Tag: doj

Verizon Blames ‘Human Error’ For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and fifteen colleagues sent a letter to Verizon on Thursday demanding the telecom giant explain how a 2023 grand jury subpoena tied to Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation vanished from its own paperwork for more than two years – only to resurface after the company chalked the omission up to “human error.”

The letter, addressed to Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, is the latest turn in Grassley’s monthslong excavation of Arctic Frost – the Biden-era FBI/DOJ probe-turned-Trump-prosecution that has already produced a House criminal referral for Smith himself, revelations that his team accessed the actual text messages of 44 lawmakers, and now a fight over what one of the country’s largest phone companies knew and sat on.

What Subpoena?

Back in October 2023, Grassley asked Verizon to search its files for every DOJ or federal law enforcement request touching Senate devices between January 2016 and October 2023, part of his long-running Crossfire Hurricane oversight. Verizon wrote back that it generally keeps legal process on file for four years and had no records predating October 2019.

What it didn’t mention: a May 25, 2023 grand jury subpoena issued by Smith’s Arctic Frost team for senators’ phone toll records, including two numbers belonging to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms.

Congress didn’t learn the subpoena existed until 2025, when Verizon told Grassley’s office the 2023 omission came down to “human error.” Grassley isn’t satisfied with that. His new letter wants to know whether Verizon actually found the subpoena during its 2023 search and stayed quiet, or genuinely missed a live federal legal demand sitting in its own compliance files for two years.

Two of the numbers swept up in that May 2023 subpoena weren’t just any senators’ lines – they belonged to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Under a contract Verizon signed with the Senate in May 2022, that’s supposed to trigger automatic notice to the SAA any time a Senate device or line gets subpoenaed. Grassley’s letter effectively asks how a contractually mandated notification simply never happened.

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Senate Schedules Contempt Vote For Fauci

The Senate has scheduled a vote on holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Aug. 5 will consider a contempt resolution for Fauci. The resolution has not been released as of yet.

If the panel approves the resolution, then it will be sent to the Department of Justice with a recommendation to prosecute Fauci, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate panel, said during an appearance on CBS on July 30.

Paul has previously requested prosecution of Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress, but federal prosecutors have not brought any charges to date.

Fauci, who led the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, read an opening statement at a hearing of the committee on July 29, then refused to answer any questions.

Fauci said he was following advice from his lawyers and invoking his right under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which protects people against self-incrimination.

Paul noted at the end of the hearing that a preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden issued in early 2025 covers Fauci for any crimes he may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025. Paul asked Fauci whether he, at any point during the time period the pardon covers, destroyed any federal record or instructed others to.

Fauci declined to answer, pointing to the Fifth Amendment.

“My question was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported,” Paul said.

Fauci said in his opening statement that Paul is obsessed with calling for his prosecution.

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.

Some senators said the situation called to mind what transpired with Lois Lerner, an IRS official who read an opening statement while appearing before a congressional panel in 2013 before refusing to answer any questions. The House of Representatives voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

Congress more recently approved contempt resolutions against Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, onetime advisers to President Donald Trump. The men were convicted of contempt and spent time in prison.

People convicted of contempt of Congress can land a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison term of up to 12 months.

Several legal experts told The Epoch Times that Fauci wrongly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to some of the questions.

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New Jersey Rejects DOJ’s Request For Records On Noncitizen Voter Registration Error

New Jersey is refusing to hand over information to the U.S. Department of Justice involving a voter registration error that allowed thousands of noncitizens to register to vote in the state.

The DOJ requested the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and registration dates and locations of 6,600 people involved in the error.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill rejected the DOJ’s request for the data, saying in a letter on Tuesday that state and federal privacy laws prohibit releasing it.

“The request had no legal basis, and I will always protect New Jerseyans’ personally identifiable information,” Sherrill said on X.

Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, said the governor’s “refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement does nothing to protect law-abiding NJ voters.”

“NJ has a legal duty to keep ineligible voters off its rolls, & our request is grounded in that legal authority. DOJ will get this information through all legal means!” she said Tuesday in a post on X.

Sherrill said on July 21 that approximately 6,600 people who indicated they were not U.S. citizens were mistakenly registered to vote because of a software flaw in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission system.

According to Sherrill, the error affected applicants between June 2023 and June 2024, during the previous administration. While applying for driver’s licenses or state identification cards, the individuals selected “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens, but they were nevertheless added to the voter rolls due to the software issue.

