Episode 766: Rights and Freedoms in Peril

Published Oct 23, 2024, 11:50 PM

Newt talks with Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, about his new book "Rights and Freedoms in Peril: An Investigative Report on the Left's Attack on America." They discuss the progressive movement's impact on American institutions, government accountability, and corruption. Fitton shares his background and the origins of Judicial Watch, emphasizing the importance of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in exposing government misconduct. They also delve into issues like election integrity, DEI programs in military academies, and the Biden administration's border policies. Fitton highlights the ongoing challenges and the need for leadership to address these critical issues.

On this episode of Newsworld, Chaos at the Border, lawfare targeting former President Trump, DEEI, and the military, the COVID cover up. These are just a few of the topics addressed in the new book by Tom Fitton, Rights and Freedoms in Peril, an investigative report on the left's attack on America. Tom and his team in Judicial Watch discuss how the progressive movement is threatening America's institutions and undermining core principles that make this country a beacon of hope to the world. Here to discuss his new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, Tom Fitton. He is the president Judicial Watch and brings thirty years experience in conservative public policy to America's largest and most effective government watchdog organization. He is a real fighter and somebody who I've admired for a long time. Tom, Welcome and thank you for joining me on news World.

I appreciate the invitation and I'm pleased to be here with you. As you know that it's a mutual admiration society here. Appreciate your leaders Listen, you do great work.

But I'm curious, can you share a bit about your background and what led you to become involved in government accountability.

I was in a middle class family, right to use the phrase. My father was a supermarket manager. My mother raised ten kids, became a nurse, a right to life activist, you know. I went to school down here at George Washington University, and my first job was for Morton Blackwell, the conservative activist teaches young folks how to lead. And I've just been in the movement ever since. And I came over to Judicial Watch, which we're celebrating thirty years now, and I came over in ninety eight because I kind of liked this aggressive approach to dealing with the problems we face. We had these corruption issues. The left, as you were called back then, they were the googo people, they were the good government people, public citizen, these left leaning groups. They used Floya to essentially harass the national security establishment that was trying to protect us against communism at the time. And so Judial Watch came in. We used Floya to advance our values. We recognized when you had big government, you normally had big corruption, and that the whole journalistic enterprises that were underway at the time and still largely are through the legacy media was uncovering that government wasn't doing enough to help the beneficiaries of government large as right, that was their idea of government investigations, and we obviously took a different approach. You know, we had these Clinton scandals, and then I think President Bush came in kind of slept walk through the issues that he herided in terms of the lack of confidence that people had in the operations of government, and then things metastasize under Obama. And I just want to return to normalcy. I mean, the Clinton years, despite the impeachment, were relatively normal in terms of the sorts of corruptions we face. With him, it was this personalized corruption, some abuses of power. But it's kind of gone off the scale these days, at least as I've looked back over the decades.

Do you think that George W just didn't get it?

I recall him coming in and say, well, you know, we have to move on, right. And I think people get frustrated that when they see evidence of corruption and that nothing much is done about it or effective in terms of holding folks accountable. And I think that's a mistake. And there's a reason that you know, when folks like Trump come in and at least express a willingness to do something about it. We can talk about how effective the administration was or wasn't last term in doing that. There's this overwhelming public support. To me, was no surprise Trump one. His approach on things was very judicial Watchee. There's a real problem in Washington that needs to be addressed, and obviously he did it in a much more blunt way than we do. My advice to politicians at both parties knew is that going after government corruption is something that appeals to everyone. I don't understand why there isn't more political interest in doing it, or even appearing to do it.

Over eighty percent of the country believes corruption is a major problem, and overwhelmingly, by better than three to one, they would like to have a president who focuses on rooting out corruption more than a president who's either a liberal or conservative.

