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EXCLUSIVE: FOIA Turns Up Zilch on The ‘Full Authority’ Garland Claims He Gave Weiss Over Hunter Biden


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 07, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/07/exclusive-foia-turns-up-zilch-on-the-full-authority-garland-claims-he-gave-weiss-over-hunter-biden/

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal a glaring gap in the documentation maintained by the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office: There is nothing memorializing the authority Attorney General Merrick Garland claims he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss for the Hunter Biden investigation. 

For more than a year, Garland represented to Congress that Weiss held ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation — which the eventual appointment of Weiss as special counsel contradicted. But now there is more evidence — or rather a lack of evidence — indicating the claimed authority was always a charade. 

The Friday before the long holiday weekend, the DOJ provided the Heritage Foundation with the second batch of documents it was ordered by a federal court to produce in response to Heritage’s FOIA lawsuit. This installment concluded the DOJ’s production of the non-exempt documents in Weiss’s custody which concerned his authority for investigating Hunter Biden. But none of the documents produced addressed Weiss’s authority or any authority promised by Garland.

Mike Howell, the director of the Heritage Oversight Project and a co-plaintiff in the FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ, stressed the significance of this omission to The Federalist. 

“The DOJ lives on paper.” Anything as important as granting Weiss ultimate authority over an investigation or promising to give him authority to bring charges in another venue, if necessary, “would have been written down,” Howell explained. To Howell, this last batch of documents constitutes an admission by Garland that “there was nothing written down at the DOJ and sent to Weiss, indicating Weiss had any of the authority that Garland claimed he did.”

“We’re beginning to understand why Biden’s DOJ is throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us to fight the release of these records in federal court, all paid for by the taxpayers of course,” Howell told The Federalist.

While the DOJ withheld some documents from the production, claiming various exemptions from FOIA, it is difficult to fathom what FOIA exemption would permit the DOJ to withhold a communication granting Weiss the authority Garland publicly discussed on multiple occasions. When asked why Garland had not memorialized his supposed grant of ultimate authority to Weiss, the DOJ did not respond to The Federalist’s inquiry.

The lack of any materials documenting such authority raises more questions about the statements both Garland and Weiss made to Congress. As far back as April 26, 2022, the attorney general told Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty that the “Hunter Biden’s investigation … is being run by and supervised by the United States attorney for the District of Delaware,” and that Weiss “is in charge of that investigation.”

Then on March 1, 2023, Garland unequivocally testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in response to questioning by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary.” 

Garland maintained that position even after IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified that during an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, “Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.” Specifically, after news broke of the whistleblower’s testimony, Garland said during a press conference that Weiss was assured he could “make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

Weiss would later write to Congress to confirm Garland’s position, stating:

I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.

After the transcript of Shapley’s testimony was released, however, Weiss would walk back his claims by clarifying that what he meant was that Garland had promised him that he would be granted ultimate authority to make charging decisions — not quite the same thing as having that ultimate authority. 

Either way, one would presume that if Garland had granted Weiss full authority over the Hunter Biden investigation and promised to authorize him to file charges in other venues, there’d be some documentation to back up the claim. But there was none in the FOIA production.

Of course, after the sweetheart plea deal — footsied out between one of Weiss’s top assistant U.S. attorneys, Lesley Wolf, and Hunter’s attorneys — imploded, Garland named Weiss special counsel. So, the federal prosecutor now has the requisite authority to charge the president’s son in whatever district he wants. 

But that belated appointment isn’t a grant of absolution for misleading Congress, which is precisely what appears to have happened. And the documents that weren’t suggest as much.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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BREAKING: Judge Orders Release of Clinton Security Training Docs To Begin In Five Days


waving flagAuthored by Richard Pollock, Reporter, 09/21/2016

URL of the original posting site: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/21/breaking-judge-orders-release-of-clinton-security-training-docs-to-begin-in-five-days/#ixzz4KvouqDji

A frustrated federal judge ordered the State Department to begin producing within five days hundreds of documents on whether required or recommended security training, briefings or courses were completed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides.