The governor said a preliminary review found that fewer than 400 of those improperly registered ultimately cast ballots. Those voters included Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters and were spread across New Jersey.

Sherrill said she has directed her chief counsel to investigate how the mistake happened and instructed election officials to remove anyone who was improperly placed on the voter rolls during that timeframe. She said the software problem was corrected in June 2024 but that she only recently became aware of it.

The governor also said the Motor Vehicle Commission administrator she appointed has started replacing the vendor that managed the system.

However, a company that has worked with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle System for more than 40 years suggested the New Jersey government was responsible for the noncitizens being placed on the state’s voter rolls.

IDEMIA, an identification software provider, told The Epoch Times July 22 that the individuals disclaimed U.S. citizenship but also said they indicated “Yes” to wanting to register to vote.

“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote,” the company stated. “Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

The governor said in the July 21 announcement that she was “appalled” by the failures that allowed the error to occur and vowed that those responsible would be held accountable.

She also accused the Trump administration of trying to “weaponize elections for political gain.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has found that about 278,000 noncitizens were illegally registered to vote in U.S. federal elections after reviewing voter rolls from several states that cooperated and turned over data, according to the White House.

The White House said earlier this month the actual number could be higher because some states did not share their voter files with the federal agency.

The Trump administration has been involved in lawsuits with several states involving access to voter registration rolls.

In April, a U.S. District judge dismissed a lawsuit the Trump administration had filed in Massachusetts to get access to unredacted voter rolls.

The White House said the error in New Jersey “is the direct result of Democrat policies that refuse basic citizenship checks—and exactly why Congress must pass the SAVE America Act immediately,” in a July 21 statement.

The SAVE America Act is a bill that would mandate proof of U.S. citizenship while registering to vote in federal elections, require photo ID verification to vote, and restrict the use of mail-in ballots.

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GrapheneOS Wipe at Airport Leads to Federal Charge in Atlanta

The Justice Department is asking a federal court in Atlanta to treat a man’s erasure of his own phone as destruction of property, in the first known US prosecution built on a phone’s duress password.

Samuel Tunick faces one count under Title 18, Section 2232(a), a statute covering the destruction of property to stop the government from taking it. Prosecutors say he handed Customs and Border Protection officers a passcode that deleted the contents of his Google Pixel instead of unlocking it. His lawyers appeared before the court for the first time on Monday, arguing that officers ran a custodial interrogation without Miranda warnings, denied him a lawyer, and searched him unlawfully. They want everything obtained from the encounter suppressed.

CBP pulled Tunick into secondary inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson on January 24, 2025, as he returned from the Dominican Republic. An FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force officer and an FBI special agent had coordinated with CBP in advance to question and search him on arrival. The account comes from the defense filing, which draws on the government’s own reports. Officers from CBP’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team opened by telling him they were “looking for people who are pedophiles.”

Officers never read Tunick his Miranda rights. He said early in the interview that he did not want to keep talking without a lawyer, then asked to call one repeatedly. Questioning continued. One officer told him his refusal to talk gave them authority to go through his phone. When he asked again about his attorney, an officer told him customs and immigration work was a different matter, “and we have search authority, we don’t need a warrant.”

Tunick eventually provided a password for his phone and his e-reader. The screen “went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart,” according to the government’s report. Officers seized the devices anyway and told him they would be returned after thirty days. A third officer took him to another room for a pat-down that was not recorded. A DHS agent then told him he was free to leave once the other agents were finished with him.

The government’s reports contain no indication that anyone suspected Tunick of carrying illegal images, his lawyers wrote. The reports record an interest in his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement opposing the clearing of the South River Forest for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. Opponents call the 85-acre, $115 million police facility Cop City. Federal documents label the movement an “Anti-Government, Anti-Authority Violent Extremist Group.” Tunick has not been charged with any offense connected to it.

Eleventh Circuit precedent favors the government. Its 2018 ruling in United States v. Touset permits forensic searches of electronic devices at the border with no warrant, no probable cause, and no individualized suspicion. Tunick’s lawyers cite decisions from the First, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits going the other way, including a Fourth Circuit holding that warrantless border searches of devices cannot be used to hunt for evidence of domestic crime. They also argue that surrendering a passcode is testimonial, relying on a 2012 Eleventh Circuit decision that decrypting and producing the contents of a hard drive triggers Fifth Amendment protection.

Courts allow suspicionless border searches to keep contraband out of the country. The accusation here is that data left a phone rather than entered the United States, and digital files move across borders over the internet anyway. A ruling on the motion is not expected before the end of October.

