Anti-Trump Lawfare Update! | Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Communications with Anti-Trump Organization
Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for Communications on Biden-Hur Audio, Epstein Memo
Hundreds More Illegal Alien Gang Members, Murderers Arrested in Houston
Defense Department Being Sued to Restore Kids’ Transgender Treatments

Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Communications with Anti-Trump Organization

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice 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)).

Judicial Watch sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to respond to a January 31, 2025, FOIA request for:

Records and communications between Timothy Thibault, former [Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Washington Field Office] and the non-profit organization American Oversight, 1030 15th St. NW, B255, Washington, D.C. 20005, email domain: @americanoversight. The search terms for this request are a) Trump b) Electors c) Investigation d) election

In July 2022, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reportedly warned then-Attorney General Merrick Garland that Thibault and an official in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Richard Pilger, were “deeply involved in the decisions to open and pursue election-related investigations against President Trump. At the time, whistleblowers told Grassley that the Thibault-Pilger investigation’s predicating document was based on information from ‘liberal nonprofit American Oversight.’” Thibault retired in August 2022.

Earlier this year, Senators Grassley and Ron Johnson (R-WI) publicized records dating back to 2022 about Thibault’s targeting of Trump:

Internal FBI emails and predicating documents provided to Grassley and released jointly by the two senators show Timothy Thibault, a former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) who was forced to retire from the Bureau after Grassley exposed his public anti-Trump bias, authored the initial language for what ultimately became Jack Smith’s federal case against Trump regarding the 2020 presidential election. Records show Thibault essentially opened and approved his own investigation.

American Oversight describes itself as “founded in 2017 in response to the unprecedented challenges that the Trump administration posed to our nation’s democratic ideals and institutions.…” Earlier this year, Politico described it as, “A left-leaning watchdog group … working to gather materials that could feed Congressional investigations into the Trump administration.”

It’s a shame that we must sue to get these records about how the Biden gang at the FBI and DOJ tried to rig an election by jailing Trump for disputing the 2020 election. It’s past time for these institutions to focus on transparency under law, so the American people can know the full truth of the lawfare attack perpetrated on Trump.

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

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 Justice Department for Communications on Biden-Hur Audio, Epstein Memo

The American public deserves to know the details surrounding the leaks of “exclusive” U.S. Department of Justice information on the Biden-Hur interviews and the Epstein client list memo.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Justice Department for its communication with the media outlet Axios regarding the outlet’s “exclusives” on the release of audio of then-President Joe Biden’s August 2023 interview with then-Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding Biden’s handling of secret documents and the July 2025 memo that states there is no Jeffrey Epstein “client list” (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-03225)).

We sued the Justice Department after it failed to comply with two FOIA requests. In May 2025, we filed a FOIA request for the Justice Department’s contacts with Axios regarding the Biden-Hur audio recordings. We also had submitted a July 2025 FOIA request for the Justice Department’s communications with Axios pertaining to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.

We have been at the forefront of these investigations.

Regarding the Biden-Hur records, in March 2024, we filed the first FOIA lawsuit and were the lead plaintiff asking for the Special Counsel’s interviews of Biden (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-00700)). In June 2024, the Justice Department admitted that the Special Counsel’s transcript was inaccurate.

Justice Department emails in a related case showed White House staffers suggesting edits to transcripts of Biden’s interview with Hur (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02176)).

In May 2025, we forced the release of the audio recordings of Biden’s October 2023 interview with Hur. The recordings are available here: justice.gov/storage/Biden-interview-with-Hur-part-1-October-8th.mp3 and justice.gov/storage/Biden-interview-with-Hur-part-2-October-9th.mp3. In July 2025, we reached a settlement in which the government agreed to pay $10,000 for attorneys’ fees and other costs associated with the successful lawsuit that forced release of the audio tapes of Biden’s interview with Hur.

