Judicial Watch Defends “Election Day” at the Supreme Court! Senate is AWOL!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:11]So, in the news this week was the settlement between President Trump, his family, and his and his uh family's businesses and the IRS that resulted in a compensation fund uh funded initially with 1.7767 1776 mill uh billion dollars of taxpayer money to compensate victims of government weaponization.

[00:00:41]So you can imagine the left is furious about it. And I don't mean the left in an in a in a partisan sense. I mean the left in a bipartisan sense. anti-Trump Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, and the usual, you know, Trump haters in the media. What happened is a left-wing contractor for the IRS stole Trump's IRS forms and the IRS forms of countless other Americans and leaked them to the media, including the New York Times, who then mischaracterized them in a way to make Trump look like a bad guy.

[00:01:20]outrageous violation of the law. Uh, relatively speaking, they gave, uh, him a slap on the wrist, the courts, and I think in the Biden administration, uh, the guy who stole the records, and Trump filed a civil rights lawsuit, and he settled it. And rather than take billions in damages that I think he was owed, he gave up the billions and settled the case and said, "This is what you need to do. You need to have a compensation arrangement for other victims. I'm not going to get the money.

[00:01:48]victims of the weaponization of government under Biden, etc., are going to be eligible to apply and get the money. And the way it's going to work is there's something called the judgment fund in the Justice Department that is used to pay uh judgments and to settle cases before they go to trial in terms of claims against the federal government, various agencies and such.

[00:02:13]And that's not a terribly transparent system because if it settles before trial, you may not get the information. It's not public. But this compensation arrangement that he's set up is going to be much more transparent because according to the founding document or documents, uh they are going to disclose who gets the money and how much. I think that's their goal. and it's going to be run and and who's is by five people appointed by the attorney general, fireable by President Trump. Now, of course, everyone's screaming that this is outrageous. You know, the January 6 people who were abused, they should be abused again by be being denied access to any vehicle to compensate them for the misconduct and abuse targeting them.

[00:03:00]They don't want President Trump or his allies to be able to uh at least be made partially whole for the damages they suffered as a result of the lawfare run by the Biden gang, the deep state, Obama, etc. Now, the rules haven't put haven't been put out there, but supposedly a bunch of Republican senators who don't give a rat's tail about what the deep state did to countless Americans are furious about it and want to restrict it, if not destroy it. And they're so furious they left town for a week plus long vacation for Memorial Day. Do you get a week vacation for Memorial Day? Do you get a 10-day vacation for Memorial Day? I doubt you do, right? But the Senate and Congress does.

[00:03:52]And they didn't want to. They were planning to have some uh uh bill to fully fund DHS finally because they're still not getting the money they're supposed to. They're there's still this shutdown debate. And rather than just do that as they were planning to do, they left town because they were so angry that President Trump gave up the opportunity to get billions of dollars through litigation and settlement and instead directed the government to start compensating victims of weaponization in a more transparent way than otherwise they would be able to any American would be able to see under the current way of vict of of taking care of people who've made credible allegations of being victimized.

[00:04:47]So that's where we are. You have Republicans in the Senate fleeing Washington DC because they're mad that Trump is trying to help citizens, most of whom would be supportive generally of the people who are abandoning him.

[00:05:06]Now, I'm I'm outraged about it, you know, and everyone else is supposed to say, everyone's out there saying it's a slush fund. It's no no such thing. If you've got a claim, you should be able to try to pursue it.

[00:05:22]I don't think any of the January 6 defendants were properly prosecuted. I don't think there were these were good faith prosecutions.

[00:05:30]They were treated differently than others similarly situ situated.

[00:05:35]President Trump, I mean, there's no doubt he was victimized.

[00:05:40]Countless others, uh, Trump's aids, others were just harassed out the wazoo by by these leftists running the Biden administration.

[00:05:51]I mean, and the crimes continue.

[00:05:54]Did you see what happened this week?

[00:05:55]They uh just prosecuted or indicted a former well I guess a current I don't know if they've been fired yet but a senior Justice Department official for stealing a sealed document about one of the Trump investigations and sending it to her home emails or private emails using a disguised name like calling it a call it a chocolate cake recipe or bunt cake recipe.

[00:06:25]These documents were under seal. They weren't hers to steal.

[00:06:29]And at the same time, she's supposed to be investigating lawfare against Trump.

[00:06:33]And she's continuing it.

[00:06:37]The lawfare hasn't stopped against President Trump. And frankly, a lot of the objections and the threats around this compensation fund are further are are further developments in the law.

[00:06:53]Oh, don't don't you dare give away taxpayer money to someone who was destroyed as a result of the Biden vendetta and the January 6 jihad cuz we'll come after you too. It's threats upon threats from these leftists. And to see Republican senators buy into it, I guess it's no surprise. Look, the Republican Senate controlled Senate didn't pass the SAVE Act. It's not because of the filibusters, because Republicans don't support the Save Act.

