Tag: doj

Justice Department Sues Four States Including Georgia After Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger Sides With Democrats in Failure to Produce Voter Rolls

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has launched federal lawsuits against four states, Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, for refusing to turn over full, unredacted voter registration lists upon request, according to official DOJ filings and press statements.

This latest filing brings the total number of federal lawsuits against states over voter data to 22 nationwide.

The centerpiece of the legal offensive is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who has inexplicably aligned with Democratic state officials and election bureaucrats in resisting federal efforts to access complete voter rolls ahead of the 2026 midterms.

DOJ attorneys filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia after the materials provided by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office were incomplete and failed to include key data fields requested by federal officials, such as voters’ full names, dates of birth, residential addresses, state driver’s license numbers, or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

Raffensperger, however, said his office provided the Justice Department with documentation outlining the state’s voter roll maintenance practices along with the publicly available voter registration data.

“Georgia has the cleanest voter rolls in the country because we verify citizenship through the federal SAVE database, use SSA (Social Security Administration) data to remove dead voters, and share data with other states to identify and remove voters who have moved,” Secretary Raffensperger said in a statement.

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DOJ Wins Motion to Unseal Documents on Investigation into Trump Shooter Thomas Crooks

The Department of Justice announced that it successfully moved to unseal documents related to the investigation into would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks. 

“The Department of Justice received court approval to disclose to Congress documents gathered as part of the FBI’s investigation of Thomas Crooks and his attempt to assassinate President Trump,” the Western District of Pennsylvania announced on X.

A copy of the motion and order can be found here.

On July 13, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot President Trump in the ear from a nearby rooftop as he was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania. One rallygoer was killed in the shooting, and two were injured.

Questions still remain surrounding the failure by law enforcement and Secret Service to secure the area, as well as Crooks’s background.

Crooks used a range finder device and flew a drone at the Butler rally site between approximately 3:50 and 4:05 pm that day, during a period when the Secret Service was allegedly experiencing connectivity issues.

An eyewitness at the scene told the BBC that several people witnessed the shooter crawling on the roof of a local building with a rifle before Trump was shot, but they did not act until Trump was shot. According to later reports, a police officer encountered the shooter on the roof but let him go after he pointed the gun at him and before he shot Trump.

It seems unlikely we will get answers, as the FBI recently concluded that he acted alone.

The records sought by the DOJ, “such as telephone and internet service providers, email services, financial institutions, and others,” relate to the grand jury investigation and were obtained under a grand jury subpoena.

“The United States seeks to disclose pre-existing business records that were created for purposes independent of the Crooks grand jury investigation. Disclosure will reveal only the information contained in the documents, and will not reveal what, if anything, occurred before the grand jury,” the motion reads.

“By moving to unseal these documents, we hope to give the American people more answers about that fateful day in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X, touting the Trump Administration as “the most transparent administration in American history.”

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Massie says DOJ’s Epstein release ‘grossly fails’ to meet legal obligations

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a leading sponsor of the law requiring the Trump administration to release the full Jeffrey Epstein files, said Friday that the Justice Department is “grossly” violating its legal obligations. 

In a social media post, Massie said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her chief deputy, Todd Blanche, who orchestrated Friday’s document release, are skirting the law that President Trump enacted exactly a month ago.

“Unfortunately, today’s document release by @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that @realDonaldTrump signed just 30 days ago,” Massie posted on X. 

He referred to a similarly critical post that Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the lead sponsor of the Epstein transparency law, had published shortly beforehand, which accused the DOJ of using heavy-handed redactions without explanation. 

“One document, 119 pages of Grand Jury testimony, was completely redacted,” Khanna said.

“@RepRoKhanna is correct,” Massie wrote in response.

Khanna and Massie had joined forces on legislation to release the full Epstein files, which was initially opposed by Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. That changed over the summer, when the pair brought a number of alleged victims of the late sex offender to Capitol Hill, where they pressed GOP leaders to stage a vote on the legislation. 

It didn’t work initially. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) refused those entreaties, saying the better strategy for investigating Epstein’s associates was through the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is conducting its own probe. 

The tipping point came in November, after the government shutdown, when Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was sworn in to replace her late father and immediately signed a discharge petition to force the Khanna bill to the floor. 

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Justice Department Quietly Reverses Clinton-Era Rule On Immigrant Welfare Benefits

For almost 30 years, a key part of America’s 1996 welfare reform laws has existed mostly on paper after the Clinton DOJ effectively nullified it with a loophole. Now, the Trump DOJ says it’s time to enforce those laws as Congress originally wrote them.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel quietly reversed a Clinton-era legal opinion that had sharply limited when immigrants could be denied federal welfare benefits. The earlier interpretation narrowed the law so much, critics say, that it allowed many immigrants – including some who were not lawfully eligible – to continue receiving benefits Congress intended to restrict.

