NEW Lawsuit on Covid Cover-up!
[INSIDE JW]
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FILES STATEMENT OF INTEREST IN JUDICIAL WATCH’S
LAWSUIT TO COMPEL OREGON TO CLEAN VOTER ROLLS
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The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest
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in our lawsuit that calls on Oregon’s secretary of state to make
“a reasonable effort to remove” the registrations of ineligible
registrants from the voter rolls as required by federal law (_Judicial
Watch, et al. v. The State of Oregon et al._
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(No. 6:24-cv-01783)). U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. McShane set
a hearing
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in the case for June 18 at 10:00 a.m.
We applaud the Trump Justice Department’s decision to join our
effort to expose dirty voter rolls in Oregon. Judicial Watch, for
years, has done the heavy lifting alone.
The National Voter Registration Act
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(NVRA) requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a
reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the
names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence. The
law requires registrations to be cancelled when voters fail to respond
to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the next two
general federal elections. Judicial Watch’s lawsuit alleges
Oregon’s voting rolls are among the worst maintained in the nation.
In a Justice Department press release Assistant Attorney General for
the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon said
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“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that
elections in Oregon are conducted fairly, accurately, and without
fraud…. States have specific obligations under the list maintenance
provisions of the NVRA, and the Department of Justice will vigorously
enforce those requirements.”
Our lawsuit pointed out that the federal “NVRA supersedes and
preempts any Oregon law or practice” that claimed to limit or
delegate the state’s obligations under federal law. The Justice
Department’s statement of interest
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explains, “This case presents important questions regarding
enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act,” adding,
“Congress has vested the Attorney General with authority to enforce
the NVRA on behalf of the United States.” The statement takes the
same position as Judicial Watch when it argues that “[b]y its plain
terms, the NVRA identifies one entity, the state, that is required to
carry out obligations for voter registration administration[.]” The
Justice Department focuses on the state’s obligation to make voter
registration lists available to Judicial Watch and the public, as
federal law requires.
We filed the lawsuit
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in
October 2024 to enforce basic voter list maintenance provisions under
Section 8 of the NVRA after uncovering
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a
broad failure to clean up voter rolls in dozens of Oregon counties.
In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed
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that
such removals are mandatory.
Judicial Watch’s lawsuit argues that Oregon’s voter rolls contain
large numbers of old, inactive registrations; and that 29 of
Oregon’s 36 counties removed few or no registrations as required by
federal election law. Judicial Watch asserts that Oregon and 35 of its
counties had overall registration rates exceeding 100%; and that
Oregon has the highest known inactive registration rate of any state
in the nation. In combination, all of these facts show that Oregon is
failing to remove inactive registrations pursuant to Section
8(d)(1)(B) of the NVRA. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court
for the Northern District of Oregon, Eugene Division, to compel the
defendants to comply with their voter list maintenance obligations
under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
In April 2025, we announced
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that
our analysis and use of voter registration lists has led to lawsuits
and legal actions under the NVRA that have resulted in the removal
of five million
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names from
voter rolls in nearly a dozen states and localities over the last
several years.
We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights.
In March 2025, we sent a notice letter
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to Lt.
Governor Deidre M. Henderson, notifying her that Utah is currently in
violation of the NVRA’s public disclosure requirements. The notice
letter warns of a lawsuit after 90 days if the issues are not resolved
In May 2024, we sued
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California to clean up its voter rolls. The lawsuit, filed on behalf
of Judicial Watch and the Libertarian Party of California, similarly
asks the court to compel California to make “a reasonable effort”
to remove ineligible registrants from the rolls as required by federal
law.
In July 2024, we asked
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a federal
court to reject the State of Illinois’ motion to dismiss Judicial
Watch’s lawsuit to compel the state to clean up its voter rolls. The
lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern
District of Illinois, on behalf of Judicial Watch, the nonprofit
organizations Illinois Family Action
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and Breakthrough Ideas
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and Carol J. Davis, a lawfully
registered Illinois voter.
JUDICIAL WATCH SUES PENTAGON ON REPORTED COVID INFECTIONS AT WUHAN
GAMES
We’re still uncovering the truth about Wuhan and Covid.