Judge Richard Leon ruled Tuesday in favor of The Daily Caller News Foundation by rejecting the State Department’s motion to dismiss TheDCNF’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerning production of the documents originally sought under the Freedom of Information Act. But he also denied TheDCNF’s request to depose State Department officials.

The State Department has been unable to produce any records confirming that Clinton and her top aides received mandatory annual security briefings about the proper handling of classified materials and the proper methods for conducting secure communications.

In addition to Clinton, TheDCNF seeks the same records for former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Advisor Jacob Sullivan.

Leon has been impatient with State Department foot-dragging in releasing the documents. He ordered the department to release one third of the 400 documents by Sept. 26 and the rest of them by Oct. 10.

Bradley Moss, one of the attorneys representing TheDCNF, said “Judge Leon’s Order made clear his frustration with the State Department’s continued obstruction of the FOIA process. State will either meet his deadline or face the consequences of failure.”

FBI Director James Comey told reporters in a July 7 news conference he regarded the former secretary of state as a “careless” federal official when she set up a private and unsecured email server in her New York home. Comey did not end up recommending prosecution of the former secretary of state.

National Security Agency officials were aghast to learn early in Clinton’s term that she insisted on using an unsecured personal Blackberry phone within the confines of her State Department office. Unsecured digital devices are banned from the secretary’s office.

State Department officials admitted in a July 29 response to TheDCNF that their failure to produce the requested documents meant the “courses were not completed” by Clinton or her aides.

Department officials balked at searching computer hard drives in Clinton’s executive offices or in security offices where security awareness training is arranged for all of the department’s 45,000 employees and foreign service officers.

In an Aug. 31 hearing, Leon told Justice Department Attorney Jason Lee the documents should be released before the November election.

“I’m sure you can appreciate Mr. Lee, there is a certain time sensitivity on this issue,” Leon said. “We’re looking down the barrel of a presidential election from now in two months.”

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Read the Absurd Presentation the U.S. Army is Pushing About “White Privilege”


waving flagWritten by Philip Hodges, Mar 9, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://constitution.com/read-the-absurd-presentation-the-u-s-army-is-pushing-about-white-privilege

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Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Judicial Watch obtained training materials used by the U.S. Army in teaching soldiers about white privilege, as well as male, heterosexual privilege. The documents pertained to an Equal Opportunity briefing on April 2, 2015, to the 67th Signal Battalion at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Here are some of the topics covered using a PowerPoint presentation in the briefing at Fort Gordon, reported by Judicial Watch:

  • Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groupsDeath of a nation they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do.
  • Privilege has become one of those loaded words we need to reclaim so that we can use it to name and illuminate the truth
  • Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. “To be white in American [sic] means not having to think about it” [Quotation not attributed]
  • Our society attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual regardless of your social class. [Emphasis added]
  • Imagine a school or a workplace where all kinds of people feel comfortable showing up. [sic] valued, accepted, supported, appreciated, respected, belonging. [sic] Something very powerful keeps this from us.
  • The truth of this powerful forces [sic] is everywhere, but we don’t know how to talk about it and so we act as though it doesn’t exist
  • The trouble we’re in privileges [sic] some groups at the expense of others.
  • It creates a yawning divide in levels of income, wealth, dignity, safety, health and quality of life.
  • It promotes fear, suspicion, discrimination, harassment, and violence.
  • Consider the “black woman” in Africa who has not experienced white racism and does not identify herself as a “black woman”.  African, a woman, but not black.
  • She only became “black” when she came to the U.S. where privilege is organized according to race, where she is assigned to a social category that bears that name and she is treated differently as a result. [Emphasis added]
  • The trouble we’re in can’t be solved unless the “privileged” make the problem of privilege their problem and do something about it.
  • The fact that it’s so easy for me and other people in dominant groups not to do this is the single most powerful barrier to change.Alinsky affect

A few years ago, Judicial Watch had obtained a 133-page document used by the U.S. Air Force, which included a “student guide” to extremist groups and hate groups. According to the student guide, “Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publically espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”of domenstic terrorist

Regarding “extremist ideologies,” the document listed two historical examples: one, “the colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”; and two, “the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states.”