The new DOJ opinion restores a broader reading of the law, potentially expanding waiting periods for benefits, strengthening sponsor repayment requirements, and closing loopholes that have existed since the late 1990s.

What Congress Intended in 1996

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) along with major immigration reforms. The message was straightforward: immigrants should be self-sufficient, public benefits should not encourage immigration, and American taxpayers should not be responsible for supporting new arrivals.

To enforce those goals, Congress created several rules:

  • Most lawful permanent residents were barred from receiving “means-tested” federal benefits during their first five years in the U.S.
  • Family members who sponsored immigrants had to sign legally binding affidavits promising to support them.
  • If a sponsored immigrant received certain benefits, the government could seek reimbursement from the sponsor.
  • When agencies evaluated eligibility for benefits, they were required to count the sponsor’s income as part of the immigrant’s resources.

Congress defined “federal public benefit” broadly but never formally defined the term “federal means-tested public benefit.” That gap would become critical.

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Timeline: The Sabotage Of The Clinton Foundation Investigation

This week, Senator Chuck Grassley released Department of Justice and FBI records that provide a new look on how FBI and DOJ leadership sabotaged the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

These records, which include internal emails, summaries of high-level meetings and calls, and intelligence from confidential human sources, reveal the Clinton Foundation investigation was sabotaged from the start.

During the Obama Administration, both DOJ and FBI leadership were openly hostile to the investigation. US Attorneys declined to cooperate, denying requests for subpoenas or other investigative support. And during the first Trump Administration, actors within the FBI and DOJ obstructed and delayed the development of the investigation by not approving the release of FBI materials and slowing the release of witness interviews to investigators. A frustrating tale of corruption and incompetence.

Relying on these new documents, as well as other public source materials and Special Counsel John Durham’s report, here is the comprehensive timeline of the Clinton Foundation investigation, as well as other parts of the overall Clinton corruption investigation that are relevant. It is an infuriating tale of corruption and incompetence from the highest levels of government which ultimately protected the Clinton’s schemes to trade on their political influence for millions of dollars.

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Blanche says DOJ won’t release full Epstein files by Friday deadline

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice (DOJ) would not be releasing the full Epstein files on Friday as required under new legislation, instead sending over a partial batch.

Blanche told Fox News the Justice Department would release “several hundred thousand” documents on Friday, “and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more.”

Blanche attributed the delay to the need to redact any names or identifying information about witnesses, but failing to turn over the full unclassified files could run afoul of the law, which gave the department 30 days to publicly share the documents.

“So today is the 30 days when I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today. And those documents will come in in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein,” Blanche said.

“What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story, to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected. And so I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks.”

DOJ was compelled to turn over the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a bill that got near-unanimous support in Congress, signed into law after President Trump reversed his earlier stance opposing their release.

While the bill does allow for redactions related to victims and for DOJ to withhold some information about the investigation, it does not provide a rolling deadline to turn over the documents.

Under the law, the DOJ has 15 days to turn over its rationale for any documents withheld.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said not releasing the required files in full amounts to breaking the law.

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Nevada is the latest of 18 states sued by US government for voter data

The lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division adds Nevada to a growing list of 18 states facing litigation over sensitive state voter data.

The suit comes after months of DOJ demands for complete state voting registration lists, which Nevada and other states have repeatedly denied and called intimidation in an effort to influence elections. President Donald Trump lost all 18 states in the 2020 election, with Nevada one of three states with Republican governors.

The Trump administration said in the filings that it would like to use the voting registrations to verify the states are following federal election law in an effort to strengthen voting security.

Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution says states administer elections and determine their “Times, Places and Manner.”

Nevada, along with most other states, had already denied a request to provide the sensitive voter data. The initial request by the DOJ Civil Rights Division in August called for complete voter registration lists – including Social Security numbers and information about driver’s licenses. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said at the time that the state needed more time to look over the “unprecedented” request.

“Despite our simple requests for information on how they’re going to keep this data secure, they’ve given us no clear answers,” Aguilar wrote in response to the suit filing announced Friday. “It’s my duty to follow Nevada law and protect the best interests of Nevadans, which includes protecting their sensitive information and access to the ballot.”

The DOJ Civil Rights Division announced similar suits in Colorado, Hawaii and Massachusetts on Friday. They also sued for 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia after an ongoing election interference case against Trump and allies in the state was dismissed last month.

“At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

Wyoming and Indiana provided complete voting registration lists with driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers. Ten other states responded to the DOJ Civil Rights Division with publicly available versions of the voter registration lists, with the sensitive information redacted.