But it occurs to me kind of looking at these so called revolutions abroad, a lot of that is sparked, and I'm convinced you can throw a lot of political dissonance in jail as a dictator or corrupt government. It doesn't get too many people excited, but I tell you you get in a way of people going about their daily lives because you demand too many bribes. It's the corruption in these regimes that often leads to their overthrow or dissent in a mass way, and we don't understand that. I don't think as well here in the United States. And like I'm convinced the reason Congress has an approval rating, I don't know when the last time it was taken, but it's usually in the genes. It's not because they think Congress isn't doing anything. It's because they think the institution's corrupted. And to me, that needs to be addressed. And as I go through in the book, these are kind of topics that would be ongoing and discussion. But I think we've had this rising communist wing, largely the Democratic Party but also independent of it, that kind of has just taken on this. They think they can get past the usual hurdles they have here in the United States and destroy the institutions that make this constitutional republic function, and those institutions protect our rights and freedoms. And to me, it's despair and hopeful at the same time. I despair because I don't think you need too much in the way of leadership to get it done. That's despairing that it isn't done. But I'm hopeful because on the other hand, you just need new leaders or leaders that understand the problem. And I think a lot can be accomplished in addressing issues that we're worried about.

Given everything we've seen with the literal abuse of the judicial system by the Biden administration. You know, the motto of Judicial Watch is quote because no one is above the law. Yeah, now, in your mind, what does that mean?

We benefit from it because it means that when we go into court over a FOIA matter, we have the most powerful agencies in the history of humanity having to come in and be on equal footing with us and have to tell our lawyers when they're going to give us documents or explain in a public way why they're withholding documents, or when we sue these institutions over misconduct, there's this legal process. So we have the most powerful institutions and the people who run them are constrained by the rule of law. And you know, and the mirror of that is and I think the crisis we've had with the lawfare against Trump is that no one's below the law or below the protection of the law, just because he's your political enemy. And this isn't about whether I like Donald Trump. I don't agree with all of his policies. I joke, I don't even agree with everything I say. The question is do we want to put our political opponents in jail because we don't like their politics? Now, you know you've been a movement leader for decades. I've been around town a long time. I haven't been in any conservative meetings where we're thinking of, well, how is it we censor our political opposition? How do we get big tech to take down the accounts of our political opponents? How is it we put someone in jail or objecting to an election, as has been done for virtually every four years by the left here. To me, that's like an escalation that comes from the radical extremist left that we really haven't faced before, at least in the modern era.

How did Judicial Watch start?

It was started before I got there, but it was modeled a little bit on Public Citizen Right and Ralph Nader, and it was kind of a conservative alternative to that. We saw there was corruption at the Commerce Department at the time, and there was kind of your in your face buying and selling of public office, or the benefits of public office out of the Clinton White House. That became readily apparent. So what really got a lot of press attention to our work was you may recall this, we had these trade missions going abroad under the Clint administration, which as a conservative is objectionable in the sense that the government would bring businesses to foreign countries and then promote their contracts. But in the lead, however, objectionable. They shouldn't be on the plane unless there was a contract to be sold that was legit and was in the public interest. There you know, you had to give money to the DNC it looks like, or you know, the Clinton political operation in order to get a seat on the plane. So we uncovered all of that, and then there was this China connection to it as well, because Commerce had a bunch of folks associated with looks like China, Intel and other folks over there. So it was a bit of a rats nest we uncovered at the Commerce Department, and it kind of uncovered in some ways China Gate. And as I talk about it, it's like, boy, it's kind of like Joe Biden Hunter and their China connections. There's nothing new under this sun in this town. When it comes to corruption. The countries that were corrupting our politics back in the nineteen nineties, it's what now, thirty years later, they're still doing.

It Now you use Freedom of Information Act requests. How important has that system been in making it possible to open up government.