Regarding Jeffrey Epstein, in April 2025, we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Justice Department for records on the identities of clients or associates of Epstein (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-01056)). In July, the Justice Department reported to the court that it was continuing to search for and review records, which is at odds with the leaked, unsigned and undated Justice Department/FBI memo that suggested no more Epstein records would be disclosed to the American public. The memo was first disclosed late on July 6.

We also sued in July for records related to Epstein’s victim Virginia Louise Giuffre.

Hundreds More Illegal Alien Gang Members, Murderers Arrested in Houston

Every town in America is now a border town, but Texas is at the frontier and facing some of the worst consequences of the Biden era’s open-door policy for illegal aliens. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.

Texas’s largest city appears to be a cesspool of undocumented criminals where just weeks after federal authorities announced the arrest of hundreds of violent gang members with a combined 1,700 criminal convictions, another 822 illegal immigrant offenders have been apprehended. This batch also includes gangbangers, convicted murderers, child predators, and other egregious criminals. In the last few weeks, during two separate operations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed that it has taken more than 1,000 dangerous criminal aliens off the streets in Houston, Texas’s biggest city—and the nation’s fourth largest—with a population of around 2.4 million. The perpetrators rounded up in the first operation completed in early August entered the United States illegally a combined 1,400 times under the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies that welcomed a record-breaking 7.6 million illegal aliens, including hundreds of thousands with serious criminal records and over 1.7 million from countries the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says pose a national security threat to the U.S.

In an effort to mitigate the damage the Trump administration launched a nationwide initiative known as Operation Take Back America that aims to repel the invasion of illegal immigration and protect American communities from perpetrators of violent crimes. Cracking down on criminal aliens released throughout the nation under Biden is a key component of the effort and the administration assures it is targeting the “worst of the worst,” for arrest and removal even as most media outlets spin the narrative to focus exclusively on polices open border groups claim separate immigrant families and victimize hard-working migrants. The mainstream media ignored last month’s announcement involving ICE’s Houston operation even though it nabbed hundreds of illegal immigrants who are mostly members of violent gangs, including the renowned Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Tren de Aragua, Latin Kings, 15th Street Gang, Sureños, Paisas and Tango Blast and the majority of the perpetrators have been convicted of serious crimes such as homicide, sex trafficking, domestic violence, burglary, arson and unlawful possession of a firearm. The feds made it incredibly easy to report the story by providing mug shots and detailed criminal information of the worst offenders, illustrating the urgency to enforce immigration laws after four years of devastating open border policies.

As expected, the most recent Houston operation has also been disregarded by the media though it was just as alarming. In only a week ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested over 800 criminal aliens, many of them transnational gang members, with disturbing records. More than 320 of the offenders had previously been deported from the U.S. and 112 illegally reentered the country at least once after getting deported. “During the past four years, transnational gang members, foreign fugitives and other violent criminal aliens took advantage of the crisis at our southern border to illegally enter the country,” said Houston’s ICE ERO Director Gabriel Martinez in a statement issued by the agency a few days ago. “Many of them remained in the Houston area and have gone on to wreak havoc in our local communities.” Martinez added that the most recent weeklong operation focused on targeting those threats to public safety and resulted in the arrest of 822 illegal aliens, including five transnational gang members, seven child predators and three criminal aliens convicted of homicide-related offenses.

Here are a few examples of the criminal aliens arrested recently in Houston: Jorge Eliseo Torres-Soto, a 30-year-old child predator from Guatemala convicted of sexual assault of a child; William Alexander Telles Amaya, a 35-year-old from El Salvador convicted three times of child sex offenses, including aggravated sexual assault of a child, failure to register as a sex offender and sexual indecency with a minor; Cruz Leandro Martinez Leiva, a 25-year-old from El Salvador and MS-13 gang member convicted of robbery and armed carjacking; Carlos Vega-Ramirez, a 38-year-old Mexican deported from the U.S. twice and convicted of sexual indecency with a minor, enticement of a minor for indecent purposes, driving while intoxicated, fleeing police and forgery; Manuel Ivan Castillo Estrada, a 36-year-old child predator from Mexico deported from the U.S. three times and convicted of alien smuggling and sexually assaulting a minor; Francisco Eduardo Bonilla, a 37-year-old from El Salvador, convicted of sexual indecency with a minor; Alejandro Perez Miramontes, a 54-year-old Mexican deported from the U.S. 12 times and convicted eight times of illegal reentry and twice each of robbery, larceny and burglary as well as trespassing and evading arrest.

