Commentary Culture Investigations

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records concerning the House January 6 Select Committee’s transfer of approximately 30 million lines of telephone toll data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (Judicial Watch, Inc., v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-02557)).
The lawsuit was filed after the FBI failed to comply with an October 2025 FOIA request for:

Communications of former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Denver Riggleman (R-VA) with FBI officials regarding the reported acquisition or offer to provide the telephone toll data.
All FBI records and internal communications regarding the reported acquisition or offer to provide the telephone toll data collected by the House January 6 Committee.

In February 2022, the FBI opened “Arctic Frost,” an investigation into alleged efforts by Trump campaign associates to obstruct Congress’s certification of the 2020 election. The probe aggressively targeted dozens of GOP officials and organizations before closing in January 2025.
A December 2023 FBI FD-302 interview summary reveals that Kinzinger proactively offered the January 6 Committee’s massive database to the FBI. The summary states:
Kinzinger stated the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (the “Select Committee”) collected and linked a substantial amount of telephone data, and noted the FBI may already possess such data. While former Congressman Denver Riggleman worked with the Select Committee, he (Riggleman) had a contact and was able to obtain toll information, including for White House “root” or switchboard numbers via congressional subpoena. Kinzinger noted that he (Kinzinger) did not conduct the analysis himself, but that Riggleman had identified certain telephonic connections between numbers identified as being associated with the White House and certain individuals….
Kinzinger indicated that Riggleman may have never received direction on what to do with the toll data, which included approximately 30 million lines of data. Kinzinger believed it was in an electronic format, but did not know if it was the original [redacted] returns.
In October 2025, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary reported that “the FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phones for ‘tolling data’ as part of its Arctic Frost investigation. One Republican member of the House of Representatives was also impacted. The Arctic Frost investigation formed the basis of [Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s elector case against President Donald Trump.”
“The FBI must stop concealing the truth. Thirty million lines of Americans’ phone records weaponized by a partisan committee and federal investigators against President Trump and his supporters represents one of the most brazen abuses of power in modern history,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The American people deserve every record — no more stonewalling.”
Judicial Watch has conducted a massive, independent investigation into the events of January 6.
On July 6, 2026, the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department released to Judicial Watch over 1,000 hours of body-worn camera footage in 1,627 videos from the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol event. The videos were released because of an April 2026 court ruling in a DC FOIA lawsuit. The videos are available via the Judicial Watch website here.
In August 2025, Judicial Watch announced that the U.S. Air Force would finally provide full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed inside the U.S. Capitol by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021. Babbitt was the only official January 6 homicide victim. The Biden administration had previously denied Babbitt and her family these honors in retaliation for being at the U.S. Capitol that day. This decision came on the heels of a massive, nearly $5 million Trump administration settlement to her family for wrongful death and other claims against the U.S. Government.
In July 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for records on accelerated January 6 prosecutions after Trump was elected president in November 2024. The Biden administration, anticipating President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to issue pardons for January 6, 2021, defendants, is believed to have accelerated prosecutions in the final months of Biden’s term.
In March 2024, Judicial Watch received Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Justice Department in a FOIA lawsuit that showed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed personnel to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.
In October 2023, Judicial Watch received the declaration of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at the U.S. Capitol.
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The post Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records on January 6 Committee’s Transfer of 30 Million Phone Records appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Francesca Hong, the Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, is no ‘sewer socialist,’ unless that term no longer has meaning.

