Weekly Update: Urgent Kavanaugh News

The Rule of Law Versus Mob Rule
The ATF Is Still Hiding the Truth About Obama’s Anti-Gun Agenda
Judicial Watch Uncovers Soros / State Department Collusion!
Judicial Watch Sues to Uncover Pentagon Cash Tied to Spygate Targeting of Trump

The Rule of Law Versus Mob Rule

 As I sat in the Senate conference room watching the Brett Kavanaugh hearing last week, I had the sense that we are entering into an entirely new era in our politics. Rabid leftists have thrown all decency to the winds, and we’re now facing a dire threat from a corrupt ideology which would destroy our constitutional system of governance.

I recorded my thoughts in this piece today for USA Today.

The FBI report on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh confirms what most in Washington knew all along: There is no supporting evidence for the claims made against him. The supplemental report is said to show nothing that corroborates any claim of sexual assault or misconduct. This concludes the seventh FBI background check of Kavanaugh.

The confirmation vote for him can’t come soon enough.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations were corruptly handled by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and fellow Democrats. They didn’t have the votes to stop him, so they sought to destroy him with smears.

I was honored to attend last week’s Kavanaugh hearing. It was intense, dramatic, emotional and outrageous, but nothing changed. In the end, the hearing added nothing to the debate. As Ford’s incredible and uncorroborated testimony showed, the allegations were never sufficient to derail Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Yet the Senate requested an FBI supplemental background investigation of “credible allegations.” There weren’t any. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump authorized the inquiry. It’s time to move on and let a good man with an impeccable record of honoring the U.S. Constitution have a confirmation vote.

Kavanaugh, from the very beginning, should have been presumed innocent. The rule of law is becoming dangerously subservient to mob rule. And if seven background checks are insufficient to clear a person’s name, what’s the magic number? Eight? Nine?

Leftist law breaking, rule breaking, violence and disruption have marred the public Kavanaugh confirmation process. America has had enough of this abuse. I had to walk through a phalanx of illegally protesting leftists to get to the hearing last week. I wasn’t intimidated, but I’m sure senators were — and are. And the intimidation, assaults and threats will get worse if they are seen as vehicles for power and political success.

Let’s hope the Kavanaugh circus won’t be the new normal confirmation process. We can’t allow Senate confirmations to become search-and-destroy missions. We can’t allow mob rule to replace the rule of law.

The Senate owes Judge Kavanaugh an apology. And the best start would be a vote to confirm him.

I hope the ship of state can right itself after this perfect storm. Things are looking up for Kavanaugh, but the Left hasn’t given up. I’ve just learned of at least two assaults against pro-Kavanaugh supporters by leftists. Senate staff are locking doors to protect themselves. There is concern about rioting. In short, it is brutal and violent on the Hill.

Call your Senators tonight and tomorrow at 202-224-3121.

The ATF Is Still Hiding the Truth About Obama’s Anti-Gun Agenda

The Obama administration excelled at pushing its radical agenda through any means necessary. Since its gun-control agenda was not going anywhere, it decided to control ammunition, which would have had the same effect.

Everyone with an appreciation of the Second Amendment saw right through it.

We just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), a component of the Department of Justice, for 1,900 pages of records about a proposed reclassification that would effectively ban certain types of AR-15 ammunition as armor-piercing (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02218)).

We sued after the agency failed to respond to our May 14, 2018, FOIA request for the 1,900 documents about the Obama administration’s AR-15 ammo ban efforts. The documents include ATF talking points about the “Armor Piercing Ammunition Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” and other records discussing ammunition classification.

This lawsuit is the latest development in our more than three-year effort to obtain documents from the ATF. Judicial Watch discovered the document cache in separate litigation on the ammo ban issue.

Here’s some background: In March 2015, more than 200 members of Congress wrote to former ATF Director B. Todd Jones to express their “serious concern” that the proposal to reclassify the ammunition types as armor-piercing may violate the Second Amendment by restricting ammunition that had been primarily used for “sporting purposes.” The ATF’s move “does not comport with the letter or spirit of the law and will interfere with Second Amendment rights by disrupting the market for ammunition that law abiding Americans use for sporting and other legitimate purposes,” the letter said. The ATF subsequently halted its efforts.

(The precise statutory definition of armor-piercing ammunition can be found in 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(17).)

Simply put, the ATF refuses to comply with federal open records law. The ATF has withheld records for over three years concerning the Obama administration’s shady attempt to institute gun control by restricting ammunition instead of guns.

And, despite these games, your Judicial Watch will continue to seek answers in federal court.

Judicial Watch Uncovers Soros / State Department Collusion!

Judicial Watch has taken the lead in exposing the dubious ties between State Department and the radical Soros operation.

We just released 49 pages of new documents forced out from the State Department detailing the hand-in-glove relationship between the Obama Sate Department and Soros, Inc.

The documents deal primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Soros’ Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents show U.S. grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.

We filed a May 26, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and USAID after they failed to respond to March 31, 2017, FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-01012)).

