Judicial
Watch Lawsuit Forces Release of Biden Interview Audio
Tapes
In another Judicial Watch
victory, our lawsuit forced the release of the audio recordings of former
President Joe Biden’s October 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert
Hur in the criminal investigation into his theft, retention, and disclosure
of classified records.
You can listen here:
justice.gov/storage/Biden-interview-with-Hur-part-1-October-8th.mp3
justice.gov/storage/Biden-interview-with-Hur-part-2-October-9th.mp3
We
filed the first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and are the lead plaintiff
asking for the Biden audio recordings (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department
of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-00700)). In February 2025, a federal
court ordered the Trump Justice Department to
declare whether it intended to continue denying our request for the audio,
which led to this release.
These tapes show why the Biden gang was
desperate to keep these audio tapes secret before the election to cover up
Biden’s obvious dementia. The Trump Justice Department quite correctly
ended the unlawful cover-up of these tapes.
In June 2024, the Biden
administration was forced to admit that the transcripts of audio
recordings of Biden’s interviews with Special Counsel Hur had been
altered and are not accurate. The transcripts were altered in a way, as the
actual audios show, to minimize evidence of Joe Biden’s cognitive
failure.
In April 2025, we uncovered Justice Department records showing White House staffers
suggesting edits to transcripts of President Biden’s interview. The
Justice Department also recently turned over to us 49 pages of records detailing pressure
asserted by the Biden White
House and Joe Biden’s personal lawyers on Special Counsel Robert Hur
regarding the interviews. Non-disclosure agreements signed by the
president’s lawyers were also included in the
records.
Judicial Watch Files Ethics Complaint
for Altercation at ICE Facility
We filed an ethics complaint to the U.S. House of
Representatives Office of Congressional Conduct against Representatives
LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), Rob Menendez (D-NJ), and Bonnie Watson Coleman
(D-NJ).
The complaint stems from misconduct during an altercation at the
Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility
in Newark, NJ, on May 9, 2025. We are requesting that the Office of
Congressional Conduct “recommend appropriate disciplinary measures,
including but not limited to expulsion, censure, fines, and referral to law
enforcement authorities, if violations are substantiated.” (McIver has
since been brought up on federal charges over the alleged
assault.)
The conduct of McIver, Menendez, and Watson Coleman not
only disrupted a secure federal facility but also endangered law
enforcement personnel and detainees – all as part of a political stunt.
The House needs to take action to punish this dangerous
misconduct.
The complaint reads as
follows:
Judicial Watch, a non-profit organization
dedicated to promoting transparency, accountability, and integrity in
government, submits this formal ethics complaint against Representatives
Rob
Menendez (NJ-08), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), and LaMonica McIver
(NJ-10) for their conduct during an altercation at the Delaney Hall
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Newark, New
Jersey, on May 9, 2025. Based on credible reports, including statements
from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), video evidence, and media
accounts, we allege that the Representatives’ actions violated House
ethics rules, federal law, and standards of conduct expected of Members of
Congress.
Background
On May 9, 2025,
Representatives Menendez, Watson Coleman, and McIver arrived unannounced at
the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility, claiming to exercise congressional
oversight authority. According to DHS, as a bus carrying detainees entered
the facility’s security gate, the Representatives, along with a group of
protesters, “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility,”
bypassing security protocols. DHS reported that Rep. LaMonica McIver
assaulted a federal ICE officer, with body camera footage allegedly showing
her “barreling unprovoked through law enforcement near the gate.” The
incident also involved the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for
trespassing, charged after reportedly ignoring warnings to leave the
facility’s premises.
The Representatives have disputed DHS’s
characterization, asserting they were exercising their legal right to
conduct unannounced oversight visits under federal law and denying
allegations of assault or improper entry. However, DHS maintains that the
lawmakers’ actions endangered law enforcement agents and detainees,
describing the incident as a “bizarre political stunt” and noting that
a formal tour would have been facilitated had the Representatives requested
one. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin further indicated that additional
arrests of the
Representatives remain “on the table,” citing evidence of assault
against ICE officers.