[00:07:24]Not all of them, but enough of them don't.

[00:07:27]And I don't even think it's a principal position. I think it's because they hate Trump.

[00:07:33]You're seeing the same thing over this ballroom fight. The president wants to had is in the process of building a ballroom to better accommodate guests to the White House, provide better security for the for the um for the complex generally, and Congress was trying to push through some extra money to support making the ballroom complex, which includes uh offices for to the first lady and other White House staff hardened and they don't want to do that. So these crazed anti-Trump Republicans in the Senate are putting the president of the United States and the White House staff and all the visitors to the White House at risk because of the ballroom.

[00:08:35]I mean, I know there are a bunch of people who think, well, Tom Fit, all he does is he hates Democrats. That's ridiculous. I don't a hate anyone.

[00:08:43]I don't like ideologies, but this is an example of politicians who are nominally conservative acting in reprehensible ways, and I'm calling them out.

[00:08:59]So call your senators, ask them what they think about denying funds to people abused by the Biden regime, trying to make them whole. Ask them what they think about denying necessary security protections to President Trump. Ask them what they think about using their anger over President Trump as an excuse to leave town and not fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, our immigration enforcement, etc., and abandon the White House and the American people, too.

[00:09:47]who knows what type of security threats because of their craziness about being anti-Trump.

[00:10:00]So again, on this compensation fund, Trump gave up billions to make sure that Americans got a little bit of money who were victimized by the Biden regime, the Obama regime in the deep state. And the left is furious and Republicans are angry at him for it.

[00:10:19]Incredible.

[00:10:25]I have some great news for you. Judicial Watch has uh confirmed um through communications with Los Angeles County that the county has removed 1.2 2 million ineligible names from their voter roles as a result of judicial watches litigation and federal court settlement uh that uh LA County and the state of California entered into a few years ago. Now, this litigation was filed under the National Voter Registration Act, which is maybe you know as the Motor Voter Bill. It was passed during the Clinton administration and it was designed by the left to get the government to register everybody.

[00:11:06]And the sop to Republicans and those concerned about having duplicate registrations as a result of the government registering people time and time again was that the states had to take reasonable steps to clean up the roles. Guess which part of the law the left enforced? The registration part.

[00:11:21]They didn't want the roles to be clean because in my view they want the extra names there as a cushion if they need to steal elections if necessary. And you know that's that's my blunt analysis of it. And so thankfully the law allows for private enforcement. The Justice Department I think only filed one or two lawsuits in its entire history on uh this this key law to make sure that election roles are are clean. And certainly it's more important than ever given the over reliance on uh mail-in balloting that requires ballots to go out to people. You want them to uh have roles that are clean or as clean can reasonably be.

[00:12:05]So in Los Angeles uh and in California the roles were generally a mess when we sued I think our lawsuit was initiated back in 2017. So five years ago, now was it five years ago? What is this? What year is this? 2003, six years ago.

[00:12:24]And um we noted at the time I think that there was 20% of the rolls were dirty. And California, it turns out, hadn't cleaned their rolls, and I can't I don't want to get into detail why they didn't other than they didn't think they needed to under the law, uh for 20 years. until Judicial Watch came around. And so we sued on behalf of registered voters and our friends at the Election Integrity Project of uh Election Integrity Project California, which is a public interest group also involved in monitoring California's um uh election roles. And under the terms of the settlement agreement, Los Angeles County sent almost 1.6 6 million address confirmations in 2019 to voters listed as quote inactive on its voter roles.

[00:13:15]Under the law, voters who do not respond to the notices and who do not vote in the following two federal elections must be removed from the voter roles. The settlement also required an update to the state's online MV manual, which is the the manual that the counties used, uh, to make it clear that ineligible names must be removed and to notify each California county, they are obliged to do this. So, what happened was we began this process in 2019 and essentially the two federal elections have passed. So, folks who haven't responded have been removed from the VOS and it's 1.2 million names. So if you don't respond and you don't vote, it means you're it doesn't mean you can never register and reregister or or vote subsequently, but it means you need to reregister and vote otherwise your name gets dropped from the roles. And why is it important that the roles be clean and that they shouldn't have millions of inactive registrants? Because even if you're inactive, you can show up and vote or request a ballot and such. And if you know people are moved away, obviously that's a temptation. That's a pool from which fraudsters can draw if they want to engage in fraud or fraud. And that's why there's this law requiring the states to have clean election roles.

[00:14:28]Now, I don't have to exp I guess I shouldn't have to explain that to you since you instinctively know dirty election roles can mean dirty elections.

[00:14:36]The left hates the idea that Judicial Watch has been doing this and um and you can be sure they're going to be very upset with the news that we disclosed at that as the result of this settlement and this process for which we would we we had to be patient for the time to pass 1.2 million names were removed from one county in California. And so what was happening under the settlement agreement, Los Angeles County was sending us email reports telling us about what was going on. And so we had an email report from January of 2022. And maybe we can throw this up on the screen. And it kind of kind because you got to look at both to understand the numbers here.