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In rare public comments, career DOJ officials offer chilling warnings about online network 764

In striking and chilling terms, several career Justice Department officials on Thursday offered dire warnings about the online extremist network “764,” whose young followers around the world use popular social media platforms to target, groom and push vulnerable teens into harming themselves and others.

“I don’t think Stephen King is dark enough to come up with some of the stuff that these kids are coming up with,” said Justin Sher, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

“It is as serious a threat as you can imagine,” Sher’s Justice Department colleague James Donnelly said. “[And] they’re trying to metastasize the evil.”

Their comments came during a panel about 764 hosted by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. It was a rare public appearance for two career prosecutors who the panel’s moderator described as “the point people” on 764 within the department’s National Security Division.

Sher and Donnelly both noted that 764 members are increasingly trying to push victims to take deadly actions, including suicide or school shootings and other mass-casualty attacks.

As ABC News has previously reported, 764 members find vulnerable victims on popular online platforms, elicit private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then use that sensitive material to threaten and blackmail victims into mutilating themselves, harming others, or taking other violent action — all while streaming it on social media so others can watch and then disseminate recordings of it.

“For them, content is currency,” Sher said. “So they are building their content inventory … and putting it out there to build their status within these groups.”

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Epstein files release in chaos as Trump officials scramble to redact thousands of documents hours before deadline

Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice is working around the clock to redact thousands of pages from the Epstein files before their legally required release Friday.

White House officials are bracing for the release of the files after Trump has been the subject of rampant speculation about his connection to Epstein. 

Also believed to be in the files are former President Bill Clinton, the former Prince Andrew, and others.

There are fears that the same rushed workflow and deadline could lead to similar mistakes to the release of the JFK assassination files, which unintentionally revealed the social security numbers of more than 200 people. 

Pam Bondi’s DOJ lawyers are worried that the the Justice Department’s National Security Division don’t have the proper guidance on how to provide the most information legally possible. 

Attorneys for the DOJ are reportedly working on over 1,000 documents per week to get the files ready in time to meet their deadline, CNN reported. 

They must be able to edit the files to protect the victims of the late billionaire pedophile and meet executive and legal privacy requirements. Many are preparing for more to be redacted than is legally necessary. 

‘Either they’re going to screw it up or they’re going to withhold things. It wouldn’t surprise me. Some of it may be incompetence as much as deliberate,’ a non-DOJ lawyer awaiting the release said. 

The DOJ has asked additional counter-intelligence specialists to drop everything else they were doing to process the files. Some refused the assignment.  

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FBI repeatedly warned DOJ didn’t have probable cause to raid Trump home: ‘Not been corroborated’

he FBI in summer 2022 raised repeated objections to raiding Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, warning agents did not believe the Biden Justice Department had enough evidence to establish “probable cause” that the then-former president had broken the law in handling classified documents, according to bombshell memos turned over Tuesday to Congress.

“WFO [FBI’s Washington Field Office] has conducted approximately [Redacted] interviews related to this matter. Very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents,” a June 1, 2022 FBI memo declared. “From the interviews, WFO has gathered information suggesting that there may be additional boxes (presumably of the same type as were sent back to NARA [National Archives] in January) at Mar-a-Lago.”

“WFO has been drafting a Search Warrant affidavit related to these potential boxes, but has some concerns that the information is single source, has not been corroborated, and may be dated. DOJ CES [Counterintelligence and Export Control Section] opines, however, that the SWs [search warrants] meet the probable cause standard,” that memo read.

Over a month later, FBI agents raised more concerns, including about the legality of searching Trump’s personal residence at the Mar-a-Lago residence, the memos show.

“DOJ has inquired as to an Ops Plan for a SW of MAL [Mar-a-Lago]. I let them know we are not in agreement for PC [probable cause] on the SW [search warrant] and that we already had an Ops Plan in place that will [sic] can be quickly updated between FBI/MM [Miami Field Office] and FBI/WF [Washington Field Office],” a redacted FBI agent in the nation’s capital wrote in a July 12, 2022 email. “However, WF-[Redacted] does not believe we have PC for the 45 Office or the bedroom due to recency and issues of boxes versus classified information. Therefore, as we are in disagreement on the SW and its scope, we are not yet finalizing a SW as we are missing relevant logistics and details.”

Just the News obtained a copy of the memos after Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel declassified them and turned them over to Congress.

“Received shocking new docs 2day from DOJ & FBI showing FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres[ident] Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. “Based on the records, Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice.”

The emails were turned over to the Senate and House Judiciary committees, ahead of a planned deposition Wednesday from ex-special prosecutor Jack Smith, who inherited the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case just months after the August 2022 raid of Trump’s home that rocked the political world ahead of the 2024 election.

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