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State Dept. plans New Year’s Eve release of Clinton emails


waving flagBy Sarah Westwood • 12/28/15

URL of the original posting site: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/state-dept.-plans-nye-clinton-email-dump/article/2579159

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Thousands of Hillary Clinton’s private emails will hit the Internet on New Year’s Eve thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that permits the State Department to wait until the end of each month to release the documents.

The holiday email release will mark the eighth time the agency has published a batch of Clinton’s records according to the monthly schedule. The first release came in May of this year and contained fewer than 300 emails, all of them related to Benghazi.

Clinton’s use of a personal server to shield her private emails from the public hobbled the early days of her presidential campaign. In the weeks since, her poll numbers have rebounded and speculation about whether the email controversy could cost her the nomination has largely abated.

The former secretary of state saw a turning point in the scandal near the end of October, when she took the stand for a grueling 11-hour hearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi and fielded dozens of questions about her email use. Clinton’s poll numbers began to climb shortly after the hearing.H-Cell-600-LI

The final batch of Clinton emails will be released to the public Jan. 29. At that point, all 55,000 pages of records will be available online for review.

Clinton has pointed to the State Department’s steady publication of her emails as evidence of her commitment to transparency. However, the documents she turned over to the agency late last year make up only half of the total number of emails that were once stored on her personal server, which is now in FBI custody.

lying so longAccording to papers filed in the FOIA lawsuit that forced the State Department to begin publishing the emails earlier this year, the agency is scheduled to publish roughly 8,800 pages of records Thursday. The lawsuit was filed by Jason Leopold, a reporter at Vice News.

The New Year’s Eve release should bring the total pages of Clinton emails available online to at least 45,100, with the remainder slated for publication in January. After a slow start, the agency has run ahead of schedule for the past few document releases.

Hundreds of emails are expected to be marked classified in the remaining unpublished email trove, as all monthly releases since this summer have contained classified material.

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Judicial Watch: Federal Court Issues Ruling Compelling IRS to Provide Answers on Lerner IRS Emails


waving flagJUNE 08, 2015

tyrants(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a Judicial Watch request to issue an order requiring the IRS to provide answers by June 12, 2015, on the status of the Lois Lerner emails the IRS had previously declared lost.  Judicial Watch raised questions about the IRS’ handling of the missing emails issue in a court filing on June 2, 2015, demanding answers about Lois Lerner’s emails, which had been recovered from backup tapes.  Judge Sullivan issued the court order on June 4, 2015.

Judicial Watch has argued that the IRS misled the court and Judicial Watch by withholding the truth about the existence and content of the backup tapes.  In response to Judicial Watch’s litigation and pressure from Congress, some of Lerner’s emails had been recovered by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) despite testimony from the IRS Commissioner and representations to Judge Sullivan that Lerner’s emails had been irretrievably lost and destroyed. In its June 2 filing, Judicial Watch detailed:

Because the emails recovered from the backup tapes are responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request, [Judicial Watch] respectfully requests that the Court order the IRS to submit to the Court a report by June 12, 2015 addressing the status of the emails recovered by TIGTA.  The report should include:

(a) clarification as to whether all emails that have been recovered by TIGTA have now been turned over to the IRS for review and processing in response to Plaintiff’s request, the volume of those emails, and the time frame in which the IRS anticipates completing its review and production of responsive emails, and

(b) clarification as to whether the processing is complete for all 1,268 backup tapes to determine what emails are recoverable, and if not, when the processing is expected to be complete.obama-and-IRS

Two days after Judicial Watch’s filing, Judge Sullivan issued the following order:

The IRS is directed to respond to [Judicial Watch’s] notice by no later than June 12, 2015.

