Judicial Watch Sues Pentagon and Park Police over Jan. 6 Capitol Deployment

 Judicial Watch Sues Pentagon and Park Police over Jan. 6 Capitol Deployment

 

 

Nancy Pelosi wants to set up a commission to continue the politicization of events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, saying that those who oppose her “are afraid of the truth.”

That’s laughable. Getting to the truth is our specialty, and so we filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suits against the Department of the Interior and the Department of Defense for records regarding the deployment of armed forces around the Capitol complex in Washington, D.C., in January and February of 2021 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of the Interior (No. 1:21-cv-01302)) and (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:21-cv-01301)).

Who needs a “commission” when you have trusty Judicial Watch!

We sued here in DC after the Department of Defense failed to reply to our February 19, 2021, FOIA request for: 

All emails regarding the deployment of U.S. troops around the Capitol complex in Washington, D.C. sent to and from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Deputy Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, and/or Vice Chairman Gen. John E. Hyten.

 

We’re interested in emails sent between January 6, 2021, and February 19, 2021.

 

We sued the Department of the Interior after the U.S. Park Police, one of its components, failed to reply to a March 18, 2021, FOIA request for: 

All records of communications, including emails and text messages, between officials of the U.S. Park Police and officials of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump rally and/or protest at the Capitol Building.

All records of communications, including emails and text messages, between officials of the U.S. Park Police and officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump rally and/or protest at the Capitol Building.

All records of communications, including emails and text messages, between officials of the U.S. Park Police and officials of the U.S. Capitol Police regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump rally and/or protest at the Capitol Building.

All records of communications, including emails and text messages, between officials of the U.S. Park Police and officials of the offices of the House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump rally and/or protest at the Capitol Building.

All intelligence reports, memoranda, updates, and warnings received by the U.S. Park Police regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump rally and/or protest at the Capitol Building.

The timeframe for this request is December 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021.

We are deeply troubled that the U.S. Park Police and the Pentagon are suppressing the many unknown facts surrounding the January 6 incident at the U.S. Capitol. With those emotionally charged events shaping the political landscape, it is critical that the American people have a full account of the facts. It is disturbing that we must take the two government agencies to federal court for this basic information.

We filed several lawsuits previously regarding the January 6 incident.

• In March 2021, we filed suit against the U.S. Department of Defense for records about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 8, 2021, telephone call with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
• Pressure from a March 2021 Judicial Watch lawsuit helped bring to light that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.
• In February 2021, we announced a lawsuit against the Capitol Police for emails and video related to the January 6 riot.

If Ms. Pelosi wants the truth, she can follow developments in these lawsuits. In the meantime, as I told Newsmax this week, you should be very concerned that any Pelosi commission will be used to target and abuse any and all Americans who oppose the radical left agenda.


Students Taught that ‘Make America Great Again’ Is ‘Covert White Supremacy’

You need to be concerned about our public schools. Maryland shows us why. We received 685 pages of heavily redacted records from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), including documents related to their “Anti-racist system audit” and critical race theory classes.

The documents, obtained under the Maryland Public Information Act, reveal that students of “Maryland’s Largest School District” who attended Thomas Pyle Middle School’s social justice class were taught that the phrase “Make America Great Again” was an example of “covert white supremacy.” The phrase is ranked on a pyramid just below, “lynching,” “hate crimes,” “the N-word” and “racial slurs.” They were also taught that “white privilege” means being favored by school authorities and having a positive relationship with the police.

Additionally, the documents show that Montgomery County Public Schools allocated over $454,000 for an “Anti-racist system audit” by The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, a company that claims that their “expertise in using intersectionality as part of its theory of change makes us uniquely positioned to conduct the Anti-Racist Audit and mitigate the root causes of systemic barriers.”

In Thomas Pyle Middle School’s “social justice” class course curriculum, there is a slide titled “What is systemic racism?” in which students are shown a pyramid slide depicting “Differences between overt and covert hateful white supremacy.” According to the pyramid, “Make America Great Again” is an example of “covert white supremacy.” The phrase is ranked on a pyramid just below “racial slurs.”

Examples of other “white supremacy” include thinking “but we’re just one human family,” “colorblindness,” “cultural appropriation,” “celebration of Columbus Day,” “police murdering POC [people of color],” and “bootstrap theory.”

A separate pyramid begins with the term “genocide.”

The documents include Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium’s “anti-racist system audit” proposal, which describes intersectional theory as “people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, native language, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers. Intersectionality recognizes that identity markers (e.g. “female” and “Black”) do not exist independently of each other, and that each informs the others, often creating a complex merging of oppression.”

Records regarding Montgomery County Public School’s Thomas Pyle Middle School’s social justice class include a cover letter, noting that the class in question was a one-week “Summer Boost” class called “Reading and Taking Action for Social Justice” offered from July 13-17, 2020, and that “no grades were given and no actual work due.” The class material includes a push for students to fill out a form letter with contact information addressed to federal, state and county education officials asking for more critical race theory classes in schools.