We filed a FOIA lawsuit
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against the U.S. Department of Defense for all records regarding U.S.
military personnel possibly contracting Covid-19 in October 2019
during the World Military Games in Wuhan, China (_Judicial Watch Inc.
v. U.S. Department of Defense_
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(No. 1:25-cv-01807)).
Our lawsuit cites a December 2022 report
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issued by the Pentagon titled “Report to the Committees on Armed
Services of the Senate and House of Representatives: 2019 World
Military Games” which states that seven “service members who
attended the games exhibited COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms”
during the time surrounding their attendance at the games.
The report was not made public until April 2025
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after former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) asked the Defense Department
for a full investigation. While the report had been provided to the
House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022, the Biden
administration apparently suppressed it.
We sued the Defense Department after it failed to respond to an April
28, 2025, FOIA request for:
> All reports, studies, memoranda, and/or analyses produced by or sent
> to the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense, and/or Deputy Secretary
> of Defense related to US military personnel contracting a SARS-like
> or Covid-19-like virus at the Wuhan Games in October 2019.
In the 2021 documentary “What Really Happened in Wuhan,” Sky News
Australia reported
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that a month after evidence emerged that the virus leaked from the
Wuan Institute of Virology, the city of Wuhan hosted the Military
Games, with more than 9,000 athletes from around the world in
attendance. “The opening ceremony was held on October 18, 2019, and
two weeks later, athletes begun returning home to more than 100
countries.”
The National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine
published a January 2021 article
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“The impact of
the World Military Games on the COVID-19 pandemic,” which cites a
study published
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on January 19, 2021 that “examined the hypothesis that the large
gathering in a pandemic epicenter was a factor in the spread of
COVID-19 disease.”
Let’s cut to the chase: the Pentagon should release each and every
document about military personnel possibly being infected by Covid in
2019 in Wuhan, China – months before the public learned of Covid.
The time for FOIA games is over.
We are the national leader in exposing key information about fraud,
abuse, and government secrets concerning Covid-19. In the book
“Rights and Freedoms in Peril: An Investigative Report on the
Left’s Attack on America
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Tom
Fitton examines the impact of Covid-19 related policies on electoral
processes, and expresses concerns about the potential for increased
voter fraud and chaos.
In May 2025, we received records
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from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that reveal its
plans to mandate Covid-19 vaccinations for 17 million healthcare
employees and that only one of 4,682 claims for injuries and deaths
due to Covid-19 “countermeasures” at the time was compensated.
Records uncovered in 2024 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) through a FOIA request showed an April 2020 email exchange with
several officials in the bureau’s Newark Field Office referring to
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in
China as including “gain-of-function research
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which “would leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation.”
Records from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that a
Pfizer study surveyed 23 people in 2021 to gauge reactions to its
Covid vaccine booster before asking the FDA
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to approve it.
Records
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from the
Health and Human Services included the initial grant application and
annual reports to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
from EcoHealth Alliance
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describing the aim of its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to
create mutant viruses “to better predict the capacity of our CoVs
[coronaviruses] to infect people.”
Health and Human Services records included emails
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of
then-Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins
showing a British physicians’ group recommended the use of
Ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19.
Records
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from Health and Human Services regarding data Moderna submitted to the
Food and Drug Administration on its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine indicated a
“statistically significant” number of rats were born with skeletal
deformations after their mothers were injected with the vaccine. The
documents also revealed Moderna elected not to conduct a number of
standard pharmacological studies on the laboratory test animals.
Food and Drug Administration records detailed pressure
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for
Covid-19 vaccine booster approval and use.
NIH records revealed
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an FBI
“inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant
tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records also show
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in
China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016. The Fauci agency was
also concerned about EcoHealth Alliance’s
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of compliance with reporting
rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research
involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
HHS records revealed that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277
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was given to the
Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.
NIAID records showed that it gave nine China-related grants to
EcoHealth Alliance
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to research
coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants
to the Wuhan lab itself. The records also included an email from the
vice director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding
disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and indoor
surfaces.