Judicial Watch is seeking Lerner’s emails as part of its Freedom of Information litigation over the Obama IRS’s targeting  conservative political groups and citizens in the months leading up to President Obama’s reelection bid in 2012 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559))

On February 26, 2015, TIGTA officials testified to House Government Oversight and Reform Committee that the oversight agency had received 744 backup tapes containing emails sent and received by Lerner. These tapes had been obtained one day after TIGTA requested that the IRS provide any backup tapes that contained records from Lerner’s email account. The IRS subsequently produced 424 additional backup tapes in February 2015. More than 32,000 emails from Lerner’s account were recovered from the initial 744 tapes; Judicial Watch is still seeking information regarding the contents of the additional 424 tapes.

Judicial Watch outlined the continuing IRS cover-up to Judge Sullivan:

The aforementioned testimony is uncontested that the recovered emails are from the email accounts of IRS officials, including Ms. Lerner, and cover the time period of (Judicial Watch’s) request. The testimony also is unequivocal that the IRS reported publicly that any backup tapes had been recycled and were no longer available without asking its technicians whether the tapes existed. [TIGTA Deputy Inspector General] Camus also testified that hard drives previously reported by the IRS to have been destroyed had not, in fact, been destroyed.Obamas IRS Gestapo

However, the IRS has yet to provide answers to Judicial Watch regarding the content of tapes it turned over to TIGTA, specifically “whether the emails are from all or only a subset of the 1,268 backup tapes located since July 1, 2014,” or whether additional emails remain to be recovered.

As the Obama State Department has argued with respect with Hillary Clinton’s hidden emails, the IRS has now argued that Lerner’s emails are no longer “IRS” records and it has no legal obligation to request them:

Agency counsel responded that the IRS is under no obligation to request copies of the emails recovered by TIGTA because they are allegedly not agency records. The IRS’s position is extraordinary considering that, not only are the backup tapes and emails obviously IRS records, but the Court went to great lengths to address the issue of the “missing” emails, including holding a status conference, ordering a meet and confer before a magistrate judge, and ordering the IRS to submit multiple declarations about its efforts to recover or locate the emails.Obama's IRS Gestapo

“The Obama IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about Lois Lerner’s emails,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The IRS, including its top political appointees IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, has much to answer for over its contempt of court and of Congress.  And the Department of Justice officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable, as well.  The IRS is out of control and Judicial Watch is happy that Judge Sullivan has taken this key step to remind the agency that it is accountable to the rule of law and the American people.”Party of Deciet and lies  freedom combo 2

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IRS had ‘secret research project’ on conservatives


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URL to article: http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/irs-had-secret-research-project-on-conservatives/

Posted By author-image Garth Kant On 09/04/2014 @ 5:52 pm

lois-lerner-scratch-600WASHINGTON – The government watchdog group Judicial Watch has unearthed more bombshells in the IRS scandal, using the federal court system to get information Congress has been unable to obtain directly from the tax agency or the Justice Department.

Tom Fitton, the group’s president, told WND the scandal has now become so massive, “President Nixon resigned over lesser abuses of the IRS.”

The just-released emails reveal the IRS had a “secret research project” using lists of donors to mostly conservative organizations that an agency attorney appeared to admit it never should have had Obamas IRS Gestapoin its possession.

The documents do not describe the project or show how the IRS used the names on the lists, but they do show they were in the possession of Lois Lerner, the former agency employee and central figure in the scandal.

Referring to all the emails released Thursday by Judicial Watch, Fitton told WND, “These documents show how justice has been abused by this administration. That Eric Holder’s Justice Department has done no serious criminal investigation of the IRS abuses is no surprise since that agency is implicated in the scandal and obstructed investigations.”

One of the email exchanges revealed Lerner warned a colleague that Congress was asking “dangerous” questions about their targeting of conservative nonprofit organizations.

Congress has been stymied in its attempts to get much of the information from the IRS and the Justice Department that Judicial Watch has been able to obtain through the legal system.

Obama's IRS GestapoThe documents are the latest emails Judicial Watch has obtained as part of a lawsuit it filed in October 2013 after the IRS refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests dating back to May 2013.

Attorney General Eric Holder has ignored a contempt of Congress citation against Lerner and a recommendation by a congressional committee to file criminal charges in the IRS scandal.

But Judicial Watch has been able to use FOIAs to obtain a series of documents with explosive revelations that have helped House committees keep their investigations into the IRS scandal alive.

