Tag: doj

Federal Grand Jury indicts 11 in massive $100K-per-couple marriage fraud scheme

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed a two-count indictment charging 11 individuals for orchestrating a massive, decade-long marriage fraud network that arranged over 1,000 sham marriages.

Federal prosecutors described the operation as one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in U.S. history, spanning “from 2016 through July 2026 and generating tens of millions of dollars in illegal revenue.”

The criminal scheme primarily aimed to secure fraudulent green cards and lawful permanent residency for foreign nationals, predominantly citizens of the People’s Republic of China, the DOJ noted.

According to the 21-page indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the defendants marketed their services through social media, word of mouth and targeted advertising.

Foreigners reportedly paid the enterprise up to $100,000 each to facilitate a fake marriage and process green card applications. In turn, the network recruited U.S. citizens to act as spouses, paying them up to $30,000 per arrangement, while recruiters pocketed commissions of around $5,000 for every participant enrolled.

Federal officials explained further how the syndicate functioned as a “full-service” operation designed to systematically evade federal immigration checks. Facilitators hired officiants and photographers, staged wedding ceremonies — sometimes at local restaurants where participants wore traditional attire to fabricate authenticity — and generated fake documentation.

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TRUMP DOJ Sues New York, Connecticut, and Vermont for Giving Illegal Aliens In-State Tuition and Financial Aid While Americans Pay More

The Justice Department has now filed 17 lawsuits challenging state tuition benefits for illegal aliens, and says it will continue until American citizens are no longer treated as second-class students.

The Trump Justice Department is turning up the heat on three more Democrat-run states accused of placing illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.

On Monday, the Department of Justice filed lawsuits against New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, challenging state laws that provide qualifying illegal aliens with in-state tuition rates, financial assistance, and scholarships unavailable on the same terms to American citizens living outside those states.

The DOJ alleges that the blue-state programs violate federal law, encourage illegal immigration, and force American students to compete under a system tilted against them.

Let that sink in: An American citizen living across the state line may be charged the full out-of-state tuition rate while someone unlawfully present in the country can qualify for taxpayer-supported benefits based on state residency.

In New York, the average in-state tuition and fees run about $8,300 while out-of-state students pay more than double. Connecticut and Vermont have long maintained similar two-tier systems that favor those who broke federal immigration law over American families from neighboring states.

According to the Justice Department, that arrangement directly conflicts with 8 U.S.C. § 1623. The federal statute generally prohibits states from awarding residence-based higher-education benefits to aliens who are not lawfully present unless the same benefits are available to U.S. citizens regardless of where they live.

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Insane: MSNOW National Security Reporter Horrified That the Trump DOJ is Stopping Illegals From Voting

This week on MSNOW, their national security reporter David Rohde seemed to express shock and horror that the Trump DOJ is trying to make sure tha illegals don’t vote in our elections.

He refers to illegals voting as a ‘Trumpian conspiracy theory’ even though just last week it was revealed that more than 6,000 illegals were on the voter rolls in the state of New Jersey.

This is a window into the mind of the left. They really want illegals to be able to vote and they’re not particularly shy about showing it.

Transcript via NewsBusters:

DAVID ROHDE: More pe- He would not bring- well, the midterm elections are coming. The Justice Department-

RUHLE: This has been your big thing.

ROHDE: -the Justice Department sent election observers to Michigan for the primary last week. And before that happened, they informed election clerks across the country that they would be arrested and prosecuted federally if they allowed non-citizens to vote.

That is an astonishingly rare thing that happens in the U.S. It’s a giant, frankly, Trumpian conspiracy theory that there’s all these people voting. So whether he’s acting or not, it’s just not acceptable that that’s how, you know, and nothing happened, they sort of watched.

But there’s tremendous worry about what will the FBI do on election day? What will the Attorney General do? What will the Director of National Intelligence- given President Trump’s- We just had four judges testifying the other day, and they were asked – judges, federal judges! – who won the 2020 election. They’re afraid to say it was Joe Biden. This is a huge alarm for our democracy.

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More than 600,000 voter files ripped off Arizona site in 2020 by hacker, but DOJ didn’t prosecute

Arizona’s largest county suffered a significant breach of its election data in the days before the 2020 presidential election when a self-described hacker foiled security and obtained 633,000 voter registration files but the Biden Justice Department and local prosecutors declined to bring charges even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the White House.

The scraping of Maricopa County’s voter registration files was the most flagged security incident in a cyberintrusion log kept by U.S. spy agencies in the days around the Nov. 3, 2020 election, and it caused an extensive FBI investigation that led agents to a home in Fountain Hills, Ariz., the memos show.

The man the FBI confronted admitted he wrote a computer script to exploit the county voter systems security and scraped the files, which included 930 with “sensitive voter information like domestic violence victims, judges and law enforcement officers,” according to the FBI case files declassified and made public by President Donald Trump’s White House Government Transparency Task Force.

FBI Director Kash Patel sent a letter to that task force this week stating the bureau spent “significant resources” but could not get the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the Maricopa County Arizona Attorney’s Office or the Pinal County, Arizona Attorney’s Office to bring charges despite an admission from the alleged hacker.

FBI_Letter.pdf

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the alleged hacker on July 12, 2021, under the Biden Administration, according to the FBI. The newly released memos do not state when the other prosecutorial agencies made similar decisions not to bring charges,  but the full case was officially closed in 2023.  

Just one day before the Nov. 3 election, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office submitted a tip through the Arizona Counterterrorism Intelligence Center that there had been “an attempt to scrape voter registration information,” according to one FBI summary. 

