Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

We are working to get the entire record on the Obama/Biden Justice Department lawfare against President Trump. It is the worst government corruption scandal in U.S. history, and the American people deserve to see the whole story.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for fully unredacted records and previously withheld or missing portions of Durham’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00138)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond to an August 5, 2025, FOIA request for:

• The complete, unredacted notes taken by former CIA Director John Brennan during the August 3, 2016, White House briefing, which reportedly discussed intelligence regarding a Hillary Clinton campaign plan to link Donald Trump to Russia.
• The full, unredacted Inspection Division Report from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General that critiques the FBI’s handling of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
• The 14 missing pages of the Durham Report appendix that have not been publicly released.
• All unredacted transcripts, summaries, or notes from interviews conducted by Special Counsel John Durham with the following individuals regarding the 2016 election and related investigations:
  • Hillary Clinton (interviewed May 2022)
  • John Brennan (interviewed August 2020)
  • Stefan Halper
  • Alexander Downer
  • Jake Sullivan (interviewed November 2021)
  • John Podesta (interviewed January 2022)
  • Robby Mook
  • All unredacted records of referrals made by Special Counsel John Durham to the Department of Defense or any other federal agencies.

• All emails and communications between Fusion GPS and The New York Times, The Washington Post, or other major media outlets as well as between Fusion GPS and the Hillary Clinton campaign or the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
• All unredacted emails, memoranda, or other communications between former head of British intelligence Sir Richard Dearlove, U.S. intelligence officials (including CIA and FBI personnel), Stefan Halper, and Christopher Steele.

In July 2016, during the presidential election campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In August 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama and other senior officials on intelligence reportedly showing a Hillary Clinton campaign plan to link Trump to Russia.

In May 2019, Durham was appointed special counsel to investigate the origins and conduct of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

In May 2023, Durham released his final report, concluding that the FBI opened a full investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence” and displayed “confirmation bias” in pursuing the investigation. The report noted problems with the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) surveillance practices, noting that unverified information from the Steele dossier was used to help justify FISA applications targeting Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The report also noted that an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to altering an email used in a FISA application.

In July 2025, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) made public the formerly classified Appendix (“Durham Annex”) to John Durham’s 2023 Special Counsel report, which “contains previously classified information exposing a reported Clinton campaign plan to falsely tie President Donald Trump to Russia.”

We have been instrumental in uncovering much of what the public knows about Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate, which involved a long list of Democratic political figures, lawyers, and staffers who shaped the narrative around the Trump-Russia hoax.

In November 2025, we provided an in-depth recap of the Crossfire Hurricane/Russiagate debacle.

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

In October 2020, we uncovered heavily redacted email communications among top-level U.S. State Department officials and a U.S. ambassador expressing skepticism about reports by Steele’s London-based private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. (Steele was the author of the Clinton-funded, anti-Trump dossier.) The emails show one assistant secretary of state saying some of Steele’s reports sound “extreme” and others “do not ring true,” while the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine called some of the Steele reports “flaky.”

In May 2020, we forced the declassification and release of the “electronic communication” used to launch Crossfire Hurricane, written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.

In April 2020, we obtained emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, including an email dated January 10, 2017, in which Strzok said that the version of the dossier published by BuzzFeed was “identical” to the version given to the FBI by McCain and had “differences” from the dossier provided to the FBI by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and Mother Jones reporter David Corn. January 10, 2017, is the same day BuzzFeed published the anti-Trump dossier by former British spy Steele. The emails also show Strzok and other FBI agents mocking President Trump a few weeks before he was inaugurated. In addition, the emails revealed that Strzok communicated with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about the “leak investigation” tied to the Clinton Foundation (the very leak in which McCabe was later implicated).

In September 2019, we released State Department records revealing that Steele had an extensive and close working relationship dating back to May of 2014 with high-ranking Obama State Department officials including Jonathan Winer and Victoria Nuland.

In August 2019, we obtained “302” report material from 2016 FBI interviews of Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney Bruce Ohr, who was removed from his position in December 2017. (A Form 302 is used by FBI agents to memorialize interviews they undertake during an investigation.) In a November 22, 2016, interview, Ohr said that “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign, Winer at the State Department and the FBI.” In a late September 2016 interview, Ohr described a person (likely Christopher Steele) as “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.” A report states that “Ohr knew that [Fusion GPS’s] Glenn Simpson and others were talking to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department.”

In July 2019, we obtained records revealing a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya, Winer, who was a close associate of dossier author Steele, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.”