Rep. Summer Lee’s (D., Pa.) office has improperly used House resources and the notorious Instagram account “Dear White Staffers” for campaign and political activity, according to a complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee on July 22.
The complaint—filed by one of Lee’s concerned constituents—demands that Philip Bennett, Lee’s director of operations, be probed for using “Dear White Staffers” to advocate on behalf of preferred progressive candidates such as Abdul El-Sayed and broadly engage in “conduct not reflecting creditably on the House.”
The complaint did not allege that Lee—a member of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D., N.Y.) far-left “squad”—specifically performed any improper act, but named her as a target anyway given that every “member is responsible for ensuring that employees are aware of and adhere to House rules and that House resources are used for proper purposes.”
The controversial “Dear White Staffers” account—originally an anonymous space for junior congressional staff to grouse—is now controlled by Bennett, who regularly spews progressive, virulently anti-Israel invective to its close to half a million Instagram followers. Earlier this month, “Dear White Staffers” called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to kill anyone in the Epstein files—an exhortation which features prominently in the ethics complaint.
“On or about July 14, 2026, the account copublished—via Instagram’s ‘collaborator’ feature, which jointly credits and displays a post on both accounts—a post by activist Ariana Jasmine stating a desire for ‘my tax dollars to be used for ICE to hunt down and [shoot]/[kill] the people in the Epstein files, not random immigrants,’ followed by ‘I said what I said’ and a dare to sue. By copublishing and adopting this post to an audience of roughly 380,000 followers, the account amplified a call for federal agents to carry out extrajudicial killings,” the complaint notes—significantly undercounting the account’s actual number of followers.
“Regardless of whether the words were originally the collaborator’s, associating the operative of a House office with the promotion of extrajudicial violence, does not reflect creditably on the House within the meaning of House Rule XXIII, clause 1, which requires that Members, officers, and employees behave ‘at all times’ in a manner that reflects creditably on the House.”
In the days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, which left 1,200 dead, Bennett himself immediately joined in “ceasefire” protests which broke out in progressive spaces around the country—even boasting about being arrested in an Oct. 20, 2023, interview with the New Arab.
“It was really powerful. I didn’t have any plan. I was arrested with all of them. I was in my work clothes. They were wearing matching T-shirts,” Bennett said of the moment.
Elsewhere, the complaint cited the account’s open advocacy on behalf of liberal candidates including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and William Lawrence, an anti-Israel activist now running for Congress in Michigan’s seventh district.
“House rules prohibit using official resources — House-issued equipment, House networks, and official staff time — for campaign or political purposes, whether for the Member’s own campaign or any other candidate, and whether to support or oppose. The account is reported to be operated by a full-time Director of Operations and posts throughout the standard workday,” the complaint notes.
The ethics issues were reported to the committee by Jeremy Kazzaz, a Pittsburgh resident and Lee constituent. Kazzaz is also a cofounder of the Beacon Coalition, a Jewish issues nonprofit that fights antisemitism (with no affiliation to the Washington Free Beacon). Lee, whose district includes Squirrel Hill and the Tree of Life synagogue, site of the 2018 massacre of Jewish congregants, has been accused by Pittsburgh rabbis of “openly antisemitic” rhetoric.
Indeed, during her time in the House, Rep. Lee has also made a name for herself as one of its most anti-Israel members. In October 2023, after Hamas’s slaughter, Lee voted against a bipartisan resolution stating that the House of Representatives “stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.”
A month later, she voted against another resolution condemning support for terrorism on college campuses.
In February 2024 Lee spoke at a banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations—which multiple states have designated as a terrorist organization. She has also appeared with social media influencer Hasan Piker, who infamously said “America deserved 9/11” and once called Jews “inbred.”
“I think that it’s important that we know we have transparency into what’s going on in DC, and I think this account has grown increasingly extreme, and as far as how much it campaigns for members and embrace of political violence, and attacking sitting members of Congress directly,” Kazzaz told the Free Beacon when asked why he submitted the complaint.
A representative for the House Ethics Committee declined to comment on the status of the probe. Rep. Lee’s office did not respond to requests for comment from the Free Beacon.
The post ‘Squad’ Member Summer Lee Faces Official Ethics Probe Over Staffer’s Inappropriate Use of ‘Dear White Staffers’ Instagram To Boost El-Sayed, Other Progressives appeared first on .