HHS records included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci
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email chain,
citing ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth
Alliance
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The government emails
also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates
worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for
Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help
“raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from
China on important international counsels as high level commitment
from China.”
HHS records included a grant application for research involving the
coronavirus that appeared to describe “gain-of-function
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research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses,
attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically
manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone.
HHS records showed the State Department and NIAID knew immediately in
January 2020 that China was withholding Covid data
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which was
hindering risk assessment and response by public health officials.
University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) records
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showed the former director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the
University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Dr. James W. Le Duc
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warned Chinese
researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology of potential
investigations into the Covid issue by Congress.
HHS records regarding biodistribution studies and related data for the
Covid-19 vaccines showed a key component of the vaccines developed by
Pfizer/BioNTech, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), were found outside the
injection site
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mainly the liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries of test animals,
eight to 48 hours after injection.
Records from the Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP) revealed safety
lapses
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and violations at U.S. biosafety laboratories that conduct research on
dangerous agents and toxins.
HHS records included emails
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between National Institutes of Health (NIH) then-Director Francis
Collins
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and Fauci,
the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID), about hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19.
HHS records showed that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms
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to China’s terms
and that the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased,
“strictly confidential” Covid-19 epidemiological analysis in
January 2020.
Fauci emails
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included
his approval of a press release supportive of China’s response to
the 2019 novel coronavirus.
Our four-part documentary
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regarding the
coordinated effort by the government and Big Tech to censor and
suppress information on topics such as Hunter Biden’s laptop,
Covid-19, and election debates is available here
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FBI’S PATEL AND BONGINO: HOSTAGES OF THE DEEP STATE?
As many Americans do, we look at President Trump’s FBI and wonder
what’s going on. Too many questions arise about the performance of
its leaders. Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, takes
a look
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in _Investigative Bulletin_.
> Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have been stalwart allies of the
> conservative movement—and good friends of Judicial Watch—for
> many years. Judicial Watch applauded their appointments as director
> and deputy director of the FBI. Expectations were high. In a
> statement
>
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> following Patel’s confirmation as FBI director, JW President Tom
> Fitton noted that Patel has “his work set out for him.” He
> called on Patel to “bring transparency and accountability back to
> an agency that became irredeemably corrupt and the tip of the spear
> in unfettered lawfare against any American seen as a threat to the
> ruling class. From sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in order to
> influence the 2020 election, the raid of President Trump’s
> Mar-a-Lago home, and the censorship of Americans, to the targeting
> of traditional Catholics, the FBI has shown itself as a tainted
> domestic and intelligence service.”
> Veteran Washington reformers like Fitton understand that Patel’s
> time for true change is limited. The Deep State, the forces of
> inertia, and the political calendar are all working against him.
> These days, as well, conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting
> signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep
> State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the
> FBI.
> An early warning sign came in April when Patel plucked Steven Jensen
> from exile in Columbia, South Carolina, and appointed him head of
> the FBI’s powerful Washington Field Office. Conservatives were
> aghast. As chief of the Domestic Terrorism Section at FBI
> headquarters in 2020 and 2021, Jensen led a highly damaging
> law-enforcement campaign against the January 6 protestors, raising
> the specter of domestic terrorism.
> Jensen was “a true believer in Joe Biden’s domestic terrorism
> narrative,” retired FBI supervisor George Hill told
>
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> Miranda Devine of the New York Post, “…that every Trump
> supporter in and around Capitol Hill [on January 6] was an
> insurrectionist, a white supremacist and probably violent.”
> Jensen “set up the infrastructure for that [domestic terrorism
> narrative],” Hill told Devine. “He made the decisions, set up
> the mechanisms whereby all the cases would be opened around the
> country to give the picture that this was a nationwide problem.
> Previously it would have been opened up [as one case with multiple
> suspects] in Washington — but by opening it that way, you allowed
> [then-FBI Director] Chris Wray to sit in Congress and say domestic
> terrorism was a nationwide problem.”
> Patel and Bongino vigorously defended Jensen. Appearing on Fox News
>
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they urged patience.