[00:15:22]The number of active registrations as of January of 2022 was 5.4. 438 million. So more or less the total inactives on that file was 1.672 and um and included and uh 317,000 names who had just been you know just placed on that list in the last year at least in 2021 or just before 2022.

[00:15:52]The number of individuals who hadn't voted in two consecutive elections as of 2022 was 1.2 million. 1,27,613 to be exact.

[00:16:06]There were 814,000 names of people who hadn't voted in six years at least. 685,000 names hadn't voted in four consecutive federal elections. So that's eight years plus. five or more consecutive general federal elections, at least half of the names on that list, hadn't voted in 10 years or more.

[00:16:28]So, uh, we got that number right. And then they sent us a follow-up email this year dated, uh, which just came in on the 15th. So, what's today? The 23rd.

[00:16:39]So, it just came in last week.

[00:16:44]So, the number of active registrations have got it's gone up a little bit.

[00:16:48]5.625. 625 up from 5.4 last year. The number of registrations in the inactive file dropped to 529,000.

[00:16:59]Now, just because they're inactive doesn't mean they can be removed under the law, as I've described. The number of registrations placed in the inactive file of the last year, it's dropped 210,000.

[00:17:11]And these are the big numbers.

[00:17:15]The number of registrations continuously on Los Angeles is inactive file or showing no voting related activity for two consecutive elections, zero. Three consecutive elections, zero.

[00:17:30]Four consecutive elections, zero.

[00:17:33]Five or more consecutive general federal elections, zero. What a victory that is.

[00:17:40]Two 1.2 Two million names have been cleaned off from the roles. This is a tremendous victory for the rule of law.

[00:17:48]It wasn't done by the Justice Department. It was done through Judicial Watch. Your support for judicial watch has led to a massive cleanup of the roles in California that will have statewide potentially nationwide implications in the senses in the sense that those elections will be at less risk for voter fraud as a result of this mass cleanup.

[00:18:12]And I tell you um there's been nothing like this ever done by the federal government. And I guarantee you they'll never do anything like it in the future unless it there's a radical change of leadership. And I tell you, even under the Trump administration, they weren't terribly interested in doing much here.

[00:18:28]So, this is a tremendous victory for the rule of law. As I said, um it wouldn't have happened without your support. Our legal team uh led by Bob Pa on the election integrity side has done yman's work here. Uh Russ Noil is on our side, too. Eric Lee uh has done great work.

[00:18:48]Our three attorneys who have been uh working on this case. Uh this has just been a tremendous effort that took five six years of um careful work, litigation, and then being on them uh to make sure that the settlement was enforced. Now, I know many of you are saying, "Well, how do you know this isn't being this is this is uh this is true?" Well, I mean, it was sent to us pursuant to a federal court settlement.

[00:19:15]So, I mean, they'd be really putting themselves at some risk if they're lying about the numbers here. And we have other ways of validating these numbers as well. So, trust us on that. But I want you to take a step further back.

[00:19:26]So, this isn't the only positive thing that's happened because you may recall I told you how in New York City, we settled a lawsuit after New York City removed, thanks to Judicial Watch, 440,000 names. And you may recall last year, North Carolina, we ended a lawsuit there because North Carolina, after we sued, removed 430,000 names. So over the last year, Judicial Watch has confirmed over 2 million ineligible voters have been removed from voting roles in New York, North Carolina, and California thanks to our historic litigation efforts.

[00:20:06]Uh, you know, if I could applaud Judicial Watch, it would be appropriate.

[00:20:09]Great work by Judicial Watch. Don't you agree? And there's more to be done.

[00:20:14]We've u had previous successes in making sure that Maryland Democrats couldn't rig elections in uh by gerrymandering seats in a way to ensure that only Democrats got elected. Something completely illegal under state law. We have an ongoing uh lawsuit in Illinois challenging Illinois's um uh position that they should be able to and they have been counting ballots that arrive by mail up to two weeks after election day, including ballots that haven't been postmarked.

[00:20:45]We have an ongoing civil rights lawsuit there.

[00:20:49]And of course, we've got ongoing litigation in Pennsylvania and Colorado to require those states and certain counties in those states to clean up their roles as the law requires. So, we ain't done yet. And you can bet as the new numbers come in of voter registration details for uh as a following up the 2022 elections, uh Judicial Watch will be looking at those details very carefully to decide where and whether to sue or warn people uh that they need to clean up the roles because at this point uh just us warning people gets them to clean up the roles. That's happened in state after state. It happened in Florida. Uh I know in uh Pennsylvania, one county after we sent them a letter saying, "What's going on here? You haven't been removing names as you were supposed to." They immediately removed 69,000 names. So, I tell you, if Judicial Watch wasn't doing this, our voting roles would be a mess. An absolute mess. And I told you we settled with California and New York City. Now, they're not exactly the friendliest states and localities when it comes to judicial watch on election policy matters, don't you think? But, you know, kudos to them for settling, seeing what the writing what the writing on the wall was in terms of the law and not wasting time and money and just getting the work done and following the darn law again without the help of the Justice Department. So, this is further confirmation that Judicial Watch is your watchdog in Washington. It's your Justice Department.