It's been essential. First of all, every government bureaucrat understands their activity and documents are covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Largely so, just its mere existence has been a check on government misconduct and abuse, I would argue, and it was passed I think, you know, Linda Johnson, I guess was kind of forced into signing it, and it was relatively unique in the Western world. It was only when the last few decades did other Western countries follow up with more significant open records laws. Not only is it available at the federal level, it's even more powerfully available at the state level. And what I love about judicial watches working new is that others are mimicking us. And now FOYA is a well known tool for conservatives, and Congress has gotten tired. At least our friends in Congress have gotten tired of judicial Watch getting documents they weren't getting, which led to my understanding to more aggressive investigations in recent years. And you know, I remember I was at a hotel and there's someone who knew Judicial Watch and he obviously was a recent arrival to the country, you know, and he gave me the thumbs up and he says, you know, FOYA, And I thought, oh boy, that's worth everything we've done. I exaggerate, but the idea that you know, a hotel lying worker knows about FOYA is a great accomplishment because it's really a major tool to hold the government accountable. And we don't get everything we want, but we get a lot of what we want. And the process is important too in holding the government accountable when they don't want to give up info.

Do you have particular zone owns you try to focus on.

I joke, we investigate everything, but.

Then, given limited resources, how do you pick and choose?

I think they are kind of a series of crises. Right. We've got the border crisis, so we focus on that. We have the law fare against Trump. We've been focusing on that. These First Amendment issues, that's been a more recent focus because frankly, these are new challenges to the First Amendment. In recent years, we've had increased focus on the decision by the left to abandon civil rights, abandon the idea under the fourteenth Amendment that we all have equal protection to the law and no matter our color or other classification. So that's been a big focus the DEI woke racism. If there's a crisis that folks are concerned about, it's something we're very interested in. And of course election integrity has been key. What I like about the book, you know, it's my book, so I yes, I do like it is that it kind of details what really went on in twenty twenty in a serious way, why people were upset about how the election was handled, and why half the country doesn't have confidence in the outcome and about seventy five percent of Republicans. And my concern is that a lot of what happened in twenty twenty unless the election on election day is clearly a win for one of the candidates, where there's going to be no change in the outcome as a result of post election day counting, we may be in the same boat again if we don't know who won on election day. All the issues I talk about in the book counting ballots after election day, which previously really hadn't been done in presidential elections. That to me was like the single biggest issue in twenty twenty. Trump had the votes to win on election night and those results were changed as a result of unprecedented accounting in the Swing States, something that's never happened before, and I would argue is contrary to law, but I guess you know, the courts never got to the heart of that. So there are continuing challenges. We've been doing this work to clean up the voter rolls. Doj is supposed to do it, you remember vot voter.

By the way, they have now filed two lawsuit blocking states from taking illegal immigrants off the voter rule.

Yeah, they've taken the position the law that we've used to clean up four million names from the roles in the last year or two. So that requires cleanups. It somehow requires you to leave on the roles people who on the surface shouldn't be there because they're not citizens. Talk about a dramatic illustration of maybe what their real agenda is when it comes to non citizen voting.

It was remarkable to me. I just noticed that Glenn young kind had made some comments because Virginia is one of the states that is now being sued by the federal government for trying to take non citizens off the voting rules.

Yeah, and Alabama, I think issued as well, and they've given us zero help in cleaning up roles in any other state. I'm talking millions of names are on the rolls, and these are people who by and large have moved or died and haven't voted in a decade. I mean, we're not talking about someone, Oh, you didn't vote last election, let's take your name off the rolls. We're talking about people who have been active for years. There's evidence they're not there anymore by simple virtue of their moving or being inactive, and they don't want to remove their names. And my view is, why would you want dirty election roles? And to me, it's a pool of voters, a pool of names that can be used to draw from for fraud, and that's why the law requires you take reasonable steps to clean up the roles. California, they hadn't cleaned the roles in twenty years till we started snooping around.

Do you see this whole process? Clyst and I were actually at the White House election night of twenty twenty, and everything looked amazingly good until all of a sudden, about eleven thirty state after state stopped counting, and I thought, this is really a bad sign.

