Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for FBI Records Found in Secret Room

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for “hidden” records from former FBI Director James Comey’s era that were referenced during a Fox News interview with Deputy Director Dan Bongino (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:25-cv-04047)).

We know Comey was spying on Donald Trump. He was the Obama administration’s go-to guy, trying to set Trump up to be toppled from the campaign and then from office. These hidden-room documents may contain additional smoking guns.

Judicial Watch sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the FBI failed to respond to a June 2, 2025, FOIA request for:

1. All documents referenced by Deputy Director Dan Bongino as having been discovered in a room “hidden from us and not mentioned to us,” discussed in a Fox News interview at https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1928099455095427383;

2. All internal FBI communications among officials in the offices of FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino related to the discovery of these documents; and

3. All directives sent to officials from the offices of the Director and/or Deputy Director regarding the handling and disposition of the documents.

The May 29, 2025, X post about the Fox News interview with Bongino has the headline “The FBI just discovered that James Comey had a whole room of secret documents! We found it in bags, hiding under Jim Comey’s FBI, you're going to be stunned. - FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.” Bongino states:

There was a room [in FBI Headquarters], and we found stuff. A lot of stuff … hidden from us at least and not mentioned to us. And then found stuff in there. A lot is from the Comey era. We are working … right now to declassify. And just so you know, because I get the public—I totally understand people saying “well do it now.” The process is: not all of the information is ours to declassify. Some is other intelligence agencies’…. We literally can’t do it. Once that gets done … and you read some of the stuff we found—that, by the way, was not processed through the normal procedure, digitizing and putting in FBI records. We found it in bags, hiding under Jim Comey’s FBI. You’re going to be stunned.

Comey was indicted in September on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice regarding the Trump-Russia investigation.

In August 2025, we sued the Justice Department for all records regarding the FBI, under then-Director James Comey, initiating an investigation of then-2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In May 2023, we recapped our investigative findings regarding the “Steele Dossier” and the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which was launched during the Obama administration in July 2016 under Comey.

Judicial Watch Sues Education Department Over University’s China Ties

We are keeping an eye on tax-supported universities with connections to hostile foreign governments. China in particular has been very active in infiltrating our campuses.

In the latest development, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education seeking records on the University of Michigan’s connections to China, including related communications with the U.S. Department of Justice (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Education (No. 1:25-cv-03895)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Education Department failed to provide records in response to a June 4, 2025, FOIA request for:

On June 5, we narrowed the scope of the request for information on the lab to include the following officials:

In January 2025, the university announced it was ending its partnership with a prominent Chinese university, a few months after five Chinese students in a joint program were charged with lying to federal investigators regarding suspicious activities outside a remote military site.

In June 2025, two Chinese nationals — Yunqing Jian, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Michigan’s Molecular Plant‑Microbe Interaction Laboratory, and Zunyong Liu, her partner, — were charged with conspiring to smuggle a fungus considered to be a potential agroterrorism agent into the U.S. Jian later pleaded guilty to smuggling and making false statements and was sentenced to time served. Liu was stopped at Detroit Metro Airport in 2024 with concealed fungal samples and later deported. Separately, four other Chinese nationals have been charged with smuggling biological materials.

In January 2025, we sued the Education Department on behalf of the Zachor Legal Institute for records concerning Qatar’s funding and operations of five U.S. universities, including the University of Michigan. Qatar had given or contracted nearly $6 billion to American universities since 2007, according to a February 2024 report. The money was said to have “enabled Qatar to have outsized influence in American politics and academia, efforts [that] have mainstreamed anti-Israel propaganda and silenced criticism about Doha’s longstanding ties to Hamas, the Iranian regime, and other terror groups.”

We and Zachor previously had spent more than five years successfully fighting the Qatar Foundation in Texas courts for information about the funding of Texas A&M. The records that were produced showed that over $522 million was given by Qatar to the state university from January 1, 2013, to May 22, 2018, including more than $485 million from the Qatar Foundation.  In addition, because of our court victory, Texas A&M produced contracts that suggest Texas A&M provided an assignment of sensitive intellectual property to the Qatar Foundation.

Judicial Watch Files Claim for Monk Arrested by Biden DOJ/FBI

Judicial Watch filed a Federal Tort Claims Act claim on behalf of a Massachusetts Greek Orthodox monk and his monastery’s general counsel, who were maliciously arrested and charged after a 2022 FBI raid. Our claim includes allegations of malicious prosecution, false arrest and imprisonment, and assault and battery.

In the early morning hours of October 13, 2022, heavily armed federal agents raided the St. Nicholas monastic complex in Marblehead, MA, and arrested Father Brian Andrew Bushell, 50, and General Counsel Tracey M.A. Stockton, 66. The Biden Justice Department accused Bushell of being a "purported" monk and alleged that he and Stockton improperly used Covid relief funds.

The case against Bushell and Stockton fell apart, and the charges were dismissed on November 9, 2023. Bushell accused former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins of weaponizing “the DOJ, FBI and other federal agents to manufacture a pack of lies to destroy St. Nicholas, me and intimidate God-fearing Orthodox Christians.”