[00:22:31]I know we're not literally the Justice Department, but when it comes to enforcing the rule of law, um, we put the Justice Department to shame, certainly on election matter. So, just great work, great news, and it's going to be hard to match the success of this litigation. Uh but we're going to try and you can bet uh given the left's attack on free elections, fair elections and clean elections by opposing voter ID, by dragging their feet on cleaning up the rolls, uh through this outrageous ballot harvesting, through unsupervised voting, meaning vote by mail, which is an anathema in my view to free and fair elections. Uh there's a lot more work to be done and Judicial Watch will continue to be the national leader in defense of free and fair elections under law.

[00:23:28]a very important week uh for Judicial Watch and for America as the Judicial Watch legal team was able to make its plea in person to the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the federal law that sets an election day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the day that ballots are supposed to be received. uh many states or too many states have uh allowed the counting or the receipt of ballots to uh occur days and weeks after election day and we had a court ruling in the lower courts the fifth circuit court of appeals that found that to be unlawful.

[00:24:13]Now the Supreme Court has taken the case up and is expected to rule in June.

[00:24:19]Judicial Watch led the way in the challenges to late election ballot counting. Uh we filed lawsuit in Illinois. We filed a lawsuit in Mississippi. Similarly, the RNC filed a lawsuit in Mississippi. So both judicial watch for the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and uh the RNC were before the court. We were also joined in court by the uh solicitor general of the United States on behalf of the US government who agrees with judicial watch's analysis that counting or allowing the receipt of ballots after election day is contrary to federal law.

[00:24:58]The lawyer who made the key argument for Judicial Watch, our clients, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, uh was uh Paul Clement. He did a wonderful job.

[00:25:09]Uh, and I can tell you, and let me give you some background what it's like to go into the Supreme Court and watch these arguments in person. It's pretty intense. The justices, all of them, all nine of them were very interested in the case. Uh, the oral argument went on for well over two hours, which is a pretty lengthy argument. And and as I said, the justices were paying close attention uh to both the lawyer from Mississippi that was seeking to uphold the Mississippi law that was an issue that allows the counting of ballots that arrive for up to 5 days after election day. and Paul Clement on behalf of um uh our client and in partnership with Judicial Watch made an excellent presentation uh and uh the way it looked uh well I'll tell you how it seemed to come out a little bit later but let's um look to see uh what Paul Clement's argument was.

[00:26:10]So, what happens is uh the Mississippi attorney um I think solicitor general or was it the attorney general or solicitor general? Now, now I'm confused. It's a solicitor general. He made his argument followed by our argument uh made by Paul Clement and uh the argument began with a statement by Paul laying out the nature of what what the issue is. And uh you'll see this clip from C-SPAN, which incorrectly labels him as lawyer for the RNC. Uh in fact, he was lawyer for our uh our client, the Mississippi uh Libertarian Party. Uh so let's listen to Paul's opening statement. Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court. All agree that elections for federal office have to end on the day of the election specified by Congress. and all agree that you can't have an election unless you receive ballots and there must be some deadline for ballot receipt.

[00:27:09]Nonetheless, Mississippi insists that ballots can trickle in days or even weeks after election day. That position is wrong as a matter of text, precedent, history, and common sense. Mississippi all but concedes that the original public meaning of election included both offering to vote and the receipt of that vote or ballot by election officials.

[00:27:32]And of course, the key distinction between voting and an election is an election involves the combined action of voters and election officials as this court underscored in its decision against Foster against Love. And of course, Mississippi insists that at the time these statutes were passed, ballot receipt and uh the the casting of the ballot were so inextricably intertwined, no one would have thought of one without the other. That seems to me to be a damning admission, but it also ignores the advent of field and proxy voting in the Civil War and the enormous efforts that states went to to ensure that all of the ballots, whether by proxy or by field vote, were received by election day. In the state's view, all of those herculean efforts were for not or were entirely gratuitous. Now, the state's position actually works even worse as a matter of common sense. If somebody in Gulfport the day after the election asks, "Is the election over?" The common sense answer is, "No, it's not. The ballots are still coming in." And if somebody asks who won, the truthful answer is we don't know yet. The ballots are still coming in and they may trickle in for weeks or months. And in fact, they may trickle in for weeks or months with or without a postmark in differing ways in differing states. that reality gives the lie to the idea that we have a uniform national election day.