Christiane Amanpour, the eponymous host of PBS’s Amanpour & Company, welcomed author and activist Bill McKibben to Tuesday’s show to partake in the latest doom-and-gloom prognostications on the environment. According to McKibben, climate change is mostly former President Ronald Reagan’s fault and any additional blame should be directed at President Trump for engaging in “economic-self sabotage.”Towards the end of their discussion, Amanpour invited McKibben to “Tell me your story about President Carter back in the ’70s. There was the oil crisis there, and he did all sorts of things, including putting solar panels on the roof of the White House. What did he tell people back then? Tell the American people?” PBS’s Christiane Amanpour asks environmental activist Bill McKibben, “Tell me your story about President Carter back in the ’70s. There was the oil crisis there, and he did all sorts of things, including putting solar panels on the roof of the White House. What did he tell people… pic.twitter.com/RM2zAWeLOm— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) July 29, 2026 McKibben mourned, “What he told people was that the sun was, in fact, the future. And in his last budget, he put aside another R&D money that the plan was for America to be producing 20 percent of its power from the sun by the year 2000. Had we done that, we would live in a very different world today, a much cooler one, because this renewable revolution would have been pushed forward several decades.”Lamenting Reagan’s election, McKibben continued, “Instead, of course, Ronald Reagan was elected over Mr. Carter, and he took down those solar panels from the White House roof. More importantly, he took that money out of the budget and locked us into this cycle of endless drilling for more oil that’s come to define not only America’s economy, but America’s politics.”McKibben then fast-forwarded to Trump, “As you know, Donald Trump has said his plan is to exert energy dominance across the earth by America’s control of oil and gas. I don’t think that’s going to work, but I do think it runs the very strong risk of turning America into a kind of theme park of internal combustion, while the rest of the world gets its act together very quickly.”He also claimed, “We’re being left behind, and I’m not sure there’s ever been a kind of act of national economic self-sabotage to compare with the last 18 months. The country that invented the solar panel and the industrial wind turbine and the lithium-ion battery is now the country ceding all of that advantage to our theoretical chief adversary.”By “our theoretical chief adversary,” McKibben was referring to China, which is interesting because the U.S. and China’s CO₂ emissions per capita data lines have gone in opposite directions since 2000, and China’s is the one that is steadily going up.Here is a transcript for the July 28 show:PBS Amanpour and Company7/28/2026CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Tell me your story about President Carter back in the ’70s. There was the oil crisis there, and he did all sorts of things, including putting solar panels on the roof of the White House. What did he tell people back then? Tell the American people?BILL MCKIBBEN: What he told people was that the sun was, in fact, the future. And in his last budget, he put aside another R&D money that the plan was for America to be producing 20 percent of its power from the sun by the year 2000. Had we done that, we would live in a very different world today, a much cooler one, because this renewable revolution would have been pushed forward several decades. Instead, of course, Ronald Reagan was elected over Mr. Carter, and he took down those solar panels from the White House roof. More importantly, he took that money out of the budget and locked us into this cycle of endless drilling for more oil that’s come to define not only America’s economy, but America’s politics. As you know, Donald Trump has said his plan is to exert energy dominance across the earth by America’s control of oil and gas. I don’t think that’s going to work, but I do think it runs the very strong risk of turning America into a kind of theme park of internal combustion, while the rest of the world gets its act together very quickly.We’re being left behind, and I’m not sure there’s ever been a kind of act of national economic self-sabotage to compare with the last 18 months. The country that invented the solar panel and the industrial wind turbine and the lithium-ion battery is now the country ceding all of that advantage to our theoretical chief adversary.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had heretofore never met a microphone from which he wished to social distance, refused to answer the questions of U.S. senators on Wednesday morning.
A cowered Fauci, who spent years ginning up fear in the United States regarding Covid-19, appeared before Congress afraid to answer basic questions.
“You can sit for In Style magazine,” a frustrated Hawley told Fauci, “but you can’t answer questions for the American people.”
The longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) thereby joined mobster Frank Costello, communist Howard Da Silva, and bribed Teapot Dome Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall in invoking the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions from elected officials.
Questions about whether he shielded work-related communications from public scrutiny by sending and receiving messages on personal devices and accounts or eventually dismissed the theory that he publicly touted of the Wuhan wet-market as the source of Covid yielded the same answer: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
Even when Senator Josh Hawley (R—Mo.) asked the color of his tie and the day of the week, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment. Hawley raised the issue of contempt based on the reasoning that his pardon in the last hours of the Biden Administration made the Fifth Amendment moot in this case.
Senator Rand Paul (R—Ky.) ejected criminal defense attorney David Schertler early in the hearing when he attempted to make Fauci’s case as his client simultaneously invoked his right to remain silent. Paul later explained, “In no courtroom in America can you have your witness plead the Fifth Amendment, then your attorney gets to testify.”
Republican senators ranged from the respectful in Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) to the profane in Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who used the f-word and the s-word in his questions and statements to Fauci.
Incurious Democrats refused to ask questions in the same rote manner that Fauci refused to answer them. “Dr. Fauci has saved lives,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) declared. Sen. Andy Kim (D.—N.J.) quoted from Theodore Roosevelt’s man-in-the-arena passage and maintained, “The public servants do this work because they love this country.” Others in filibustering their allotted times invoked such boogeymen as Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph McCarthy, and antivaxxers.
The publication of Fauci’s diary, which showed contradictions between his public pronouncements and his private beliefs, necessitated Wednesday’s hearing. Fauci’s claims of fatality rates dramatically higher than influenza in the early days of Covid when he lacked the denominator of cases (and his diary indicated that he knew the falseness of the inflated claims), grants awarded to Chinese doctors who described in published papers conducting gain-of-function research illegal to federally fund under U.S. law, and alleged self-dealing all went unaddressed.
“You can sit for In Style magazine,” a frustrated Hawley told Fauci, “but you can’t answer questions for the American people.”
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If you thought there had to be some reasonable explanations for why his diary assessments were so different from his public statements, he’s not giving them to you.