The records reveal that Soros operative Dobrushi was the first person on a list of invitees by then U.S. Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu to attend an “election rollout event” held at the U.S. Embassy on April 27, 2015. The event was intended to “launch U.S. assistance for the June local elections,” being held in Tirana, Albania. As we previously reported in an April 4, 2018, press release, Ambassador Lu has been closely associated with Soros and the socialist government in Albania, which he assisted by denying U.S. visas to conservative jurists from the conservative party in Albania. Lu has since been nominated by the Trump administration to become US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

Additionally, a June 18, 2015, email from Ilva Cuko, a Program Specialist in the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, invites several people, including Dobrushi, to a “Donors Grant Reviewing meeting” at the U.S. Embassy, in which the participants would review applications for grants submitted by NGOs seeking U.S. taxpayer grant money from the State Department. Cuko says she would “like to invite you in a discussion on these proposals. Your valuable input and comments will be used by the U.S. Embassy’s Democracy Commission, which has the ultimate authority in awarding the grants.”

Cuko on August 28, 2015, also invited Dobrushi to attend another U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission Small Grants Program “Grant Proposal Technical Review” meeting on September 3 at the U.S. Embassy. At this meeting, Cuko said they would focus on applications dealing with “anticorruption.” Ironically, under the leadership of Soros’ close friend, socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, who took power in 2013, corruption in Albania has soared, with cannabis trafficking in the country increasing 300 percent between 2016 and 2017.

In a February 22, 2016, email, Cuko again invites several people, including Dobrushi, to another “Donors Grant Reviewing Meeting” held at the U.S. Embassy on February 26 where Dobrushi would be able to influence Embassy officials who have “the ultimate authority in awarding the grants.”

Another document, titled “Guidelines for the Democracy Commission Small Grants Program,” shows that the applications for grants that Soros’ operative was reviewing are part of a program the State Department runs in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States called the “Democracy Commission Small Grants Program,” which is supposed to “promote grassroots democracy.” The guidelines also say that the program “supports initiatives of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in building the social and intellectual foundations of democracy, the democratic resolution of problems, strengthening civil society watchdog activities, and the institutionalization of open, pluralistic political processes.”

In addition to Albania, Judicial Watch also has filed FOIA lawsuits against the State Department and USAID for records about funding and political activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations in, Macedonia, Romania and Colombia.

In an earlier document production connected to this lawsuit, we obtained 32 pages of records showing that the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a Soros-backed group that used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania. That included working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.”

The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding. USAID funds were funneled to Soros’ left-wing Open Society Foundations in Albania, particularly the Soros operation efforts to give the socialist government greater control of the judiciary. USAID reportedly gave $9 million in 2016 to the “Justice for All” campaign, which is overseen by Soros’ “East West Management Institute.”

The Obama administration turned over key State Department activities to George Soros, especially in Albania. The Deep State continues to be aligned with Soros and uses the State Department in countries such as Albania to push his radical agenda. And, of course, tax dollars for Soros abroad frees up resources for his activities here in the United States.

Judicial Watch Sues to Uncover Pentagon Cash Tied to Spygate Targeting of Trump

Your Judicial Watch has been systematically untangling the massive Obama/Deep State conspiracies against President Trump.

In our latest move, we have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense seeking information about the September 2016 contract between the Defense Department and Stefan Halper (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:18-cv-02125)).

Halper is the Cambridge University professor identified as a secret FBI informant used by the Obama administration to spy on the Trump’s presidential campaign. Halper also reportedly has high-level ties to both U.S. and British intelligence.

Government records show that the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), a small Defense Department unit known as the Pentagon’s think tank, paid Halper a total of $1,058,161 for four contracts that lasted from May 30, 2012, to March 29, 2018. More than $400,000 of the payments came between July 2016 and September 2017, after Halper reportedly offered Papadopoulos work and a trip to London to entice him into disclosing information about alleged collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

The lawsuit was filed after the Defense Department failed to respond to Judicial Watch’s May 15, 2018, FOIA request for:

• All records related to the contract awarded by the Department of Defense Washington Headquarters Services Office to Stefan Halper on or about September 26,2016. For purposes of clarification, this award is identified by award ID number HQ003416P0148. This request includes, but is not limited to, the following:
• All records documenting the scope of the work to be completed pursuant to the contract.
• All reports, analysis, abstracts, summaries, or similar records produced pursuant to the contract.
• All related records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of Defense and Mr. Halper and/or any other individual or entity acting on his behalf.
• All records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of Defense and any official, employee, or representative of any other branch, department, agency, or office of the federal government regarding, concerning, or related to the award and/or any work product generated pursuant to the award.

This is the second recent Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit against the Defense Department relating to Halper. On August 15, 2018, we filed a FOIA lawsuit on behalf of former Pentagon analyst and White House National Security Council (NSC) senior director Adam S. Lovinger seeking information about the revocation of Lovinger’s security clearance. Lovinger’s security clearance was pulled after he raised concerns regarding lucrative government contracts awarded to Halper as well as Long Term Strategy Group, a consulting firm owned by Chelsea Clinton’s friend Jacqueline Newmyer Deal (Adam S. Lovinger v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:18-cv-01914)).

Americans want to know if the Defense Department was working with the corrupt FBI, DOJ, and other Obama agencies to spy on Donald Trump. Our new lawsuit against the Defense Department will help determine to what extent it was helping to finance any Spygate targeting of President Trump.

Until next week …