[00:28:59]>> So, uh a great summary of the argument and uh what's even better uh because you imagine the intense preparations both sides make when prepping for a Supreme Court argument of such uh importance. Uh you can't uh you can't dismiss the fact that you've got generally speaking nine pretty darn smart people with a lot of smart lawyers working for them who also bring something to the table. And uh and I got to hand it to Justice Alo who kind of summed up the argument in a very accessible way to pretty much any American in his commentary as to what election day means. listen to uh Justice Alo uh muse on what it is election day means.

[00:29:46]>> We have lots of phrases um that involve uh two words, the last of which the second of which is day. Labor Day, Memorial Day, George Washington's birthday, Independence Day, uh birthday, and election day. And they're all particular days. So if we start with that, if I have nothing more to look at than the phrase election day, um I think this is the day in which everything is going to take place and or almost everything. And then we have three points in time uh 1844, 1872, 1914 and we can ask what would people >> So you have a birthday right? No one thinks that when you get greetings after the birthday, the person's on time. That's why it's a late birthday greeting, right? It's a kind of a brilliant uh insight by although a simple insight, but a brilliant one nevertheless. And you know what's going on here is that Mississippi and those defenders of uh the late arrival of ballots say well you know the the voting the voting takes place uh prior to election day and that's and that should be enough even though the ballots aren't received till after election day. And the key response to that is putting your ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting your ballot in the ballot box. And uh the powerful language of the straightforward law that federal election day is the date that is set by federal law uh raises all sorts of other interesting issues about early voting and such. And uh Justice Thomas asked um our our uh partner in this argument Paul Clement about that. And uh here's here's that dialogue. How would you define uh the day of election?

[00:31:45]>> I would say that the day of the election is the day when it's the last day in which all the ballots are cast and they are received into official custody.

[00:31:54]>> So h how would you uh treat early voting uh as compared to late reception of votes? So I would say I mean you know I think the best place to look for a treatment of early voting is the Chrysling the Chrysling decision um by Judge Kleinfeld in the Ninth Circuit because after Foster Against Love uh there was a suggestion in Foster Against Love that maybe o voting is a problem.

[00:32:17]He rejected that claim based on two things. One is the distinct history of early voting and the second is the idea that was explicit in this court's decision in Foster against love that election day is the date of consummation. So I would say under our theory early voting is permissible largely because it has a different history and because of this idea that the election day is the date where the election is consummated.

[00:32:40]>> Would you uh spend a few more minutes on or at least a little bit more time on the uh voting during the civil war?

[00:32:51]uh there was some suggestion that that's an example of late uh reception of votes and I think in your uh intro and was my thinking that it was not that proxy voting uh was a way to make sure that the vote occurred on election day as opposed to afterwards.

[00:33:14]>> Well, not surprisingly, Justice Thomas, you were exactly right. So proxy voting is the thing that happened in the Civil War that is most analogous to absentee voting. And the thing that is most striking is I think five states had proxy voting. Every one of those five states required the votes, the ballots to be received by election officials back home by election day. Now that's an incredibly inconvenient thing that was done in the Civil War to ensure the ballots were received by election day.

[00:33:43]And under the state's view, they didn't need to do that. Now, that's really no different in the context of field voting because there were like maybe a dozen states, if you're not going to count the Confederate states, there about a dozen states that did field voting. Again, every one of those ensured that the ballots were received into official custody by election day. And of course, most of the states went to enormous efforts to replicate the machinery of the ballot box and everything else in the field. And but and and some variation in that. But the one thing that didn't vary at all was the ballots had to be received into official custody by election day.

[00:34:20]>> So, uh it's an important historical point uh and it's a fascinating issue uh because we didn't have mail and balloting essentially until uh or as as Paul Clement highlighted uh a version of it until the Civil War. And immediately after the civil war, I think it was in 1872 was the first election federal election day statute. Uh and and you know other statutes similarly have set election day for first the house uh then the presidency and then the senate uh with the direct election of uh direct election of senators in the early part of the last century as as the election day we all know the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. And uh there's really no historic record that states thought otherwise until essentially co there have been exceptions like Washington state has that 21-day rule that goes back a ways and a state here or there that's an outlier. Uh but the idea that all you know there's this been this long tradition of states allowing the counting of ballots in large numbers after election day or that arrive late after election day is just ahistorical and and u even though even if it was quote historical the law says otherwise. So there were all sorts of things that had gone on for a long time that were uncon unh unlawful under federal law or unconstitutional that the Supreme Court says well you know too bad so sad too bad right you got to follow the law and uh then there's the issue as I said earlier of whether just dropping something in the mail is the equivalent of receipt and I don't think anyone seriously believes that but if you're trying to justify in my you the indefensible. You pretend that dropping in the mail uh uh therefore allows you uh as a as a state to receive that ballot any time after election day, which is in effect what they're saying. Because if it's not 5 days, should it be 21 days? Should it be 100 days? And here's a discussion about that issue uh again with Paul Clement, who's the lawyer, despite what the C-SPAN graphic says uh for uh um our Joint Judicial Watch clients, the U.

[00:36:46]Mississippi uh Libertarian Party.