Alleged Violations
We
respectfully request that the Office of Congressional Ethics investigate
the following potential violations of House Rules, the Code of Official
Conduct, and federal law:
- Conduct Unbecoming a Member of
Congress (House Rule XXIII, Clause 1)
House Rule XXIII, Clause 1, states
that a Member “shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect
creditably on the House.” The Representatives’ alleged
actions—storming a secure federal facility, engaging in physical
altercations with federal officers, and contributing to a chaotic scene
that endangered law enforcement and detainees—appear to violate this
standard. Specifically, DHS’s claim that Rep. McIver assaulted an ICE
officer, supported by body camera footage, suggests conduct that undermines
the dignity and integrity of
the House. Even if the Representatives believed they were exercising
oversight authority, their failure to coordinate with ICE officials and
their alleged disregard for security protocols reflect poorly on their
roles as public servants. - Potential Violation of Federal Law (18
U.S.C. § 111 – Assaulting a Federal Officer)
DHS has accused Rep.
McIver of assaulting an ICE officer, with video evidence purportedly
showing her pushing past law enforcement personnel. Additionally, DHS
alleges that all three Representatives engaged in actions that could
constitute interference with federal operations. Such conduct may violate
18 U.S.C. § 111, which prohibits assaulting, resisting, or impeding
federal officers in the performance of their duties. While the
Representatives deny these allegations, the existence of body camera
footage and DHS’s public statements warrant an investigation to determine
whether their actions crossed
legal boundaries. - Misuse of Congressional Oversight
Authority
While Members of Congress have the legal right to conduct
unannounced oversight visits to ICE facilities, this authority does not
grant license to disrupt operations, bypass security, or engage in physical
confrontations. DHS reports that the Representatives failed to request a
formal tour, which would have been accommodated, and instead rushed through
security gates during a detainee transfer, creating a dangerous situation.
This conduct suggests a possible abuse of their oversight privileges for
political purposes, potentially violating House ethics standards that
require Members to act in good faith and within the bounds of their
authority. - Endangering Public Safety
The Representatives’
actions reportedly jeopardized the safety of ICE agents, detainees, and
protesters. DHS stated that their unauthorized entry “put the safety of
our law enforcement
agents and the detainees at risk.” By contributing to a chaotic scene
involving physical confrontations, the Representatives may have breached
their duty to uphold public safety, a core expectation of elected
officials. This is particularly concerning given the presence of a bus
carrying detainees, which heightened the sensitivity of the
situation.
Requested Action
Judicial Watch
urges the Office of Congressional Ethics to conduct a thorough
investigation into the conduct of Representatives Menendez, Watson Coleman,
and McIver during the May 9, 2025, incident at the Delaney Hall ICE
detention facility. We request that the Office:
Review all available
evidence, including DHS body camera footage, witness statements, and
communications between the Representatives and ICE
officials.
- Issue a formal request to all involved agencies and
individuals to preserve all relevant evidence, including
surveillance video, body camera footage, internal communications, visitor
logs, and official correspondence related to the incident.
- Review
all available evidence, including DHS body camera footage, witness
statements, and communications between the Representatives and ICE
officials.
- Determine whether the Representatives’ actions
violated House Rule XXIII, federal law (e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 111), or other
ethical standards.
- Assess whether the Representatives misused their
oversight authority for political purposes, thereby undermining public
trust in Congress.
- Recommend appropriate disciplinary measures,
including but not limited to expulsion, censure, fines, and referral to law
enforcement authorities, if violations are
substantiated.
Conclusion
The conduct of
Representatives Menendez, Watson Coleman, and McIver during the altercation
at the Delaney Hall ICE facility raises
serious questions about their adherence to House ethics rules, federal law,
and the standards of conduct expected of Members of Congress. Their alleged
actions not only disrupted a secure federal facility but also endangered
law enforcement personnel and detainees, potentially for political gain.
Judicial Watch respectfully requests that the Office of Congressional
Ethics investigate these allegations to ensure accountability and uphold
the integrity of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Judicial Watch is a national leader in
advocating high ethical standards in Congress.
In March 2024,
we filed a complaint to the Senate Select Committee
on Ethics calling for a full investigation into potential ethics violations
tied to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) for abusing his office to benefit
himself and his wife. The complaint read in part, “The publicly available
facts suggest that Senator Whitehouse’s legislative activity,
particularly his sponsorship of environmental legislation, funding his
wife’s clients and her specific area of expertise (marine spatial
planning), creates a reasonable appearance of a conflict of
interest.” In August 2019, we filed a complaint to the Unauthorized Practice
of Law Committee of the Rhode Island Supreme Court against Whitehouse for
filing an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on
behalf of four clients while maintaining inactive status as a lawyer. In
addition, we argued: “the brief Senator Whitehouse filed was unbecoming
of the legal profession as it is nothing more than an attack on the federal
judiciary and an open threat to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
In April
2021, we filed a complaint to the chairman of the House
Office of Congressional Ethics against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) for
violating House ethics rules by encouraging violence and attempting to
intimidate the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin. The complaint argues
that Rep. Maxine Waters encouraged violence by urging protestors to “get
more confrontational” if Chauvin was found not guilty.
