Press Releases
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June 17, 2025

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a hearing is ordered by U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan for June 18 at 11 a.m. ET in a Freedom of Information Act (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.
Judicial Watch 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 Judicial Watch to have to go to federal court for basic information on Biden’s abuse of the FBI, using Twitter to censor and monitor Americans,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
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, Judicial Watch continues to investigate and litigate the broad range of censorship that had been imposed upon tens millions of Americans.
In November 2024, Judicial Watch 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, Judicial Watch 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, Judicial Watch 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, Judicial Watch 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, Judicial Watch 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.
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