[00:36:49]>> The reason I'm focused on ballot receipt is a it's what's directly at issue here, but also b it's the thing that to this day every state considers indispensable.

[00:36:59]No state. E Washington is the one that lets 21 days go by. But no state says that you don't have to have a receipt ballot receipt deadline at all. And under Mississippi law, it's not. Despite what they want to tell you, the ballot is not final when it's submitted. The ballot is final when it's received by election officials within five days and you can have all the certifications that this was before election day and I have it notorized and if it comes in on the sixth business day, this is the November 11th problem. What the state does is they treat it as a nullity and under the state statute they direct it to be destroyed. So the ballot doesn't become final just when it's submitted. The ballot becomes final when it is submitted and under Mississippi law. It is received into official custody by the registar within five business days.

[00:37:48]That's finality under Mississippi law.

[00:37:50]And our humble submission is finality should take place on election day.

[00:37:55]>> Pretty simple, right? And um now the three justices of the Supreme Court who were appointed by uh Democratic presidents, you know, took the opposition view and and aggressively questioned in a way that I didn't find persuasive at all or even making me nervous that they had a case that would be persuasive uh to their fellow conservative justices. And uh here's my initial reaction outside the Supreme Court uh to the oral arguments.

[00:38:27]>> Hey everyone, just walked out of the Supreme Court where uh the Judicial Watch team was making historic legal arguments to preserve the idea of election day. Uh the other side wants to allow the counting of ballots that arrive after election day. Our team made the argument to the court that it's contrary to federal law. It creates the issue of voter fraud and generally undermines voter confidence. Look, putting your ballot in the mailbox is not the same as putting your ballot in the ballot box. And federal law sets an election day, not on election month. And we're hopeful the Supreme Court will agree and bring back the rule of law uh to our elections in a way that restores confidence.

[00:39:12]>> So, a really interesting debate. I don't think the fact that this potential election day law raises issues about early voting is going to stop the court from saying in the in the least election day means the ballots have to be received by election day. I think the early voting issue is a bit more interesting. Uh you know, Paul made the argument that perhaps it's legal. Others may make the argument that perhaps it's not under the election day statute and that may come up later or the court may address it indirectly. So, you know, as I'm sitting there, uh, remember it's only the oral argument. So, no one no one's promising any vote at the oral argument. They don't take a vote at the oral argument about how they're going to vote. What literally happens is after the argument is over, they go back and have into their uh Supreme Court conference room with the nine justices and they and they meet with each other and they take a vote then and then um after that or contemporaneous with that they they start writing the decisions either majority or or minority decisions or dissenting decisions and I couldn't tell whether we had the majority of the votes. Now, I could guess that we could, but I wasn't sure cuz I could count based on the questioning, and you can look at the full hearing and draw your own conclusions. This is what I love about the Supreme Court. It's designed in many ways to be accessible to the American people. You can watch the video below. We have a full link to the C-SPAN video. I I think the transcript is available now. I think we can find that transcript link and provide it to you as well, so you can just read through it.

[00:40:48]And you can see there are seemingly four um conservative votes to uphold the notion of election day. The two votes that I had questions about were Justice uh Chief Justice Roberts because he didn't really ask any questions and then uh Justice Barrett who asked tough questions of both sides but I wasn't quite sure where she was coming from or on what she wanted assurance. So, I walked out of the court thinking, "Oh, you know, I think we're I think things are looking good. We got at least four votes, and obviously we just need one more to win." But I wasn't prepared to say, "Oh, it looks like the voting uh is going to go our way." The funny thing is the media thought we won. I mean, when you see these media headlines from what is it, CNN? And there's uh which one is that? That's New York Times. Oh, wait.

[00:41:40]Well, we'll talk about that later. But there were several other stories.

[00:41:45]There's the Associated Press or NBC News. Supreme Court conservatives appear skeptical of mail and ballots that arrive after election day. Let's go to the other headline.

[00:41:55]Supreme Court appear appears skeptical of counting mail and ballots that arrive after election day.

[00:42:02]So, uh, and the other headlines I read about the hearing that I saw, these are people who don't agree with Judicial Watch on anything and they think we're going to win. So, I'm not going to second guess that, right? But the next day, I felt a lot more confident because I thought about the hearing because I was there watching it. And I, you know, and I, it occurred to me that the three left-wing justices provided no safe harbor for any sensible conservative justice to kind of vote with them.

[00:42:38]Because as you could see from the arguments, it's either we have election day set by federal law or we have chaos where there is no set election day. The states can choose and pick and choose when they have election day uh essentially or what the deadline is for mail and balloting. And I just don't think any of those judges uh or justices, even the ones who I'm not sure about, are going to go on that side. So, I'm increasingly confident that uh that we are going to win in the Supreme Court and get an historic victory that will restore the rule of law on this key area of elections to upwards of 30 states.