In September
2019, we filed a complaint to the U.S. House of
Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics calling for further
investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar over
allegations that her alleged lover, Tim Mynett, received nearly $230,000
from her campaign since July 2018. The letter supplemented our July complaint demanding an
investigation of alleged marriage, immigration, tax, and other fraud
related to the allegation that Rep. Omar had married her brother.
In
March 2019, we filed a complaint to the Office of Congressional
Ethics about Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) controversial communications and
contacts with two congressional witnesses: Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS and
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer. The complaint
asked that Schiff, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Community, be
investigated in connection with revelations that he met with Simpson in
Aspen, CO, in July 2018 and that he and his staff coordinated with Cohen on
his testimony to congressional committees. Cohen’s testimony was alleged
to be false in several important respects. We also filed an ethics complaint in April 2018 against
Schiff and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) for improperly confirming classified
information in violation of House rules.
In 2011 we helped rewrite
House ethics rules, working with the then-Democratic majority to create the
Office of Congressional Ethics to try to ensure more transparency and
accountability in the House ethics
process.
Judicial Watch Sues FEMA over NYC
Illegal Immigrant Housing Payments
Taxpayer money was
misused to fund hotel rooms in New York City for illegal alien invaders.
The Trump administration should make the details of this potentially
illegal misuse of government funds transparent.
We filed a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) for records of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) payments to New York City for migrant housing (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department
of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-01579)).
Judicial Watch
sued after the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to respond to its
February 11, 2025, FOIA request for:
- Records
of Payments and Funding Allocations:
- Documents,
invoices, receipts, contracts, and financial records reflecting FEMA
payments to New York City or any associated entities under the Shelter and
Services Program (SSP) from January 1, 2023, to present.
- Any
records indicating whether these funds were
used for “hotels” or other accommodations.
- Internal
Communications and Directives:
- Emails, memos, or
other written communications between FEMA officials, DHS leadership, and
New York City officials regarding the use of FEMA funds for migrant
housing.
- Any internal communications discussing whether these
payments complied with federal policies and
regulations.
- Policy and Procedural
Guidelines:
Copies of FEMA and DHS policies governing the
Shelter and Services Program, including eligibility, approval processes,
and financial oversight mechanisms.
In February, Cameron Hamilton,
acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reportedly suspended payments to New
York City to house migrants and said that staff who made them will be held
accountable. Elon Musk wrote on X that we “just discovered
that FEMA
sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal
migrants.
It was also reported that four FEMA officials who
made the payments were fired. They include the agency’s chief financial
officer, two program analysts and a grant specialist. DHS Secretary Kristi
Noem wrote on X: “I have clawed back the
full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC
migrant hotels.”
Earlier this year, we sued Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for
records regarding his vow to resist the Trump administration’s mass
deportation and other immigration law enforcement
activities.
Trump DOJ Ends Sex Change Surgery
Right for Inmates
You won’t have to pay through your tax
dollars for sex change surgery for federal criminals anymore thanks to the
Trump Department of Justice. Our Corruption Chronicles
blog reports.
A ludicrous
Biden administration policy making costly treatments—including sex
reassignment surgery—a protected right for transgender prison inmates
under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been reversed by the
Trump administration. Under Biden, American taxpayers were on the hook for
experimental gender-affirming surgery, breast augmentation,
facial-feminization, permanent hair removal and other procedures for jailed
felons who claim to have gender dysphoria. In fact, the federal Bureau of
Prisons (BOP) even created a Transgender Executive Council and in 2022 agreed to provide gender-affirming
surgery for the first federal inmate, a trans man
incarcerated for a series of terrorist threats and an anthrax attack who
sued the BOP after it repeatedly denied his request for the procedure.
Under the agreement the BOP provided the trans man with vaginoplasty and
other “medically necessary gender-affirming procedures.”