> “Just wait,” Bongino said, “and you’ll see. Nothing we’re
> doing—nothing—is by accident.”
> Two months later, we’re still waiting.
> Meanwhile, more concerns have surfaced. Media reports
>
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> about Patel’s jet-setting lifestyle and love of sporting events
> can largely be dismissed as sour grapes from the opposition press.
> But the disquiet about the FBI’s lack of transparency and failure
> to mount significant investigations is not easily ignored.
> Exhibit A is the uproar over the Jeffrey Epstein files. In February,
> following a much-ballyhooed campaign promising new disclosures,
> Attorney General Pam Bondi released an underwhelming batch of
> documents, most of which turned out to be already in the public
> domain or heavily redacted. Bondi pinned the blame on the FBI
>
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> and promised more documents to come as soon as the next day. No
> documents were forthcoming. Judicial Watch repeatedly asked the FBI
> to turn over the Epstein files under the Freedom of Information Act.
> The FBI did not respond to the JW requests and in April, Judicial
> Watch sued for the records
>
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“The
> Justice Department needs to respond to public demands for
> transparency under law and release the Epstein files under FOIA,”
> said JW’s Fitton.
> The Epstein case is not the only instance of a troubling lack of
> transparency at the Justice Department and the FBI. Officials have
> been stonewalling Judicial Watch—the national leader in FOIA
> actions related to government corruption—in some cases for years.
> Seven years ago, for example, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit
>
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> for text messages between FBI agents involved in the bogus “Russia
> Collusion” investigation of Donald Trump. The FBI has refused to
> turn over many of the texts and related documents—or even disclose
> what they are withholding.
> JW sued the Justice Department
>
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> in 2023 and 2024—for communications surrounding the controversial
> Hunter Biden laptop story. And in October 2024, JW sued the Justice
> Department for communications among top officials about anti-Trump
> social media posts by a senior agent
>
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involved in
> an investigation of a Florida assassination attempt against Trump.
> The Justice Department and FBI response to these requests?
> Stonewalls, silence, and foot-dragging.
> Installation in key positions of Deep State actors like Jensen and
> lack of transparency are not the only strikes against Bondi, Patel,
> and Bongino. Perhaps most disturbing is their failure to act
> decisively to reduce the vast powers of the Justice Department and
> the FBI.
> “President Trump was almost jailed by his own Justice Department
> in his first term,” Steve Bannon recently reminded viewers in a
> War Room interview with Fitton. It’s a segment worth viewing in
> its entirety.
>
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> “There’s no evidence the FBI thinks it is subject to the rule of
> law,” Fitton said. “Kash Patel and Pam Bondi need to take a much
> more aggressive [approach] and have an expansive understanding as to
> what their opportunities and roles are.”
> “It’s a systemic problem,” Bannon said. “It’s not just a
> personnel problem. [The FBI] has to be taken apart brick by
> brick.”
> The outlines of an aggressive inquiry that would set the stage for
> reducing the power of the Justice Department and FBI are obvious:
> get to the bottom of the targeting of Trump and his allies in the
> Russiagate scandal; look at the FBI role in the Hunter Biden laptop
> case and the limiting of the story’s media circulation at a
> critical moment in the 2020 election; expose the roots of the 2022
> Mar-a-Lago raid; connect the dots of FBI targeting of conservative
> Catholics, parents attending school board meetings, and pro-life
> groups.
> Doubtless Bondi, Patel, and Bongino have their hands full managing
> the day-to-day affairs of their giant bureaucracies. Conservatives
> still wish them well, but time is running out. And the president who
> promised to “demolish the Deep State
>
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> is watching from the White House. They will not be forgiven for
> bungling a historic opportunity.
L.A. RIOTERS FIGHT TO KEEP RAPISTS, MURDERERS, GANGBANGERS ON CITY
STREETS
We’ve reported for years on the dangerous criminals among those who
have illegally crossed our southern border. Now, those on the Left are
pretending they don’t exist. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog sets
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the record straight.
> Rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers,
> gangbangers and other violent criminals loose on city streets, the
> Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirms this week
> contradicting open border groups, media outlets and California
> Democrats who claim only hard-working, law-abiding immigrants were
> cruelly arrested in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICEO)
> sweeps that ignited pandemonium in the City of Angels. Federal
> agents and local police officers have been violently attacked, cars
> set on fire, businesses looted and roads blocked. Elected officials
> in the Golden State condemn the ICE operations as an attack on
> immigrant families and mainstream media outlets downplay the riots
> as protests and civil unrest. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
> dismissed rioters burning cars and breaking windows as being caught
> up in “the exuberance of the moment.”
>
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The
> mainstream media coverage has also focused on the family men
> arrested by ICE and the spouses and children suffering over their
> sudden absence. A local newspaper story
>
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> features an arrested migrant’s wife who joined a peaceful protest
> held by families of other detained men to make a public plea for
> help and due process.
> DHS is setting the record straight by releasing detailed criminal
> information about the illegal immigrants—all men—recently
> arrested in the L.A. sweep, which started about a week ago.
> California sanctuary politicians and rioters are defending heinous
> illegal alien criminals including child pedophiles and other violent
> offenders at the expense of Americans’ safety, the agency created
> after 9/11 to safeguard the nation writes in a statement
>
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> issued this week. Instead of rioting, Californians should be
> thanking ICE officers who make our communities safe, DHS further
> points out, questioning why California Governor Gavin Newsom and
> L.A. Mayor Karen Bass care more about violent criminal illegal
> aliens than they do about protecting their own citizens? While
> federal agents were getting assaulted in Bass’s city, she sided
> with lawlessness over law enforcement, according to ICE Director
> Todd Lyons, who reveals the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)
> took over two hours to respond
>
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> when his agents, vastly outnumbered by over 1,000 rioters, were
> surrounded and attacked. “The brave men and women of ICE were in
> Los Angeles arresting criminal illegal aliens including gang
> members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault,
> cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling,”
> Lyons said.
> DHS assures that ICE will continue to “arrest vicious illegal
> alien criminals” even as rioters disrupt law enforcement.
> Fortunately, President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and
> Marines to maintain order. Bass, L.A.’s leftist mayor, finally
> implemented a curfew after several nights of extensive looting and
> vandalism. She insists most of the rioters are peacefully
> demonstrating and called the curfew an effort to “curb bad actors
> who do not support the immigrant community.”
>
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> She also demands that the immigration raids stop along with nearly
> two dozen other elected officials in the region. “When you raid
> Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children
> apart, and when you deploy troops to our streets, you’re not
> trying to keep anyone safe – you’re trying to cause fear and
> panic,” said Bass, who was on a trip to Africa while her city
> burned earlier this year. She accused Trump of triggering a
> “chaotic escalation”
>
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> by sending federalized troops and initially described the rioting as
> “reports of unrest.”
>
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> Here are some of the illegal immigrants arrested in the recent L.A.
> operation, which the feds say is ongoing. The DHS announcement
> includes photos of the perpetrators as well. They include Cuong
> Chanh Phan, who committed a notorious gang-affiliated murder
>
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> of two teenagers at a graduation party; Eswin Uriel Castro,
> previously deported with criminal convictions for child molestation
> and being armed with a dangerous weapon. He has also been arrested
> for robbery and domestic violence; Anastacio Enrique Solis-Salinas,
> a Nicaragua convict, has convictions for domestic violence and hit
> and run and has been arrested for willful cruelty to a child; Rafael
> Gamez-Sanchez has been convicted of vehicular manslaughter; Miguel
> Angel Palafox-Montes, previously returned to Mexico twice, has been
> convicted of grand theft, narcotics violations and identity theft
> and has been arrested for battery and burglary; Dzhakhar Aslambekov,
> a Russian illegal immigrant, was recently arrested for fraud related
> to government assistance programs. The list of criminal offenders
>
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> goes on and on, the “worst of the worst illegal alien criminals in
> Los Angeles,” DHS assures.