[00:43:21]Ballots are going to have to get there on time if things go as I suspect they will go before the Supreme Court. Now, am I one reason I'm even more uh one more reason to even be even more optimistic is this uh story in the New York Times, which I thought was pretty incredible.

[00:43:43]And here it is. Some states already preparing for a potential Supreme Court ban on late ballots.

[00:43:50]And they highlight the skeptical uh the skepticism of the conservatives. And this is how the story opens up.

[00:43:57]Francisco Aguilar, the Secretary of State in Nevada, stepped out at the Supreme Court on Monday where just when justices had just heard arguments about the legality of counting mail ballots that arrive after election day. He immediately called his top deputy. The court's conservative majority had appeared deeply skeptical of the arguments for continuing the practice.

[00:44:20]So his message was urgent, he later said in an interview. He began listing things we need to start working on and answering. and in the middle of a midterm election season that he couldn't wait for a decision to land perhaps as late as June. We have to provide a roadmap for county clerks. Mr. Aguilar, a Democrat, is one of 18 stop top state election officials in states and territories across the country bracing for the possibility that the Supreme Court will require major changes to election law just p just months before the midterm elections. part of the urgency getting the message out to voters that late arriving ballots may no longer be counted. Such decisions could affect hundreds of thousands of voters.

[00:45:00]So, boy oh boy, New York Times says these left-wing politicians in the various states that wanted to keep on counting ballots late that arrived late, they see the writing on the wall, too.

[00:45:18]According to the uh New York Times, at least 725,000 ballots arrived uh in the time period after election day. So that is a lot of ballots. And what's the solution? As these um as these politicians are kind of prepping, which is what they're supposed to do to be fair to them, hey, we got to make sure that the public knows they need to get their ballots there on time. And so there's increased pressure to uh frankly vote in person and uh not rely on mailin balloting. I think that should be part of the pressure as opposed to you know making it even riskier to vote through mail in balloting. Uh but it's a strong indication uh that I'm correct in assessing uh that hey it looks like we're going to win before the Supreme Court. So, this has been um really a big week for the rule on elections. This is the most important election law case in a generation. Uh kudos to Paul Clement uh who argued uh uh for the Judicial Watch legal team.

[00:46:28]Kudos to the Judicial Watch legal team, Russ Noial, Rob Bob Pauper, uh Eric Lee, Polar Finites, who leads the entire legal team here at Judicial Watch. And kudos to you, dear Judicial Watch supporter, because we would not be here before the Supreme Court making these arguments that will go down in history in terms of preser preserving the very idea of election day. It looks like we're on the cusp of victory. Of course, the fat lady has not sung yet. So, pray uh that our hopes are wellounded and uh are vindicated when the ruling comes out likely in mid June. Uh but uh it looks like uh we're going to have a significant uh uplift right for election integrity.

[00:47:14]Uh so that you know the allowing ballots to come in after election day and still be counted that will be no more if uh things go as it's uh the suggested they will go after this historic Supreme Court argument. And I'll say it once uh and I'll say it again. The only reason we're here at this moment on the cusp of this victory is because of Judicial Watch's heavy lifting. We were taking the lead on this election day fight with our litigation, with our legal strategy, with our legal theories, and everyone else followed our lead.

[00:47:54]And so we're pleased the RNC stepped up as well because the RNC used to kind of be awall on some of these election integrity issues. And so they played a role here and I kudos to them for standing and it's not because they're quote Republicans, it's because they're standing with the rule of law. Heck, early uh you know getting the ballots there on time can impact Republicans too. It will impact Democrats.

[00:48:19]Rural voters, you know, the New York Times points out rural voters, you know, face more impacts with election delay or mail and ballot delays. Uh and they tend to be Republican.

[00:48:31]But in Virginia, 73% of the ballots that arrived late in the last election went to the Democrat. So it it cuts both ways. This is a nonpartisan issue.

[00:48:44]And I want to know why aren't Democrats standing with us to uphold federal law that election day means election day?

[00:48:54]And of course, the Trump administration, uh, they're standing with this as well.

[00:48:59]President Trump had an executive order order early on and uh the solicitor general of the United States filed a brie an amikas brief an important amikas brief. Uh he made argument there on uh on Monday or you know before the Supreme Court recently as well. He was there with Paul Clement arguing for our side.

[00:49:19]So it's a team effort. Uh but the biggest part of the team are you dear supporters because we wouldn't be here without you. I mean, none of this ain't none of this is free. You know, you know, this litigation is uh costs money. Uh the education efforts around it uh costs money and the only reason we're able to do it is because we receive voluntary donations from our members, charitable donations. So, I encourage you uh to continue to support our work because I tell you, even if we win, there's still going to be battles.

[00:49:55]And there are other election integrity battles that are underway right now with Judicial Watch and cleaning up the election roles. We've cleaned six million names from the ROS. Thus far, there are 20 plus million more to be cleaned.

[00:50:11]And if if depending on how the ruling comes down, there may be additional litigation to ensure that the sanctity of election day is upheld under the law.