Yeah, I mean, if that happens again this year, if I were Trump, and it's like they're trying to normalize it. There have been three stories I count in the Washington Post. CBS just said another story, Oh, we may not know who won on election day. Remember in twenty twenty, and they did the same thing back then. Pennsylvania didn't decide who won till four days after the election. That's not normal, it's not right. It undermines confidence in the outcome of the election. And to me, that's reason enough to question the outcome. You know, it's one thing to be counting at alex into three in the morning, right because you couldn't get through them all but days that's a conscious effort to not do your job, and people have a right to question what's going on if that happened.

I recently saw the movie Recount, which was made in two thousand and eight with Kevin Spacey, and it's about the Florida recount in two thousand, and it's really well done, and it gives you this sense of these things going to get very weird.

We were down there in two thousand afterwards, going by and trying to do an audit, and what we had uncovered was that you could ask for ballots under the Sunshine Law on Florida, and Judicial Watch unfortunately gave or fortunately because it was his right to challenge the election right. I didn't want to gel Gore, but Gore's people said, well, if Judicial Watch is going to get these ballots, why don't we just recount them again and again and again. Ron Klain saw that, well, judicial Watch can get these ballots, why don't we just do these recounts before Judicial Watch gets their hands on them. Bush was certified the win right, and it's one thing to do recounts after an election, but you got to figure out who won on election day and federal law this is an interesting legal issue as far as I'm concerned. It says you've got to pick the electors on election day. If it doesn't mean you need to know who want on election day, then what is the deadline? Then we know the French have a one day election, that's right.

And they somehow magically get it all counted.

That France can do it. Philadelphia, Ken, Well, you would.

Think you recently sued the US Air Force Academy over its DEI programs. Can you sort of explain what you're doing.

There's this critical race theory programming at our military academies. It's at West Point, it's at the Naval Academy, it's at the Air Force Academy. We've been working with veterans in the case of this recent Air Force lawsuit about just how extensive it is. And it is extensive. You can't get through the training there without being propagandized and subject to this anti American, woke, racist approach to our history and our interactions with fellow citizens. And what I'm concerned about in these academies is that these are where our rising leaders in the military are being trained. It's not just the next generation, it's the next generations of our leadership, and they're being alienated, or there's an attempt to alienate them from the nation for which they've gone to school and are devoting to portionarial lives to defend. And it's got to be exposed so it can be stopped and that's what we aim to do. We're kind of more familiar with what's happening in the schools with the systemic racism argument, this quasi Marxist approach to American history. Well, why would we be forcing our young men and women in West Point and the Air Force Academy to go through that type of struggle session? And that's what it is. It's one of the, if not the organizing principle of the Biden administration which is pushing this DEI approach. They're obsessed by it, and we just got documents from the Secret Service the other day. Their DEI language was every action, every day needs to advance the DEI agenda. And it helps explain, you know, many ways our schools are failing, Our governments are failing because they don't want to do the things that people want them to do. They don't want to teach where you can write and arithmetic. The Secret Service is less interested in protection than it should be, but they are hyper interested in advancing these cultural issues within their agencies. And our militaries needs to be focused on identifying, stopping, and defeating killing the enemy. Instead, we've got this anti americanism poised as diversity training being foisted upon our cadets in those academies.

Is it really true that there was an army training program that had a slide on terrorist groups that included national right to life?

There was Again we're told that was an accident, right, there are no accidents When that sort of thing happens. The military bureaucracy has redundancy of approval that would make starsist Russia blush. So you can be sure that not only was it in that one area, but it's throughout the army. And so if you're a conservative Christian concerned about pro life issues, you're seen as literally the enemy by the army, you know. And they talk about Trump wanting to use the military against the American people, they're literally training the military to see core American values as something that needs to be suppressed.

Now you have a similar thing. You guys have gotten involved with Maryland and they apparently had extraordinarily direct linking of MEGA with hate crimes and lynching, and it's kind of unbelievable.