U.S. SUBSIDIZES ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT MONEY TRANSFERS VIA FEDERAL RESERVE
Your Federal Reserve (a creature of the federal government) is helping
illegal aliens in our country send billions back to their countries of
origin. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog reports
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> As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum denounces the proposed
> remittance tax and calls for protests in this country, she
> conveniently fails to mention that the United States government has
> for two decades subsidized the money transfers through a Federal
> Reserve program called “Directo a Mexico.”
>
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Remittances are the largest single
> source of foreign income for Mexico and last year migrants in the
> U.S. sent a historic $62.5 billion to family back home. Under the
> One Big Beautiful Bill Act
>
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> recently passed by the House and pending Senate approval,
> remittances from noncitizens in the U.S. will be taxed 3.5%,
> igniting fury among Mexican government officials, especially
> Sheinbaum who threatened to “mobilize”
>
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> a fight against the tax. Mexico’s president has publicly called on
> fellow Mexicans in the United States to send senators letters,
> electronic mail and social media posts expressing their disagreement
> with the additional assessment.
> The U.S. is the top source of remittances worldwide and the money
> sent by migrants to help support family back home has long provided
> Latin America—especially Mexico—a critical economic lifeline.
> President Trump recently proposed a 5% tax on remittances and House
> Republicans reduced it to 3.5%. Omitted from mainstream media
> coverage, mostly critical of the proposed tax, is the “Directo a
> Mexico” program run by the Federal Reserve, the government agency
> that serves as the nation’s central bank. It was launched 20 years
> ago and uses government resources to subsidize and help illegal
> immigrants transfer cash to Mexico. Back in 2006 Judicial Watch
> obtained Federal Reserve marketing materials
>
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> created for the program, which was designed to facilitate the
> transfer of funds from immigrant workers in the U.S.—regardless of
> legal status—to relatives in Mexico. The marketing materials, from
> the Retail Payments Office of the Federal Reserve in Atlanta,
> Georgia, were prepared by the government for presentations to
> financial institutions in California in November 2006.
> The “Directo a Mexico” marketing materials were targeted to
> banks, credit unions and other financial institutions in the U.S.
> and include information on payment channels and benefits to Mexican
> recipients. The marketing materials also detail the number of
> Mexican migrants in the United States—at the time 9,328,405—with
> no distinction between those here illegally. A separate list
> identifies Mexican banks receiving “Directo a Mexico” transfers
> by branches (8,578) and total bank accounts (41,313,157). After
> viewing all the records, Judicial Watch determined that the
> taxpayer-subsidized program seems designed to facilitate the
> transfer of wealth by illegal immigrants outside the United States,
> undermining our nation’s immigration laws and creating a potential
> national security nightmare. At the very least Judicial Watch called
> on the Federal Reserve to limit the program to legal residents and
> American citizens, which has not occurred.
> In its first year, 2005, remittances sent through “Directo a
> Mexico” topped $20 billion and the Federal Reserve reported
> “double-digit percentage growth” in the next several years. Over
> a decade later Judicial Watch reported
>
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> that most of the $33.48 billion in remittances to Mexico at the time
> flowed through “Directo a Mexico” amid a growing immigration
> crisis in the U.S. Remittances are transferred through the Federal
> Reserve’s own automated clearinghouse linked directly to
> Mexico’s central bank (Banco de Mexico). When the program was
> created Federal Reserve officials acknowledged that most of the
> Mexican nationals who send money back home are illegal immigrants,
> so a Mexican-issued identification is the only requirement to use
> the government banking service. In fact, the government’s colorful
> brochure promoting “Directo a Mexico” has a frequently asked
> question section that says: “If I return to Mexico or am deported,
> will I lose the money in my bank account?” The answer is “No.
> The money still belongs to you and can easily be accessed at an ATM
> in Mexico using your debit card.” Decorated with American and
> Mexican flags, the Federal Reserve’s two-page brochure also offers
> to help immigrants who do not have bank accounts open one and
> assures the best foreign exchange rate and low transfer fees. It is
> not clear if the proposed remittance tax will impact money transfers
> sent via “Directo a Mexico.”
Until next week,
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Judicial Watch, Inc.
425 3rd St Sw Ste 800
Washington, DC 20024
202.646.5172
© 2017 - 2025, All Rights Reserved
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