[00:50:21]But what a great day uh for Judicial Watch and the American people in the sense that it looks like victory may be at hand, knocking on wood, on on upholding the notion of election day and balloting uh make making sure that the ballots are supposed to get there on election day if they're to be counted. I mean, it's to me a rather obvious issue, right?

[00:50:47]Election day means what it means. you know, the ballot box closes on election day and I think the Supreme Court's been persuaded by Judicial Watch's legal argument and it it necessar you know it didn't mean it was going to go our way and I think it was our uh um our our wonderful legal argument aly and expertly presented by Paul Clement uh that u secured to the degree we do get a victory, it will be because of uh the excellent legal work by the judicial watch team. So, uh, I'm I'm taking credit for it. I'm president of Judicial Watch, but as an American, I'm thankful for our work our work. That's for sure.

[00:51:28]An unbelievable story at the FBI dating back to the James Comey error. A secret room at FBI headquarters in Washington that is allegedly filled with piles of documents, the majority anti-Trump documents, all deliberately hidden in burn bags. When the United States government and agency heads want things to disappear and want things to be buried and hidden, they know how to do it. But what they didn't count on was President Trump winning him electing leadership across the United States government to say, "Go find out how they corrupted and weaponize law enforcement."

[00:52:07]So burn bags are common at like embassies to burn sensitive documents you don't want the public to get, you don't want adversaries to get. But typically you don't hear about burning documents at the FBI because those documents are typically needed in both current and future investigations, not to mention for the historical record.

[00:52:26]But our next guest says it goes way beyond that. There are nearly 2 million pages of records from Obama to Biden related to Jack Smith, Russia gate, elections, and the lawfare. they used to try to take down Donald Trump for more than a decade. Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch. He uncovered this entire story and went public. Tom, good to have you on. I know you filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit with the FBI and they confirmed the existence of all of this. So, where are we now with releasing these documents?

[00:52:56]>> So, Dan Bino uh and and Cash also, as you can see, talked about these records that were either in burn bags or in hidden rooms. So we said, "Well, give us those records, right?" And uh we were stalled and we didn't get the records we sued. And to their credit, the FBI disclosed uh specifically just how many records were an issue, generally what they covered. As I said, Jack Smith, and it could go back, who knows how far in terms of other uh investigations that were political into Trump or related issues. Who knows what other special counsel investigations they're hiding or other IG investigations they're hiding?

[00:53:36]Could be Russia gate for example. And they said they need about a year to kind of go through it all and get a handle on it. And I compare this to the Epstein files, right? The Epstein files with three and a half million records. This is upwards of 2 million. And if I were the FBI and Justice Department, uh, I would I would make this a priority because as far as I'm concerned, the Epstein records had a lot of interesting revelations. Uh, but what the, uh, lawfare lunatics were engaged in was a plot to undo our republic uh, by trying to jail President Trump when he was president and then when he was running for president. Uh, so that ought to be >> Let me just let me just stop you so I can just I want to get everybody on the same page. Um just so and there's been a lot of changes at the Department of Justice in the last several hours, so we'll see where this goes. These were in burn bags.

[00:54:26]>> Um that's really really unusual. Can I ask you, do we have any insight into why Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, didn't burn them?

[00:54:38]We don't know who put them in there, why they were hidden, what was the purpose of hiding them in from other the incoming FBI leadership had to figure out they were in either the burn bags or in the secret room generally. Uh and to me that ought to be the subject to a potential criminal investigation and they should be questioning people closely as to how that happened, >> you And that kind of goes to the issue of, you know, Pam Bondi, you know, was essentially fired by President Trump.

[00:55:09]You know, I I think in the end, the FBI can investigate the FBI. The Justice Department can investigate the Justice Department. We can get the transparency.

[00:55:19]I think we're getting more transparency.

[00:55:21]Uh but in the end to the degree there are criminal actions by the Justice Department and FBI at issue in terms of the lawfare against President Trump, I think there should be outside agencies or independent councils outside those two agencies looking at what went on here.

[00:55:38]>> Okay. Next step in the process. I've got 30 seconds, Tom.

[00:55:43]>> Well, the FBI says they need a year. I'm hoping leadership at the Justice Department and the FBI recognize that this is a priority issue and they speed up the review of these documents. The Epstein file shows it can be done where there's a political will and I'm hoping there's a political will to expose these lawfare documents.

[00:56:03]>> Very good point. And I'll just add to that um that because of your work and you coming on tonight, the White House is aware of this. Donald Trump is aware of this whereas a couple of weeks ago he didn't know about this. So now he knows.

[00:56:16]So I think that there will be something done to expedite that process. A year seems like way too much time and um I think that that is something that will be addressed by the new attorney general hopefully. Tom Finton, great to have you on tonight. We'll have you back. Thank you.

[00:56:31]>> Thank you, Ron. Thank you.

[00:56:33]>> Thanks for watching. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below.