In August 2018, the Justice Department admitted in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit court filing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the FISA spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time adviser who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.

In July 2018, we released records about FISA warrants targeting Page, which appeared to confirm that the FBI and DOJ misled the FISA court by withholding material information showing that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the court to approve the FISA warrants targeting the Trump team.

Judicial Watch Sues Justice Dept. Over FBI Celebrating Peter Navarro Prosecution

With the Clintons in the news for refusing a congressional subpoena, it is instructive to look back at how the Left used subpoenas against Trump’s team.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for communications of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents regarding the prosecution of former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00079)).

Navarro was sentenced on January 24, 2024, to four months in prison for refusing to appear before the U.S. Congress to give testimony and produce documents as required by a subpoena he received from the Democrat-led Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

The politicization of the Justice Department and FBI against President Trump and his advisers is a disgrace. The lives of outstanding public servants were derailed.

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond adequately to a May 2, 2025, FOIA request for:

• Records and communications of Special Agent Walter Giardina; Supervisory Special Agent Blaire Toleman; and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault about the investigation, arrest, indictment, or prosecution of Peter Navarro – including contempt of Congress referrals regarding Navarro or any former Trump administration officials.

Giardina was fired from the FBI in 2025, Toleman also was fired in 2025, and Thibault resigned in 2022.

In April 2025 Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a letter to the Justice Department and FBI pointing out the results of an initial search into the FBI’s political weaponization against Navarro. In May 2025 Grassley released a few FBI emails showing Biden administration FBI agents planning and celebrating the indictment of Navarro.

We have actively pursued transparency for the lawfare waged against Trump.

In November 2025, we sued the Justice Department for the emails of former Special Counsel Jack Smith with officials in Georgia and New York and with the White House, congressional and law enforcement offices regarding his investigation into President-elect Donald Trump (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-03849)).

In September 2025 we sued the Justice Department for communications between former Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and the anti-Trump organization American Oversight (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv–02556)).

In June 2025, we launched a related lawsuit against the Justice Department for records about the FBI’s investigation of Trump codenamed “Arctic Frost,” which was part of the Biden administration effort to prosecute and jail President Trump for disputing Biden’s controversial election victory (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-02011)).

In March 2025, we sued the Justice Department for details of any investigations, inquiries, or referrals concerning potential misconduct of any person working for Special Counsel Jack Smith (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-00801)).

Also in March, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis was ordered to turn over 212 pages of records to a state court judge. The court also ordered Willis to detail how the records were found and the reason for withholding them from the public. The records were belatedly disclosed in response to a Judicial Watch request and lawsuit for communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee.

In January, we were awarded $21,578 for “attorney’s fees and costs” incurred in the case. The court previously found Willis in default and stated: “The Court finds Defendant [Willis, in her official capacity] is in default and has been since 11 April 2024” (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)).

In January 2025, a federal court ordered the Justice Department to provide us information on communications between Special Counsel Jack Smith and Willis regarding the prosecution of then-former President Donald Trump. In May, the Justice Department was directed to search text messages from the Special Counsel’s Office for responsive records (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 23-cv-03110)).

In January 2025, records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed it and the FBI warning that law enforcement agencies should be prepared for a surge in threats from so-called Domestic Violence Extremists (DVEs) following the August 8, 2022, FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (1:22-cv-03275)).

In May 2024, we uncovered a recording of a phone message left by an FBI special agent for someone at the Secret Service in the context of the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:22-cv-03147)).

In February 2024, the Justice Department asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that was targeting Trump and other Americans (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01485)).

In August 2022, we successfully sued to unseal the search warrant affidavit used to justify the unprecedented raid on Trump’s home (U.S. v. Sealed Search Warrant (No. 9:22-mj-08332)).

Judicial Watch Sues Chicago Treasurer Over Plan to Halt U.S. Treasury Purchases

We filed an Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Melissa Conyears-Ervin, treasurer of the City of Chicago, for details of her declared plan to stop buying new U.S. Treasury securities and divest the city of indirect holdings (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Chicago Treasurer’s Office (No. 2026CH00302)).

On November 17, 2025, Conyears-Ervin issued a press release announcing that the city of Chicago “will not invest in a federal administration that is using the power of government to terrorize us.” She also stated:

Before my budget presentation on Wednesday, I informed City Council members that I would boycott the purchase of United States Treasury securities and seek their authority to grant me freedoms to modify the portfolio of the nearly $11 billion in Chicago taxpayer money the office manages.