In a slide titled “What is Intersectionality?” the students are told it is defined as:

Exposing [one’s] multiple identities can help clarify the ways in which a person can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression….

Per [critical race theory scholar] Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, ‘Intersectionality is simply a prism to see the Interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment. It looks at the way that racism, many times, interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, xenophobia – seeing that the overlapping vulnerabilities created by these systems actually create specific kinds of challenges.’
 

A class slide titled “Implicit Bias, Structural Racism” states:

Race is created to justify enslaving people from Africa (the economic engine of the country).

National narrative (ideology, belief system) about people of color being ‘less than’ human (and less than white) justifies mistreatment and inequality (white supremacy).

Dominant narratives about race (family, media, society) coupled with racialized structural arrangements and differential outcomes by race all prime us to believe that people of color are inferior to white people … 

The students are asked: “What is White Privilege?” and are instructed that white privilege includes, among other things: having “a positive relationship with the police, generally;” “soaking in media blatantly biased toward my race;” and “living ignorant of the dire state of racism today.”

The students are suggested to view a Ted Talk interview with Patrisse Cullors, a founder of Black Lives Matter. The class is provided “definitions” created by www.racialequitytools.org. The terms that are defined include:

• “Black Lives Matter,” which is defined as “A political movement to address systemic and state violence against African Americans.” It claims that “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”
• “Power,” defined among other things as: “Wealth, whiteness, citizenship, patriarchy, heterosexism, and education are a few key social mechanisms through which power operates.”
• “Racist policies,” is defined with the statement, “There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy.”
• “White Privilege,” which is defined as “to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white.” And “Structure white privilege” is described as “A system of white domination that creates and maintains belief systems that make current racial advantages and disadvantages seem normal.”
• Under the heading “White Supremacy,” “White supremacy culture,” is defined as referring, “to the dominant, unquestioned standards of behavior and ways of functioning embodied by the vast majority of institutions in the United States.” White supremacy culture is further defined as “the glue that binds together white-controlled institutions into systems and white-controlled systems into the global white supremacy system.”
• Other defined terms include: “Anti-black” “colonization” “racial recognition” “racialization” “structural racism” and “whiteness”

We also received records relating to Montgomery County Public School’s Greenwood Elementary School’s “Dual Pandemic” of “Covid-19/systemic racism” class presentation.

The racist, revolutionary claptrap in these documents should be nowhere near a school classroom. These documents show that extremists have access to our schools and are willing to abuse this access to children in order to advance a dangerous, divisive, and likely illegal agenda.


Florida County Gives Illegal Immigrants Special IDs to Get Vaccines, Public Services

Leftist public officials show contempt for the rule of law when they promote sanctuary policies to aid and abet the continued presence of illegal aliens. The latest example comes in Florida, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.

Florida’s second-most populous county is the state’s first to offer illegal immigrants identification cards so they can obtain taxpayer-funded services, including COVID-19 vaccines. Elected officials in Broward County, situated in southeast Florida with a population of about two million, unanimously passed the measure with ardent support from the county’s top law enforcement officer, Sheriff Gregory Tony. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Tony to the elected position after suspending former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel for mishandling the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Tony won his first election in November to remain the county’s top cop. In a social media post published by local news outlets Tony thanked Broward County. “Together, we did this. I look forward to leading the great & hard-working people at the Broward Sheriff’s Office over the next four years as we continue to make BSO the finest law enforcement agency in Florida and an example of excellence for the nation,” Tony wrote. The sheriff fully backs the new ID cards for illegal immigrants and says they will have a positive impact on public safety, according to a local news report. Tony even wrote a letter of support to the Broward County commissioner who introduced the legislation to create the special IDs for those in the country illegally. This may seem strange considering he runs Florida’s largest sheriff’s department with 5,400 employees, including nearly 3,000 certified deputies. “Today, Broward County has thousands of residents who lack identification for various reasons,” Sheriff Tony’s letter to the commissioner reads. “With the homeless, undocumented, formerly incarcerated, to elderly, these and other bureaucratically-challenged residents do not have access to many basic and vital services. The community ID will provide these residents with a way to access those services.”

Support for the special IDs from the top law enforcement official in one of its largest counties is at odds with the state’s typically strong stance on illegal immigration. Florida is not one of the nation’s 11 states to offer illegal aliens sanctuary and no local government in the Sunshine state officially provides it either, though some have toyed with idea. Florida has also resisted a nationwide movement to provide illegal immigrants with driver’s licenses. Sixteen states along with the District of Columbia offer illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Among the states are California, New York, Oregon, Nevada, Vermont, Washington State and Connecticut. In 2020 Virginia became the latest to grant illegal aliens driving privileges. Many open borders groups have expressed concern that the information on the licenses will be shared with federal authorities.