Sure, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is playing politics, but that doesn’t have a reasonable point in his inquiry to Mitch McConnell.

The leftwing ideology deeply embedded in the American public education system is being fortified with the incorporation of a radical “Learning for Justice” curriculum—often funded with taxpayer dollars—in colleges across the country that are training future teachers, assuring that the indoctrination continues for generations to come. A new report published by an education nonprofit reveals that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a controversial leftist group that slanders conservative organizations in an interactive “Hate Map”, created the program lessons, resources and Social Justice Standards (SJS) in the educator training classes at Colleges of Education (COE) across the country. In some cases, federal grants pay for the biased teacher training that blends social justice standards into virtually all lessons.
The outrageous Learning for Justice curriculum is used to train future educators in 38 states plus the District of Columbia and at least 100 COEs nationwide utilize it, according to the probe conducted by the nonprofit Defending Education. The Virginia-based group confirms that the COEs that have adopted the SPLC’s material are responsible for preparing K-12 classroom teachers as well as the continuing education of present teachers and administrators, which means they play a major role in what content, materials, best practices and perspectives shape the educators. “This report also examines academic journal articles, doctoral dissertations, and master’s theses to provide additional insight into how SPLC materials and Social Justice Standards are incorporated into Colleges of Education, teacher preparation programs, and K-12 classrooms,” reads the report published by the charity that aims for the reestablishment of a quality, non-political education for all students. “Importantly, few COEs outwardly acknowledge their use of SPLC materials; instead, many COEs hide their usage and promotion behind faculty login pages.”
Among the cases outlined in the report is a $275,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for a venture between Northern Arizona University and the Flagstaff Unified School District that incorporates Learning for Justice’s SJS into its computer science curriculum. In another example, the Department of Education gave a California graduate program $3.3 million to “develop and cultivate educators-in-training” with “social justice teaching ideas and practices,” including “Social Justice Standards from Teaching Tolerance.” The University of Maryland College of Education’s master’s for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers features a key theme of “Equity, Access, and Anti-bias Education” that integrates social justice standards and critical practices from the SPLC’s Learning for Justice into its programs. The entire Maryland State Department of Education also incorporates Social Justice Standards into its regulations governing new teacher induction programming run by school districts. The University of Michigan’s education program is centered on a “more just and equitable elementary science teaching” that draws from Learning for Justice and Kutztown University in Pennsylvania forces future educators to complete a special “teaching tolerance module” to fulfill a requirement of developing an understanding of diversity.
The list of examples goes on and on, with colleges in California, Oregon, Washington State, Massachusetts and Virginia using the discriminatory SPLC material. Even top public universities in Republican states have adopted it and mandate it in educator training courses. The University of Florida’s College of Education has a required course called “Equity Pedagogy Foundations” that aims to define educational equity by exploring the foundational concepts of race, class, ability and sexuality as they impact children in schools. Florida Atlantic University trains future teachers with courses such as “Introduction to Diversity for Educators, Equity Issues in Multicultural Education and Education in Multicultural Society.” The University of North Texas makes future educators take an advanced teaching course that features required readings form Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards. The University of Kansas incorporates the SPLC’s “importance of multicultural education” in all teacher programs and Western Kentucky University mandates a diversity in the classroom course that requires students to read a book called “There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom.”
This latest report on the SPLC’s enormous influence in training the nation’s educators comes on the heels of an equally disturbing investigation that revealed the leftwing group has received millions of taxpayer dollars to spread its hateful message and materials across the United States, including in public schools. The money came from states, cities, counties, universities, school districts, and other public entities to help fulfill the SPLC’s stated mission of “dismantling white supremacy” and “creating a world where Black and Brown communities are represented and respected by our democracy.”
The post SPLC’s Radical “Learning for Justice” Curriculum Used to Train Educators Across U.S. appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Staff, NYT

There is no such thing as a brilliant, detached, learned figure who is set apart from politics.