FBI_Opening_Doc.pdf

According to that memo, an unidentified intruder gained access to voter registration data on the recorder’s website by using a “Powershell script” that exploited a weakness in security. More than 633,000 voter records were exfiltrated between Oct. 21, 2020, and Nov. 2, 2020, the memos state.

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What’s The DOJ HIDING At Epstein’s Zorro Ranch?

New Mexico has had enough of the federal runaround on Jeffrey Epstein’s secrets. On Wednesday the state’s attorney general hauled the Justice Department and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche into federal court, demanding the full, unredacted files that could finally expose what really happened at the predator’s sprawling Zorro Ranch.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed the 40-page complaint in Washington, accusing the DOJ of “stonewalling” a legitimate state criminal investigation into trafficking, abuse, and worse on New Mexico soil.

Publicly released Epstein material already contains more than 13,000 references to Zorro Ranch and roughly 5,000 to the state itself. Torrez says the redactions are blocking the identification of victims, witnesses, staff, and members of Epstein’s inner circle who may still face state charges.

“New Mexico has a duty to protect survivors and investigate crimes committed in our state so that perpetrators can be held accountable,” Torrez said.

He continued, “We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses, and additional criminal conduct at Zorro Ranch. Their delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying justice Epstein survivors deserve.”

The lawsuit claims New Mexico is one of the few jurisdictions still positioned to deliver any justice. Federal prosecutors never even searched the ranch. Now the state is trying to finish the job and is being blocked at every turn.

Torrez told reporters his office has made at least ten formal requests since reopening the probe in February. Informal outreach was met with promises of cooperation, then instructions to file Touhy requests—only for those to be rejected. A July 14 letter warned that legal action would follow if the materials were not produced by July 31. They were not.

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Scandalous! John Thune and Tom Cotton Are Blocking DOJ from Obtaining Brennan Transcripts before US Senate Committees – Impeding Investigation into Former CIA Chief

With friends like John Thune and Tom Cotton — who needs enemies?

John Solomon from Just the News broke the news on Wednesday that Majority Leader John Thune and Senator Tom Cotton are blocking DOJ investigator Joe DiGenova from obtaining the transcripts of John Brennan’s interviews with the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

This is holding up the investigation into Brennan and his role in the deep state coup to take down President Trump in 2016.

Apparently, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refuses to authorize a subpoena to the US Senate to obtain the documents.

What is going on?

John Solomon broke this news earlier on Wednesday on The War Room with Steve Bannon.

John Solomon: I’m going to go back to being a reporter for a second. I do not know this information from anything I’ve gained in government. I can tell you with 100% certainty that Republicans are obstructing the investigation into weaponization. There are two Republicans I can name by name, Senator John Thune and Senator Tom Cotton. They have refused for months, four months now.

The first request came in late January, early February. They are refusing thus far to provide to Joe DiGenova, to the prosecutors in Florida, to the Miami U.S. Attorney, to the Justice Department, the transcripts of John Brennan’s interviews with the Senate Judiciary— Senate Intelligence Committee.

They have refused to do so. I’m gonna call out a third name because I don’t understand the Justice Department’s behavior. When a body that’s separate of the executive branch doesn’t comply, Every other time in American history, go back to Iran-Contra, go back to Watergate, the Justice Department subpoenas the Congress.

For some reason, the acting Attorney General, who wants to be the permanent Attorney General, has not authorized a subpoena to the United States Senate to get those documents.

Those documents will allow the prosecutors in Miami to decide whether the charges are warranted against John Brennan.

The idea that Republican senators will not cooperate with the Republican administration is ridiculous politically, but it’s illegal. It’s obstruction. There ought to be a grand jury subpoena sitting in the Senate clerk’s office, and there ought to be a court case yesterday compelling this because the Justice Department has been delayed by 8 months by 2 Republican senators who have the responsibility and the ability to deliver this.

You want to get to the grand conspiracy case, you need the missing evidence, and the Senate possesses it. And as of this date, I can find no evidence they’ve turned it over, and there is no grand jury subpoena because the clerk of the Senate would have to report it publicly. I just checked the Congressional Record again today. So Todd Blanche, Tom Cotton, John Thune, you got some explaining to do to the War Room posse.

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DOJ Sues Colorado For Offering In-State Tuition Aid To Illegal Immigrants

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Colorado on Thursday over state regulations that provide in-state tuition and financial aid to illegal immigrants.

The July 23 lawsuit, filed with the District Court for the District of Colorado, accused Colorado of ignoring Title 8 of the U.S. Code Section 1623, which bans illegal immigrants from being eligible for post-secondary education benefits in a state unless the same benefits are provided to all U.S. citizens, irrespective of their state of residence.

Colorado’s Advancing Students for a Stronger Tomorrow Act, initially passed in 2013 and amended in 2019 and 2022, allows illegal immigrant students living in the state to access in-state tuition and financial aid.

In-state tuition benefits are granted to eligible students when applying to Colorado public universities or community colleges, whereas out-of-state U.S. citizens are required to pay higher tuition rates at these institutions.

“These statutes constitute blatant unequal treatment favoring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens. Worse, such preferential treatment is squarely prohibited and preempted by Congress,” the lawsuit said.

According to a fact sheet from the Colorado Department of Higher Education, the Act removed several barriers that had prevented thousands of illegal immigrant high school students from qualifying for in-state tuition and financial benefits.

The 2022 revision of the Act reduced the time an illegal immigrant student needed to attend high school to obtain these benefits from at least three years to just one year.

Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, extending eligibility for post-secondary education benefits to illegal immigrants is “unconstitutional,” the lawsuit said. Several courts have struck down similar in-state tuition laws as unconstitutional.

For instance, earlier this month, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case filed by the Trump administration that Texas cannot offer in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants under its Dream Act, ruling that federal law overrides state policy.

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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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