To protect the privacy of illegal immigrants Broward County will not issue the special IDs, but rather a nonprofit will carry out the task to avoid potential public records requests. Technically the cards are called “community IDs” and a third-party issues them with the approval of local governments. It allows the personal information of recipients to be kept private because nonprofits typically do not have to comply with public records laws like cities, counties, states, and other taxpayer-funded entities. The Broward County community IDs will be issued by Legal Aid Service of Broward County, a group that provides free legal advice and representation to the county’s “disadvantaged,” including illegal immigrants. The group helps improve the lifestyle and living conditions in low-income communities and encourages self-sufficiency, according to its website.

It is not clear how Legal Aid was chosen to administer Broward County’s new ID cards, but the measure to do so was passed after a “months-long campaign of advocacy and outreach by a diverse coalition of community organizations,” a local news article reveals. Predictably, the groups advocate for open borders and rights for illegal aliens. They include United We Dream, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Hispanic Unity of Florida, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). It is noteworthy to mention that the SPLC is a radical leftist nonprofit that lists conservative organizations that disagree with it on social issues on a catalog of “hate groups.” Its famous “hate map” helped a gunman commit an act of terrorism against a conservative nonprofit in 2012. The Virginia man, Floyd Lee Corkins, was sentenced to 25 years in prison though prosecutors recommended 45 because his crime was an act of terrorism. Even the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) officially reprimanded the SPLC for its hateful attacks, documents obtained by Judicial Watch show.

Rising Crime, Radical Agenda Test Left

It’s been said that as New York City goes, so goes the nation. That would be tragic. These days, New York City is a radical sandbox that results in policies that threaten the safety and welfare of law-abiding citizens. Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, has a revealing update in Judicial Watch’s Investigative Bulletin:

With weeks to go to elections that will decide New York City’s next mayor and the powerful post of Manhattan district attorney, rising crime suddenly is at the center of the political action. The stakes are high—and not just for New York.

The proximate cause for the sudden focus on crime was a shooting in the heart of the city—a gunman let loose with a fusillade in Times Square, wounding a 4-year-old girl, a woman from New Jersey, and a tourist from Rhode Island. But that was just gas on the bonfire. Judicial Watch followers are familiar with the grim litany of rising crime statistics in New York and across urban America.

“As of May 2,” the New York Times reported, “132 people have been killed compared with 113 this same time last year, a 17 percent increase, according to Police Department statistics. There have been 416 shooting incidents compared with 227 this time last year, an 83 percent increase.” Violent subway crimes rattle the city. Hate crimes continue to rise.

Rising crime poses a big problem for the Left, which nationwide has pushed hard on criminal-justice issues with calls to defund the police and empty the jails. In New York, a draft platform from a coalition of radical left-wing groups, obtained by Judicial Watch, suggests the scope of the Left’s national agenda.

The crowded New York mayoral and DA races are Democratic Party primaries that will be decided June 22 in a city dominated by Democrats, effectively anointing the winners. Both races have tacked sharply to the left, with most of the DA candidates backing most of the radical platform, and the mayoral candidates echoing its themes.

The platform calls for defunding the Manhattan DA’s office, sharp reductions in charging and sentencing discretion, curtailing gang prosecutions and intelligence gathering, ending support for police-sponsored community programs, declining disorderly conduct prosecutions, and stopping pre-trial detention.

It’s class war on the criminal justice system. The platform calls for a fifty percent reduction in the district attorney’s budget because “for too long” the office “has worked to extract wealth from the targets of policing and incarceration.” It says that the DA “continues to pursue overzealous charges and excessive sentences” and that there must be a commitment to “reducing the power of the office.”

The attack on the office of district attorney is an attack on policing as well. The DA’s office, the draft platform says, “is heavily intertwined with and dependent on other law enforcement entities, including the NYPD.” Charging of violent offenders must be changed because “the label ‘violent’…is applied in arbitrary, biased, and harmful ways that do nothing to address the root causes of violence.” Gang prosecutions must be ended because the “cases have been built through close collaboration with the NYPD as it has expanded its racist and controversial gang database.”

Gang violence, by the way, is widely identified as a central cause of shootings and killings in New York. And recent state legislation already has sharply reduced jail populations.

But lately it seems that urban America is tiring of rising crime and disorder. The public mood appears to be shifting. In a recent New York poll, crime placed second in public concern, after Covid-19.

In recent years, the criminal-justice reform movement, backed by the George Soros network, has made powerful gains around the country. Left-wing district attorneys are now installed in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and other cities. The New York races, while dominated by the city’s noisy progressive factions, feature a handful of relative moderates, such as mayoral candidate Eric Adams and DA contender Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who have pushed back against the Left’s excesses. Polling is sparse, but both seem to be gaining ground. Read more about the races here and here.

Victory for any moderate would signal that the public pushback against rising crime is gaining traction. Victory for any of the other candidates would signal something entirely different—that the leftward march in American cities continues.

Until next week …