“We are doing the work of the Department of Justice, the media and Congress. We are thankful that the court process still works and our lawsuit is, right now, the last best hope for accountability and truth in this massive scandal,” Fitton told WND.

  • These latest documents show Lerner had obtained the donor lists and that 75 percent of the groups were apparently conservative and only 5 percent were liberal.nonsense
  • When Lerner used a planted question on May 10, 2013 to disclose the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, as a congressional investigation began to bear down upon her, she conceded the requests for donor names was “not appropriate.”
  • An email just revealed by Judicial Watch from Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Margo L. Stevens to Lerner had instructed her on May 21, 2012, that “such information was not needed across-the-board and not used in making the agency’s determination on exempt status,” implying the information should never have been in Lerner’s possession, in her capacity as head of the IRS’ tax-exempt division.
  • Judicial Watch said key parts of that email and other emails had been blacked out. In fact, many of the documents were completely blacked out.
  • Judicial Watch said the Obama administration was not required by law to withhold any of that information, and it may have been using a FOIA exemption when material is deemed “pre-decisional” or deliberative.”
  • An email thread a month later, on June 27, 2012, showed the donor lists were being used for a “secret research project.”

Judicial Watch said the emails, with the subject line “donor names,” included this exchange:

  • June 27, 2012: 8:59 a.m. – David L. Fish, IRS acting director of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements, to Holly Paz:

Joseph Urban [IRS Technical Advisor, Tax Exempt and Government Entities] had actually started a secret research project on whether we could, consistent with 6104, argue that [REDACTED] Joe was quite agitated yesterday when I told him what we were doing. (He was involved when the initial question was raised, but we didn’t continue reading him in). At one point he started saying that this was a decision for Steve Miller – I told him we were already doing it, and that I didn’t know whether Lois had already talked to Nikole [former IRS Chief of Staff to IRS Commissioner Steve Miller] about this. Would not be surprised if he already started working on Lois.

  • June 27, 2012 9:02 a.m. – Holly Paz to David L. Fish:

Thanks for the heads up. The decision was made by Steve, based on advice from P and A. [Procedure and Administration]

It was on the very next day, June 28, 2012, that Lerner warned Paz that congressional and TIGTA (Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration) inquiries into their IRS procedures were becoming “dangerous.”

  • June 28, 2012 8:57 a.m. – Paz to Lerner: “Now TIGTA wants to talk to me. I am guessing they read this morning’s paper. [Apparent reference to Wall Street Journal article concerning IRS scrutiny of Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS tax exempt status] Will keep you posted.”
  • June 28, 2012 9:13 a.m. – Lerner to Paz: “Not alone. Wait til I am there.”
  • June 28, 2012 09:17 a.m. – Paz to Lerner: “Sorry. Too late. He already called me. It was not about WSJ. Just him trying to get better understanding of the scope of the [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave] Camp [R-MI] request.”
  • June 28, 2012 8:22 a.m. – Lerner to Paz: “Just as dangerous. I’ll talk to you soon. Be there in half hour.”
  • Judicial Watch believes the “dangerous” request was apparently a letter sent by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., to the head of the IRS requesting copies of all 501(c)(4) (tax-exempt status) applications from 2010 and 2011.

The concern by Lerner and other IRS officials apparently began just after they were informed, in late March 2012, their process for reviewing tax-exempt applications was under investigation in the form of an audit conducted by the , or TIGTA.

On May 17, 2013, then-IRS Commissioner Steve Miller testified before Congress that “instructions had been given to destroy any donor lists,” but, four months later, donor lists were actually turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The committee then announced, a year later, on May 7, 2014, that, of the scores of conservative groups that provided donor information to the IRS, “nearly one in ten donors were subject to audit.”

During an interview on Super Bowl Sunday in February, President Obama claimed there was “not even a smidgen” of corruption in the IRS scandal.

But, in a statement released by Judicial Watch, Fitton said, “[I]t is well past time that President Obama should be held to account about his repeated and recent falsehoods about his IRS scandal.”obama-liar4-266x189

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