It's been a hotbed for radicalism in the left for some time, and in that case, they're abusing kids. We've gotten documents showing support for segregation in some of these programs. That's how far out they are. They've completely abandoned any semblance of support for civil rights. We got a loss in Minneapolis the school Teachers' union, big school district out there, the biggest in the state. They forced through a contract that requires in the event of layoffs, they have a seniority protection system, which is objectionable, but that's typical in the public union contract. So if there's a layoff, the first hired usually is first fired, other than the fact if they belong to a certain race. So if they're subject to layoffs but they're black, they go to the next person in line, who's white, and then they get fired or laid off. Completely racist, completely discriminatory. And we're in court. The unions are fighting us tooth and nail on this, and now to court at the Supreme court level. The state is deciding whether a taxpayer has a right to challenge that blatant government racial discrimination.

How can that not be a violation of the Civil Rights Acts?

Where they're suing just a department a wall on it. California, they had laws that they passed requiring quotas on the boards of public companies based in California, race, ethnicity, gender, and we actually beat those back and got them ruled constitutional under the California Constitution from the local court system there. It kind of shows you they are extremism in these areas. I never thought we'd have to defend why it is you can't fire someone on the basis of their race or lay them off explicitly on the basis of their race. It used to be they kind of gussied it all up right and disguised by calling it affirmative action or diversity. Here, it's if you're a member of an underrepresented group, you're protected. It's pure racism, it is. And this is where the left is right now.

Let me ask you one last thing, which is where has Judicial Watch been on the whole question of the border.

Well, we've gone down there repeatedly. We've tried to expose and stop the sanctuary policies that if we had a wall one hundred feet high, it will never be enough if every city in the country provides aid and comfort and enables aliens to reside there illegally and work there illegally. And we've been exposing the national security threats on the border, and the book exposes, and this is what Brett was trying to get at in his interview with the Vice President, that these were specific lawyers issued by executive orders and directors issued by President Biden in his administration that essentially viscerated our border security and it had to be knowing it had to be planned. It wasn't like we didn't have an experience with folks coming across the border in large numbers if they think the rules aren't being enforced. We had that issued under Obama, we had it under the first part of the Trump administration until he got things under control and they knew exactly what was going to happen. So the consequences have been economic, criminal in terms of our public safety. The political consequence could be decades in terms of the impact over decades because if these are are not deported in the next few years, they're going to be counted in the twenty thirty census, and states with large immigrant populations, even if they're here illegally, are going to benefit in terms of congressional apportionment and votes in the electoral college. So California, they can see all their normal citizens leave because they don't like the leftism there. They don't care because they're going to be replaced by non citizens. Texas and Florida might benefit as well, to be fair, but it doesn't make up for the nonsenizen populations that are elevated in places like Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, these blue states. That's twenty to twenty five seats for Democrats.

When you watch first they let them all come in illegally. Then in places like Minnesota where Tim Walls favored allowing them to register to drive, allowing them to have free healthcare, allowing them to have free education. Then you start having these Justice Department lawsuits blocking you from keeping them off the voting rules. When you do sort of sense that there's a Democratic Party model here of encouraging illegal immigration and then using it to sustain and build up their own base.

That's right. There's the danger of the voting because it's a numbers game. Certain number are going to register, certain number are going to vote. But the bigger point is their mere presence has a significant political impact to the benefit of the left. And we're talking a number of seats in Congress that would take a decade or two for Republicans, if ever, to overcome.

Tom I want to thank you for joining me. I want to point out to our listeners that Judicial Watch does an amazing number of things, an amazing number of fronts. Your new book, Rights and Freedoms in Peril, an investigative report on the left's attack on America, is a must read for anyone who cares deeply about the future of this country. It is available now on Amazon and in bookstairs everywhere, and our listeners can find out more about Judicial Watch by visiting your website at judicialwatch dot org.

Thank you appreciate it.

Thank you to my guest Tom Fittnam. You can get a link to buy his new book, Writs and Freedoms in Peril on our show page at newtworld dot com. Newt World is produced by Gingwish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Slum. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. R. Work for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to seem at gingwid three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about right now. Listeners of Newsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingrich three sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm NEWT Gingrich. This is new Swort

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