[We will] immediately stop making new, direct purchases of U.S. Treasury marketable securities. Second, with approval from the City Council, we will explore reducing our indirect exposure by adjusting our holdings in money market funds and other instruments that derive their value from Treasurys.

We sued in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Chancery Division, after the Treasurer’s Office failed to respond to a November 17, 2025, FOIA request for:

• All internal Chicago City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) emails discussing whether to purchase U.S. Treasury debt in any form.
• Internal emails and communications from Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin referencing U.S. Treasury securities and immigration-related terms; and
• Reports regarding the fiscal impact of purchasing or declining to purchase U.S. debt.

Conyears-Ervin should focus on Chicago’s crumbling finances instead of playing national policy maven and engaging in symbolic political stunts that risk taxpayer money and could undermine the city’s fiscal stability.

In December 2025, we reported that Illinois released more than 1,700 criminal aliens from jails and prisons across the state after declining to honor federal immigration detainers.

In November 2025, we sued Evanston, IL, Mayor Daniel Biss for records related to obstruction of federal immigration enforcement.

In January 2025, we sued Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for records regarding his vow to resist the Trump administration’s deportation and other immigration law enforcement activities. The mayor previously had held a press conference at which he stated that Chicago would remain a so-called “sanctuary city.”

Americans Pay Billions to Subsidize Illegal Aliens’ College Education

Worried about affording college tuition for your children? If so, you might want to know that your tax dollars are going – against the law – to illegal aliens for their tuition. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the details.

Although a 30-year-old federal law prohibits giving illegal aliens discounted in-state tuition at public colleges and universities, 22 states and the District of Columbia still do it and the cost to American taxpayers is over a billion dollars annually. In an effort to force the violators to stop offering undocumented students the pricey benefit, a U.S. senator has introduced a bill (Put American Students First Act) to specifically prevent any alien who is not lawfully admitted for permanent residence from obtaining in-state tuition rates at public institutions of higher education. The proposed measure notes that section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already bans states from granting discounted tuition and fees to students not lawfully present in the U.S. simply because they live—albeit illegally—in that state unless the same rates are also offered to citizens of the United States regardless of residence.

Besides the discounted tuition, most of the offenders also extend additional financial aid to students in the country illegally. The Trump administration has legally challenged many of the policies, but most continue. The violators include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Last year the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued several states over the policy but only three—Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky—have terminated their in-state tuition policies for illegal alien students. Others, such as California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Illinois, have ignored the lawsuits. Illinois has taken it a step further by not only blowing off the DOJ’s lawsuit, but also passing a special law making undocumented students eligible for state and local financial aid, including grants, scholarships and stipends, as of January 2026. The measure includes the same perks for transgender students who are disqualified for failing to register for selective service.

Over 500,000 illegal immigrants are enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education, according to an alliance of college and university leaders dedicated to supporting immigrant and undocumented students and policies that create a welcoming environment for them. The Washington, D.C.-based group, Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, reveals that three-quarters of undocumented students live in about a dozen states and most are in just four states—California, Texas, Florida, and New York—and California leads the group with nearly 90,000 illegal alien students. The alliance insists that offering students in the country illegally discounted tuition at taxpayer-funded colleges is “tuition equity” and provides access to higher education for all students, which the group claims benefits colleges and universities as well as the U.S. economy. “Undocumented students are an integral part of American society and the U.S. higher education system,” the group claims. “They advance scientific innovation, drive economic growth, and make valuable contributions as classmates, instructors, scholars, and campus leaders.”

But are American taxpayers responsible for funding their education in rogue states that refuse to obey a decades-old federal law forbidding it? In an effort to force compliance, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton introduced the Put American Students First Act in mid-December. The bill points out that the subsidies create a perverse incentive for illegal immigration, rewarding unlawful presence with benefits unavailable to citizens and legal residents of the United States, undermining the rule of law. “Students of the United States in higher education, including students from modest-income families in neighboring States, are effectively penalized by States that provide such subsidies because the students pay higher out-of-state rates for tuition and fees while aliens not lawfully admitted for permanent residence receive taxpayer-subsidized discounts,” the proposed law states. “Enforcing this Federal prohibition nationwide is essential to restoring fairness, deterring illegal immigration, and prioritizing postsecondary education benefits for citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States.” If Congress passes the law, it will take effect in July and will empower the Secretary of Education to withhold funding from any state that violates it.

Until next week,