GrapheneOS, the hardened Android build that replaces the stock software on Pixel devices, lets an owner set a second PIN or password that irreversibly wipes the device and any installed eSIMs when entered at a credential prompt. No confirmation dialog appears, and nothing distinguishes it from a normal unlock.

Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Runa Sandvik, founder of the security firm Granitt, both said they had seen no comparable prosecution. Sandvik said she had discussed the scenario with activists and journalists for years and advised travelers to leave sensitive data off devices they carry across borders rather than count on wiping it. Christophe Boutry told the Guardian the prosecution “sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default.”

Matthew Dodge, an assistant federal public defender on Tunick’s legal team, said the statute is rarely seen in an indictment. Tunick was arrested about ten months after the airport stop. His crowdfunding page says he was pulled over for a purported tail light fault and cuffed by FBI and DHS officers when he stepped out of the car. He has pleaded not guilty. The single-count indictment  accuses him of acting to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel to impair the government’s lawful authority to take it, in violation of Title 18 of what the document calls the “Untied States Code.”

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DOJ: UCSD med school favored black, Hispanic applicants over more qualified white, Asian ones

The University of California San Diego School of Medicine illegally used race in its admissions process to favor black and Hispanic applicants over more qualified white and Asian candidates, the Justice Department announced Monday.

The med school continued affirmative action in violation of civil rights laws and even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race discrimination in higher education.

The feds argued the med school uses “hardship” criteria to skirt the laws.

“To racially diversify its classes, San Diego Med created an evaluation process that uses ‘hardship’ as a racial proxy, specifically to achieve its diversity agenda,” according to an eight-page findings memo it sent to the school.

The memo stated:

The Department finds that San Diego Med discriminated against white and Asian applicants to benefit black and Hispanic applicants. This is evident from the data analysis and confirmed through the information provided by San Diego Med and publicly available data. The school intended to tinker with the racial representation of its incoming classes, even after SFF A was decided. The data shows a significant disparity in objective academic metrics between black and Hispanic applicants compared with applicants from other races. San Diego Med’ s internal documents, including communications among the admissions staff, confirm that San Diego Med intended to racially discriminate in favor of so-called underrepresented minorities, such as blacks and Hispanics. As a result of these practices, more qualified white and Asian students were denied admission to San Diego Med on the basis of their race.

A UC San Diego spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times the university is reviewing the findings.

The medical school “is proud to produce some of the highest-performing physicians and researchers in the nation,” the spokesperson said, adding all applicants “must meet strict academic thresholds, a requirement that is and was applied uniformly to all applicants.”

The university “remains committed to full compliance with federal law” and “welcomes the opportunity to work collaboratively and constructively with the federal government to affirm that commitment.”

The Hill reported that the department seeks a voluntary settlement with the university to correct its admissions practices or the department will file a lawsuit.

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Former New Mexico AG Drop Epstein BOMBSHELL

New Mexico’s former Attorney General is calling out the Justice Department for systematically undermining the state’s long-running effort to probe Jeffrey Epstein’s isolated Zorro Ranch, revealing a pattern of interference that began in 2019 and continues to this day. 

Hector Balderas says federal prosecutors struck an informal deal, took the state’s evidence, then ghosted New Mexico while the elite predator’s desert compound remained largely untouched.

In an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation, Balderas detailed how the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York persuaded his office to halt interviews of witnesses and persons of interest in exchange for a promise to return any state-related materials once the federal case wrapped. That promise, he says, was never kept.

A newly surfaced handwritten note from July 23, 2019, captures the arrangement: “Agreed NMDOJ will stop interviews + refer all matters to SDNY. SDNY will refer any state-related matters to NMAG @ [the] conclusion of SDNY case.” 

An email from then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey days later confirmed the conversation, stating New Mexico had agreed to “cease any investigation into sex trafficking and share whatever they had gathered to date” while the federal side pledged to pass along state crime information later. 

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GOP Rep. Cory Mills Under Federal Investigation: Report

The Justice Department is currently investigating GOP Rep. Cory Mills, according to ABC News, The Washington Examiner, and MS NOW.

The federal probe is in part over Mills’ finances, ABC News said, citing sources.

“The Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., according to two sources familiar with the matter, adding to the mounting legal and ethical scrutiny facing the embattled congressman,” MS NOW reported.

