FBI Cover-Up In Court! | Judicial Watch

FBI Still Hiding Biden Twitter Censorship Records
CHARGES: Bribed USAID Official Helps Minority Businesses Get $550 Million in Contracts

FBI Still Hiding Biden Twitter Censorship Records

We were in court this week for a hearing ordered by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan in our FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for “Twitter Files” records concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop and other censorship. The only issue remaining in the lawsuit is the FBI’s continued hiding of records documenting two meetings between Twitter and the Biden FBI.

We filed the April 2023 lawsuit against the Justice Department, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after the FBI failed to respond to a December 2022 FOIA request for the records of any FBI official and key Twitter employees between June 2020 and December 2022 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01163)).

The lawsuit references Yoel Roth, Vijaya Gadde, and Jim Baker, who were prominent in internal discussions at Twitter about censoring the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, as journalist Matt Taibbi revealed in the December 2022 release of the “Twitter Files.”

It is frustrating beyond belief for us to have to go to federal court for basic information on Biden’s abuse of the FBI, using Twitter to censor and monitor Americans.

Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel committed the FBI to a “new era” of transparency:

The FBI is entering a new era—one that will be defined by integrity, accountability, and the unwavering pursuit of justice. There will be no cover-ups, no missing documents, and no stone left unturned — and anyone from the prior or current Bureau who undermines this will be swiftly pursued. If there are gaps, we will find them. If records have been hidden, we will uncover them. And we will bring everything we find to the DOJ to be fully assessed and transparently disseminated to the American people as it should be. The oath we take is to the Constitution, and under my leadership, that promise will be upheld without compromise.

Through FOIA and other direct litigation, we continue to investigate and litigate the broad range of censorship that had been imposed upon tens of millions of Americans.

In November 2024, we uncovered records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealing an extensive effort by government and non-government entities to monitor and censor social media posts on fraud during the 2020 election.

In June 2024, heavily redacted Homeland Security records from a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit showed state election officials in the days before and after the 2020 election flagging online content deemed “misinformation” and sending it to the Center for Internet Security (CIS), a DHS-funded nonprofit, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is a division of DHS, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which was created to flag online election content for censorship and suppression, and others.

In December 2023, Homeland Security records from the same lawsuit showed a close collaboration between its Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and the leftist Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to engage in “real-time narrative tracking” on all major social media platforms in the days leading up to the 2020 election.

In November 2023, we uncovered Homeland Security records that showed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) communicating during the 2020 election campaign with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). The CISA records showed government involvement in the EIP pressure on Google, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit and other platforms to censor “disinformation.”

In September 2022, we sued the Secretary of State of the State of California for having YouTube censor a Judicial Watch election integrity video. In March 2025, Judicial Watch asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the case.

In July 2021, we uncovered records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which revealed that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control the Covid narrative and “misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in free advertising was given to the CDC by social media companies.

In May 2021, we revealed documents showing that Iowa state officials pressured social media companies Twitter and Facebook to censor posts about the 2020 election.

In April 2021, records from the Office of the Secretary of State of California revealed how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election. Included in these records were “misinformation briefings” emails that were compiled by communications firm SKDK, which lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020. The records show how the state agency successfully pressured YouTube to censor a Judicial Watch video concerning mail-in voting and a Judicial Watch lawsuit settlement about California voter roll clean up.

CHARGES: Bribed USAID Official Helps Minority Businesses Get $550 Million in Contracts

The United States Agency for International Development has been in the news lately as President Trump’s administration exposes its use as a cash cow for the Left. Now there’s news of outright bribery at the agency, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reveals.

In yet another case that demonstrates the deep-rooted corruption at the dismantled United States Agency for International Development (USAID) , a contracting officer at the scandal-plagued State Department offshoot haspleaded guilty to bribery of a public official for running a decade-long scheme involving over half a billion dollars in contracts. The criminal operation was facilitated by a government program that helps socially and economically disadvantaged businesses by giving them lucrative federal contracting opportunities through “set-asides and solo-source” contracts exclusively available to minorities and women without a competitive bidding process. All the parties involved in this criminal enterprise, including the veteran USAID employee, are minorities.

It is important to note that the mainstream media, which collectively expressed outrage when President Trump dismantled USAID, has failed to report on the pervasive fraud that has long gripped the foreign aid agency and still ignores cases like this that support the administration’s move. Only a few local Maryland news outlets covered this huge bribery operation because the perpetrators were from the Baltimore area. The corrupt USAID contracting officer, Roderick Watson, is from Woodstock, which is just west of Baltimore. Federal prosecutors say he received over a million dollars in bribes in exchange for using his position as a trusted overseer of taxpayer money to direct 14 prime federal contracts to his three buddies, Walter Barnes, a certified Small Business Administration (SBA) minority business owner, Darryl Britt another minority business owner and Paul Young, a subcontractor of the men’s companies. Barnes has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official and securities fraud. Britt has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official and Young has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official.

“The defendants sought to enrich themselves at the expense of American taxpayers through bribery and fraud,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) criminal division. “Their scheme violated the public trust by corrupting the federal government’s procurement process. Anybody who cares about good and effective government should be concerned about the waste, fraud, and abuse in government agencies, including USAID.” Galeotti added that those who engage in bribery schemes to exploit the U.S. Small Business Administration’s vital economic programs for small businesses— whether individuals or corporations acting through them—will be held to account. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, where the case is being tried, emphasized that Watson was entrusted to serve the interests of the American people and his criminal actions for his own personal gain undermine the integrity of public institutions. “Public trust is the hallmark of our nation’s values, so corruption within a federal government agency is intolerable” the U.S. Attorney, Kelly O. Hayes, said.

The elaborate scheme began in 2013 when Watson, while a USAID contracting officer, made a deal with Britt to steer government contracts his way in exchange for bribes. Britt’s company, Apprio, benefitted from the special minority exception and therefore did not receive much scrutiny but when it graduated from the program and was no longer eligible to be a prime business for new contracts with USAID under the initiative, they brought Barnes onboard. His minority-owned company, Vistant, shifted to the prime contractor that cashed in thanks to Watson’s influence between 2018 and 2022. Britt and Barnes concealed the bribes—cash, computers, cellular phones, jobs for relatives, down payments on two residential mortgages—by passing them through Young, the president of another subcontractor to the men’s businesses. Watson helped his accomplices by manipulating the procurement process at USAID by, among other things, recommending their companies to other agency decisionmakers for noncompetitive contracts, disclosing sensitive procurement information, providing positive performance evaluations, and approving increased funding and security clearances. “Watson exploited his position at USAID to line his pockets with bribes in exchange for more than $550 million in contracts,” according to Guy Ficco, chief of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). “While he helped three company owners and presidents bypass the fair bidding process, he was showered with cash and lavish gifts.”

Judicial Watch has for years exposed inherent fraud, waste, and corruption at USAID. Most recently, we sued the agency for records involving $27 million in Gaza grants that went to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.” The Biden administration claimed the recipients could not be disclosed because the agency’s workers could be put at risk by Israel. The involvement of employees of the U.S.-backed United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel underscores the importance of transparency in who receives American taxpayer dollars and how the money is spent.

Until next week,