Defense Department Being Sued to Restore Kids’ Transgender Treatments

Three military families are suing the U.S. Department of Defense to reverse a provision in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed by former President Biden, which bans Tricare from covering hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender minor children of service members. Our Corruption Chronicles blog explains:

Although the Defense Authorization Act signed by former President Biden blocks the U.S. Military’s healthcare system from providing specialized treatments to the transgender children of service members, three families are suing the Department of Defense (DOD) to reinstate the benefit, claiming they have been left with “significant”and “crushing out-of-pocket costs.” Leftist groups were outraged when the measure passed late last year andcalled on Biden to veto it because it bans the military’s Tricare Health Plan from covering gender-affirming care such as hormone therapy and puberty-suppressants to treat “gender dysphoria.” An analysis cited by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a leader in the campaign opposing the military’s transgender healthcare ban, estimates that 2,500 minor patients receive care for gender dysphoria through Tricare and 900 get puberty-suppressants or gender-affirming hormones.

In their lawsuit against the DOD, military personnel with transgender children claim that Tricare’s sudden refusal to cover medically necessary care has inflicted profound harm and that plaintiffs’ families now face significant and crushing out-of-pocket costs. “This is not an abstract policy shift – it is an immediate and devastating disruption of essential health care that affects the physical and psychological well-being of plaintiffs and other young people throughout the country,” according to the complaint filed this month by two LGBTQ+ rights groups on behalf of the families. The transgender patients are not named to protect their privacy and are identified in the complaint as Diana Doe, Nathan Noe, and Parker Poe. The first two were taking hormones prescribed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland and were recently told by doctors that the treatments would no longer be covered under Tricare. The third plaintiff, Poe, is identified in the lawsuit as a young adult who has been taking testosterone covered by Tricare at an unnamed medical facility. Without Tricare coverage the testosterone prescription is “too expensive to purchase out-of-pocket,” the complaint states, adding that the “process has resulted in unnecessary stress and panic.”

Servicemembers and their families have been able to obtain puberty blockers or cross-sex hormone therapy for their transgender children through the military insurance for nearly a decade, one of the LGBTQ+ groups that filed the lawsuit writes in a statement that blames President Trump for ordering the DOD to terminate the essential care. “As a result of the Trump administration’s directive, the families’ trusted doctors cannot provide ongoing care and families are unfairly forced to take on this financial burden,” according to the group, which accuses the Trump administration of waging a relentless assault on transgender Americans and issuing a barrage of discriminatory executive orders designed to strip away their basic legal rights and deny them recognition. The reality is that the defense bill signed by Biden back in December 2024 bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth whose parents are active-duty military personnel. Leftist groups like the ACLU mounted a campaign to pressure Biden to veto the bill, but he signed it even though it prohibits insurance coverage for “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria,” including the hormone therapy and puberty-suppressants taken by the minors in this lawsuit.

Tricare has never covered the costly transgender sex change operations for adults but until recently provided hormone therapy and psychological counseling for gender dysphoria, which is identified by the plan as “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.” Before Trump’s second presidency, Tricare allowed active-duty service members to request a waiver for “medically necessary gender affirming surgery,” but the pricey operation was typically denied and two enlisted men who identify as women sued the DOD claiming the policy discriminates based on sex and transgender status. Less than a year ago, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled in their favor, determining that the military’s health insurance plan is discriminatory and violates Equal Protection rights under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution by failing to pay for gender transition surgeries, which the judge compared to mastectomies and hysterectomies due to cancer.

Until next week,