“The sources didn’t disclose the focus of the DOJ investigation. But a third source told MS NOW at least one person was contacted by the FBI last year about Mills’ finances, allegations of misconduct and individuals in his orbit,” MS NOW

The Washington Examiner reported:

Embattled Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) is under an investigation by the Department of Justice, a source familiar confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

It is unclear why the DOJ is investigating Mills, and the agency did not respond to a request for comment. Mills has been accused of domestic violence, stolen valor, and financial misconduct. Mills has denied any wrongdoing.

The FBI reportedly reached out to at least one person about Mills’s finances last year, according to MS NOW. The Washington Examiner has reached out to Mills for comment.

The nature of the investigation is unclear but Cory Mills is facing allegations of domestic violence, stolen valor and financial crimes.

Earlier this year, GOP Rep. Nancy Mace filed to expel Cory Mills.

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MUSKEGON UPDATE: How the Massive Michigan Democratic Voter Registration Fraud Operation Was Ignored, Buried, and Shut Down by Unscrupulous Biden FBI and DOJ Hacks

President Trump brought up the MUSKEGON, MICHIGAN 2020 coordinated election fraud scheme – buried by Biden admin – during his address to the country on Thursday.

This massive ballot registration scandal was first reported by The Gateway Pundit in August 2023 thanks to Michigan activists who tipped us off to this massive voter registration scandal.

The Gateway Pundit showed that a left-wing outfit named GBI Strategies, that was funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, was attempting to fraudulently register up to 10,000 voters in a city with only 30,000 eligible voters.

The report on systemic voter fraud in the 2020 election has never been refuted or debunked; it was simply ignored and suppressed by legacy media. The blithe answer from Michigan’s corrupt far-left Attorney General is that they ‘referred it to the FBI.‘

Yet all the information is there in the Muskegon Police report, as well as another police report from the Michigan State Police, and yet there have been zero prosecutions of those involved.

The Muskegon fraudulent ballot registration case was not in suspended animation, and it certainly didn’t close itself.

It was deliberately buried under layers of AUSAs, FBI supervisors, DOJ Public Integrity Section (PIN) officials, redactions, and bureaucratic fingerprints.

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DOJ seeks to invoke the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for first time since its creation

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has submitted an application to the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) to initiate the never-before-used legal process to deport foreign nationals deemed to be terrorists.

The application was submitted on Thursday, July 16th, and its contents remained sealed. The document’s cover sheet indicates that the information inside is classified. The person the application intends to process has not been publicly identified.

The ATRC was established in 1996 by Congress, which authorized the Chief Justice of the United States to designate five U.S. district court judges to review applications for illegal immigrant terrorists to be quickly removed from the country. However, until this week, the court has not received an application from the Attorney General in 30 years and has not conducted deportation proceedings.

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1996 in response to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. At the time, American extremist Timothy McVeigh, aided by Terry Nichols, detonated a makeshift bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

If an application is approved, the court will need to hold a public removal hearing where the government bears the burden of proving that the individual is an “alien terrorist.”

8 U.S. Code defines an alien terrorist as any non-citizen who has engaged or is reasonably likely to engage in any terrorist activity.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines terrorist activity as any unlawful act including:

  • Hijacking or sabotaging an aircraft, vessel or vehicle;
  • Seizing, detaining, or threatening to kill or injure another person to compel a third person or government to an action;
  • Assassination;
  • A violent act upon an internationally protected person;
  • Using biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons with intent to harm;
  • Material support to a certified Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) or to any individuals the actor reasonably should know has committed or plans to commit terrorist acts.

The DOJ’s filing may indicate an escalation in President Donald Trump’s administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

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Jack Smith’s Team Spied On 44 Lawmakers’ Texts, Built A Case On Them, And Misled Congress: Grassley

Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators blew past the Justice Department’s own privilege safeguards to directly access text messages between Trump White House officials and 44 members of Congress – then had the FBI match the phone numbers to lawmakers’ names, according to DOJ records released Tuesday.

Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in a letter accompanying the records that Smith’s team “bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages.” The FBI then worked out which senators and House members had sent or received them, Davis wrote.

The filter unit existed for one purpose: to screen messages pulled from the National Archives for privileged material before line investigators ever laid eyes on them.

“All communication to/from the Filter Team must go through the Coordinator,” one internal protocol document states – adding that nothing was to reach the investigative team without a filter attorney’s sign-off.

The messages, sent between October 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021, ran between a bipartisan roster of lawmakers and Trump White House figures including chief of staff Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, now-CIA Director John Ratcliffe and now-FBI Director Kash Patel, the records show.

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