The
Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) recently dismantled the outrageous
transgender surgery policy for federal inmates and has been diligent in
countering it for state prisoners as well. In two Georgia cases, the DOJ
reversed support granted under Biden to provide inmates with sexual
reassignment surgeries at state expense. “The prior administration
portrayed such claims as necessary medical care for gender dysphoria under
the ADA,” the DOJ writes in a statement that goes on to say it was
based on guidelines that were politically motivated and based on junk
science. The Biden administration had validated in a court filing a Georgia inmate’s
assertion that treatment for gender dysphoria is a protected right under
the ADA as well as the Eighth Amendment. “[T]he Eighth Amendment requires
prison officials to provide incarcerated people with adequate medical care
for serious medical conditions,” the Biden DOJ wrote in the filing. “It
is well established that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition.
Prison officials demonstrate deliberate indifference to a substantial risk
of serious harm—and thus violate the Eighth Amendment—when
they categorically refuse to provide medically necessary gender-affirming
surgery to an incarcerated individual with gender dysphoria.”
The
recent DOJ court actions, both in Georgia, undo the Biden
administration’s “abuse of the legal system that pushed an agenda
driven by politics, not law,” according to the agency, which explains
that it withdrew an incorrect statement of interest in one case and
submitted a new statement of interest in a separate case brought by
prisoners seeking the state to provide “dangerous, elective surgery as
treatment of inmates’ gender dysphoria claims.” The new filings lay
bare the Biden administration’s manipulation of supposed medical
guidelines to try to create an inmate’s right to optional surgeries where
no such entitlement exists, the DOJ confirms. “There has never been an
Eighth Amendment right for inmates to demand elective and experimental
surgeries,” said Assistant
Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
“The prior administration’s nonsensical reading of the Americans with
Disabilities Act was an affront to the very people the statute intended to
protect.”
In one case a 45-year-old woman, Ronnie Fuller, sentenced
to life for murder sued the state alleging Eighth Amendment violations for
being denied access to a mastectomy. In 2017 she told a mental health
counselor she had feelings of body hatred and depression and was eventually
diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The murderer requested and was provided
with hormone replacement therapy and later demanded a subcutaneous
mastectomy, claiming emotional distress and mental anguish for “want of a
preferred top surgery.” However, gender dysphoria is not a disability
under the ADA, the DOJ confirms in its recent statement of interest to the court.
“The ADA specifically excludes from its definition of “disability”
“transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism,
gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other
sexual behavior disorders,” the federal court document states. In the
other case supported by the Biden administration, a man incarcerated for
decades for an unidentified crime sued the state to fund his sex-change
surgery to become a woman. “The United States has since disavowed the
scientific theories” of World Professional Association for Transgender
Health, a key source used in the Biden administration court document
supporting the trans inmate, according to the DOJ reversal under Trump. The legal document
also states that the previous administration “wrongly asserted that
gender dysphoria necessitated elective care to abate risk of
suicide.”
Memorial Day – 250
Years of Sacrifice
As we spend the next few days celebrating
and honoring our Fallen Heroes for Memorial Day, let us think back to the
ultimate sacrifices of our Founding generation as we begin the 250th
Celebration of our nation’s creation.
George Washington, as a veteran, was very much aware of the price of war as
he accepted the commission of Commander-in-Chief. In his address to the New York Provincial
Congress nearly 250 years ago, he reassured the assembly that
citizen-soldiers would defend the country with their lives and reject the
temptations of military tyranny:
At ⟨the same time that
with you I deplore⟩ the unhappy Necessity of suc⟨h an Appointment, as
that⟩ with which I am now honoured, ⟨I cannot but feel sentiments⟩ of
the highest Gratitude for this af⟨fecting Instance of⟩ Distinction &
Regard.
May your warmest w⟨ish be realized in⟩ the Success of
America at this importa⟨nt and interesting⟩ Period; & be
assured that, every Exertion ⟨of my worthy Colleagues⟩ & myself, will
be equally extended to ⟨the re establishment⟩ of Peace & Harmony
between the Mother ⟨Country and the⟩ Colonies. As to the fatal, but
necessary Opera⟨tions of War.⟩ When we assumed the Soldier, we did not
⟨lay aside the⟩ Citizen, & we shall most sincerely rejoice ⟨with you
in⟩ that happy Hour, when the Establishment ⟨of American⟩
L⟨iber⟩ty on the most firm, & solid Foundat⟨ions, shall enable us⟩
to return to our private Stations in ⟨the bosom of a⟩ free, peaceful, &
happy Country.
Washington and his army were willing to
engage in the “fatal operation” of war – not for despotic power but
for a “free, peaceful and happy Country.” Tens of thousands of patriots
died in the Revolutionary War. On this Memorial Day, a quarter of a
millennium later, we should mourn and give special honor
to their sacrifice as if it were yesterday.
Until next week,