Biden appointee Rollins was publicly reprimanded by state bar regulators in 2025 for violations outlined in a 2023 Justice Department report (an archived version is available here) that found Rollins improperly attended a Democratic fundraising event in her capacity as a prosecutor with then-First Lady Jill Biden. Rollins also “knowingly and willfully made a false statement” during her interview with former Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s office.

Acting Biden U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy reportedly said that “based on evidence developed in the course of the investigation, the government determined it was in the interests of justice to dismiss the complaint.”

The claim alleges:

Father Brian Andrew Bushell, Tracey Stockton, the Shrine of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. Paul’s Foundation, the Annunciation House, and the Marblehead Brewing Company, as victims of the acts of federal government employees acting in the scope of their official duties, suffered economic and non-economic damages as a result of the intentional acts, including … malicious prosecution, false arrest and imprisonment, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress … [by] federal agents who participated in the preparation or execution of the warrants on October 13, 2022. The victims also suffered economic and non-economic damages as a result of the negligent acts, including … negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligent training and supervision, of … federal agents, who participated in the preparation or execution of the warrants on October 13, 2022, as well as the negligent acts … of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Excellence, of which the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and its Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Task Force is a part.

St. Paul’s Foundation demands at least $1,777,124.66, representing the legal fees of Father Bushell and Ms. Stockton related to the intentional and negligent acts of the individuals and entities listed above, which the foundation covered or reimbursed because of their status as unpaid officers and employees of the religious foundation.

The Shrine of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker demands at least $518,700, representing economic and non-economic damages …

We are honored to stand up for Father Andrew and Ms. Stockton for their horrendous anti-Christian mistreatment at the hands of the weaponized Biden Justice Department.

Appeals Court: Students Can Use Transgender Classmates’ Biological Pronouns

Parents with traditional views about gender won a victory in one Ohio school district. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the details.

Is the learning environment disrupted when students in kindergarten through high school refer to all classmates—including those who identify as transgender—by their biological pronoun? A public school district in Ohio claims it is and a few years ago enacted an “anti-harassment” policy that punishes students who refuse to use the preferred pronouns of transgender classmates. This is widely known among leftists as “misgendering” and the Olentangy Local School District Board of Education in the northern suburbs of Columbus created a measure to discipline students who use language that inaccurately represents another person’s gender identity as part of a series of speech codes in support of the district’s preferred viewpoints. This includes prohibiting “discriminatory language” considered derogatory towards an individual or group based on, among other things, “transgender identity.” The public school district policies prohibit “purposely referring to another student by using gendered language they know is contrary to the other student’s identity.”

With an enrollment of 24,531 Olentangy is the fourth largest school district in Ohio, with 16 elementary schools, five middle schools, and four high schools. Many of the students’ parents were outraged about the policies and sued the district, claiming they violate the First Amendment’s guarantees to free speech and unconstitutionally compel speech because they force students to alter their speech or use other students’ “preferred pronouns”—despite the students’ firmly held beliefs that sex is immutable. The Policies are also unconstitutional because they punish students based on the viewpoint and content of the speech, according to the parent’s lawsuit, and they are overboard because they restrict a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech and transgress the fundamental rights of parents to raise their children. A Clinton-appointed federal judge, Algenon L. Marbley, in the southern District of Ohio ruled against them, writing in a 2023 opinion that the intentional misgendering of students constitutes “verbal bullying” and the Constitution likely does not guarantee a “right to bully transgender students.”

The parents appealed and a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit heard the case and upheld Judge Marbley’s decision in the summer of 2024, ruling that free speech rules for schoolchildren must take into account consideration of the sensibilities of fellow students and schools are entitled to regulate speech that “would undermine the school’s basic educational mission.” The three-judge panel agreed with the school district that speech criticizing the identity of specific classmates, including the use of non-preferred pronouns, is more likely to cause disruption than speech about social issues in the abstract. “The District is entitled to recognize that speech about specific students’ identities is particularly harmful and likely to disrupt the educational experience, and to regulate that speech accordingly,” the appellate panel wrote in its decision. The 55-page document also says, “studies show that intentional, repeated use of non-preferred pronouns is more disruptive than discussions about transgender issues.”

The parents appealed again asking the full Sixth Circuit appellate court, which has 16 judges, to hear the case and the court agreed and held oral arguments last spring. This month the court came back with a lengthy ruling in favor of the parents. Students who refer to all classmates by their biological pronouns—whether they are transgender or not—do not disrupt the learning environment and cannot be forced to use preferred pronouns, the court ruled. In the decision the court’s majority determined that Olentangy public schools failed to demonstrate that the use of the pronouns to refer to transgender and nonbinary students would “materially and substantially disrupt school activities or infringe on the legal rights of others in the school community.” The appellate court also issued a preliminary injunction banning the school district from punishing students for the commonplace use of biological pronouns involving transgender classmates though it still allows officials to enforce other anti-harassment policies to protect all students, including those who identify as transgender. “Our society continues to debate whether biological pronouns are appropriate or offensive — just as it continues to debate many other issues surrounding transgender rights,” the ruling notes. “The school district may not skew this debate by forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view.”

Until next week,