold a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which struck down a Mississippi law unconstitutionally allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day. 

Federal courts in Oregon, California and Illinois have ruled that Judicial Watch’s lawsuits against those states to force them to clean their voter rolls may proceed.

Judicial Watch announced in May 2025 that its work led to the removal of more than five million ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide.

###

The post Judicial Watch Analysis: MD’s Proposed 2026 Congressional Map Replicates Unconstitutional Gerrymander Previously Struck Down in Judicial Watch Lawsuit appeared first on Judicial Watch.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it submitted a formal request to the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for an investigation of Hillsborough County, Florida’s Board of County Commissioners for various racial and other quota appointment practices used to staff its Diversity Advisory Council.

In a letter sent to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon Judicial Watch asserts that Hillsborough County’s Diversity Advisory Council violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

Judicial Watch requests the Office of Civil Rights investigate Hillsborough County, Florida’s Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) for its use of race, sexual preference, gender identity, and disability to appoint members to its Diversity Advisory Council. This practice violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

The [Commissioners] created the Diversity Advisory Council as a governmental body structured around explicit identity-based classifications.

The Diversity Advisory Council is explicitly structured around identity classifications, requiring representation from specific racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and disability groups. Council members are appointed in fixed numbers by identity category, with vacancies filled group-by-group rather than through a race-neutral or merit-based process.

In addition to arguing that the appointment process violates racial and sex discrimination law, Judicial Watch argues the Diversity Advisory Council’s structure rests on impermissible stereotyping rejected by the Supreme Court, assuming individuals’ viewpoints are defined by their sex or gender identity:

[T]he criteria sort applicants into preferred identity groups without any meaningful connection to the substance of the advice sought. Such arbitrary distinctions, untethered to any legitimate government objective… therefore violate the equal protection clause.

Judicial Watch previously submitted public records requests in June and December 2025 for documents related to the Commissioners’ use of these unconstitutional eligibility criteria and now urges the Justice Department “to open a formal investigation into Hillsborough County’s Board of County Commissioners and take appropriate remedial actions.”

“This woke racism and sexism is a textbook violation of the Constitution,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Government bodies exist to serve all citizens equally—not to segregate Americans into woke identity groups. The Trump Justice Department should take action.”

In May 2025, Judicial Watch uncovered records from the U.S. Military Academy West Point, revealing that speakers at the March 2024 “Founders Day” event were instructed to “AVOID saying ‘removed,’ ‘replaced,’ ‘deleted’ [when referring to the new mission statement] – just refer to the ‘updated mission statement and reinforce that the motto remains unchanged.” [Emphasis in original] The records also tied Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts to the mission statement controversy.

In January 2025, the City of San Francisco, CA, in a 7-3 vote by the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, authorized a settlement agreement in a taxpayer lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch against the City, agreeing to discontinue its discriminatory guaranteed-income program funded by taxpayer money in favor of transgender individuals with a preference for biological black and Latino men who identify as women. The agreement commits the city to pay $3,250 in attorney fees and costs and not to create a new guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria.

In November 2024, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of War for information regarding the rebranding of West Point’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) office to “Office of Engagement and Retention.”

In July 2023, Judicial Watch exposed records from the U.S. Air Force Academy, a component of the War Department, which included instructional materials and emails that addressed topics such as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives Matter.

In March 2023, records from the War Department showed the Air Force Academy had made race and gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.

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The government contributes to the pervasive fraud and corruption that has long gripped the nation’s massive food stamp program by using ancient technology to load recipients’ electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, making them highly vulnerable to theft. Replacing the stolen welfare benefit costs American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in addition to the eye-popping $99.8 billion they already spend to provide 41.7 million poor people with free food. Between October 2022 and December 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has replaced $322 million in benefits due to fraudulent activity involving card skimming and cloning with an additional $233 million expected to be replaced in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. The problem persists because the USDA, the agency responsible for food stamps, rebranded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under Obama to eliminate the welfare stigma, continues to use an outdated system.

The unbelievable details of this costly government negligence are documented in a lengthy report made public this month by the USDA Inspector General. In the last few years, a multitude of federal audits have exposed rampant fraud in the nation’s food stamp program, but this investigation sticks out because it involves an issue that can easily be resolved by adopting modern technological tools that are widely used and readily available. Instead of adopting chip technology utilized by most credit and debit cards, the government still relies on a 50-year-old magnetic stripe card technology that is highly vulnerable to card cloning fraud. “Criminals can use card skimmers to copy sensitive information from card stripes and transfer this information to blank cards,” the USDA IG report states, adding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says card cloning fraud costs U.S. consumers and financial institutions about a billion dollars annually. “Modernizing EBT, including the introduction of chip cards for SNAP EBT, is an important step towards the protection of SNAP benefits,” the report confirms, adding that chip cards are a more secure payment option that makes it more difficult for fraudsters to copy and steal account information.

So why hasn’t the government made the change to chip technology in food stamp cards? Chips are effective at impeding counterfeit fraud because of tokenization, which replaces sensitive data with a token. When inserted or tapped over a chip-enabled terminal, the chip creates a one-time code to process the transaction. This dynamic makes it significantly harder for fraudsters to clone the card because the transaction code cannot be reused making chip cards a critical control to mitigate schemes involving food stamp fraud transactions. In 2022 Congress ordered the USDA to create a rule forcing states to update their cards though the agency has not done so, according to the audit. As a result, the government has replaced hundreds of millions of dollars in skimmed SNAP benefits in the last few years alone. New York leads the pack with a whopping $50.68 million in skimmed benefits, followed by California ($28.08 million), Maryland ($22.53 million) and Texas ($21.18 million). Other big offenders include Florida ($20.87 million), Ohio ($16.1 million), Alabama ($15.3 million) and New Jersey ($11.5 million). The failure has left the country’s multi-billion-dollar food stamp program in an “ongoing nationwide crisis,” according to the USDA watchdog.

Card skimming is not the program’s only issue. Food stamp fraud is so pervasive that the USDA launched a special system to facilitate the replacement of the welfare benefit when recipients claim it stolen. In the program’s first two years the government doled out a hefty $61.5 million to replace pilfered food stamps in 127,290 cases. That figure has since skyrocketed to a whopping $102,425,077 to replace 226,196 of the 691,604 benefits reported stolen, according to the latest figures published in the SNAP Replacement of Stolen Benefits Dashboard. Last summer the government quietly invested millions of dollars in a special initiative aimed at cracking down on skyrocketing fraud. It is known as Fraud Framework and the USDA spent $5 million to get it going, offering states large cash rewards to bust criminal actors that operate card skimming schemes and food stamp recipients that intentionally commit fraud by violating program rules like falsifying income or identity. A few weeks before announcing the Fraud Framework investment, a veteran USDA employee, who worked in a special division responsible for identifying fraud, was criminally charged for operating what federal prosecutors call “one of the largest food stamp frauds in U.S. history.” The bribery scheme generated over $66 million in unauthorized food stamp transactions, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

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