Judicial Watch's main targets have been Democrats, particularly
Bill and
Hillary Clinton and the
Obama administration.
Commerce Department trade mission scandal In 1995, Judicial Watch, Inc. filed an action in the District Court under the FOIA, seeking information from the
Department of Commerce (DOC) regarding DOC's selection of participants for foreign trade missions. In May 1995, following a search in response to Judicial Watch's FOIA requests, DOC produced approximately 28,000 pages of nonexempt information and withheld about 1,000 documents as exempt. Disputes arose between the parties over the adequacy of DOC's search, and Judicial Watch charged that some DOC officials had destroyed or removed responsive documents. In December 1998, following discovery, the District Court granted partial summary judgment to Judicial Watch and ordered DOC to perform a new search. During the investigation, Nolanda B. Hill, a business partner of Commerce Secretary
Ron Brown testified that Brown had told her that first lady
Hillary Clinton was the driving force behind the efforts to raise as much money as possible for President Clinton's reelection and the
DNC. And further that, "...companies were being solicited to donate large sums of money in exchange for their selection to participate on trade missions of the Commerce Department."
Vince Foster conspiracy theory Judicial Watch helped promote the conspiracy theory that
Vince Foster was
murdered by the Clintons, and still has yet to provide convincing proof. The
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia partially affirmed the decision, holding that the Secret Service did not have to produce records of visitors to the president's office. Judicial Watch also made false claims about Pelosi's air travel in 2008.
Operation Neptune Spear Osama bin Laden, leader of the terror group
al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, in a joint operation by the United States Navy SEALs and the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This operation was code-named
Operation Neptune Spear. On May 2, 2011, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the
Department of Defense and the CIA for photographs and videos of bin Laden taken during or after the operation. The government failed to produce any records within the required twenty days. In order to force compliance, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the DOD and CIA on June 8, 2011. On January 31, 2014, after legal wrangling, the Pentagon released
Operation Neptune Spear documents to Judicial Watch. One email had the subject line OPSEC Guidance / Neptune Spear and showed that, after the date of the original FOIA request, U.S. Special Operations Commander,
Admiral William McRaven, ordered his subordinates to immediately destroy any Osama bin Laden photos they may have had.
Bill Clinton/Taylor Branch tapes In 2012, Judicial Watch sued the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in an attempt to force NARA to declare audio tapes held at the
William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum of
Bill Clinton to be presidential records, seize them, and release them to Judicial Watch. During Clinton's tenure in office, he had allowed historian
Taylor Branch to interview him privately for a book Branch was planning to write. It was published in 2009 under the title "The Clinton Tapes". NARA had declined to deem the tapes to be "presidential records", and the federal judge dismissed the lawsuit stating that "the relief that plaintiff seeks – that the Archivist assume 'custody and control' of the audiotapes – is not available under the
PRA." This case was called the "Clinton socks case" by former president Trump because the tapes were said to have been stored in Clinton's socks drawer.
Kennedy assassination records Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to obtain the records from
Robert F. Kennedy's time as the Attorney General. The records covered sensitive intelligence operations conducted during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations.
Hillary Clinton email lawsuits Judicial Watch has currently filed twenty FOIA lawsuits involving the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. A federal judge ruled on February 23, 2016, that top aides to Hillary Clinton could be questioned under oath by Judicial Watch about her use of a private email server as secretary of state. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted Judicial Watch's motion for discovery into whether the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deliberately thwarted the Freedom of Information Act by using a private email server to obscure her communications from public records requests. In a separate case, on March 29, 2016, U.S. District Court Judge
Royce Lamberth granted Judicial Watch limited discovery, citing potential bad faith by the government in responding to requests for documents related to talking points provided to
Susan Rice in response to the Benghazi attack. A FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch led to the release of 2,800 e-mails from Clinton aide
Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop computer of
Anthony Weiner, Abedin's estranged husband. Five of the e-mails were classified.
False claims about George Zimmerman protests In 2013, Judicial Watch claimed that the
Department of Justice under the Obama administration organized protests against
George Zimmerman after the
Trayvon Martin shooting;
PolitiFact said that this was "mostly false" and that while Justice Department employees were sent to Florida, they "were sent with the idea of keeping the situation peaceful and calm, not to instigate or condone protests or violence."
Islamic State in Mexico scares In 2014 and 2015, Judicial Watch falsely claimed that
Islamic State (ISIS) had set up camp in Mexico; Judicial Watch's claims were picked up by several right-wing news outlets.
Collaboration with Steve Bannon and Breitbart News In 2013, Judicial Watch collaborated with
Steve Bannon, executive chairman of the
alt-right website
Breitbart News, on the film "District of Corruption", which critiqued the Obama administration. Judicial Watch paid Bannon's group Victory Film Project $382,143 for the film. Judicial Watch has advertised on
Breitbart for a number of years. Judicial Watch's president Tom Fitton said "Liberal activists want to destroy Breitbart, but we won't be cowed".
False voter fraud claims In August 2017, Judicial Watch falsely alleged that 11 California counties had more registered voters than their estimated populations of citizens eligible to vote; the claims were picked up by outlets such as
Breitbart News and Russian propaganda network
RT (Russia Today). Judicial Watch counted "inactive voters" in its tally, which is a list of people that California maintains of people who have been removed from active rolls after a mail ballot, voter guide or other official document was returned as undeliverable; California keeps such a list as a fail-safe in case eligible voters have been erroneously categorized as "inactive". When the
Los Angeles Times asked Judicial Watch to share its analysis of voter registration in California, Judicial Watch declined. On February 3, 2020, the day of the
Iowa caucuses in the Democratic presidential primary, JW president Tom Fitton suggested that voter fraud was afoot in Iowa by falsely claiming that "eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to register." The false assertion went viral on social media. Iowa's Secretary of State, Paul Pate, a member of the
Republican Party, debunked Fitton's claim by linking to official voter registration data. Fitton has made alarmist claims about voter fraud, saying "We have all heard about voter fraud and the attempts by liberal media organs like the
New York Times and Ivory Tower academics to dismiss it as a nonexistent problem. But is it real, widespread, and substantial to the point that it can decide elections."
False claims about Trump Nazi billboard In 2017, Judicial Watch claimed that taxpayer money went into a billboard which depicted President Donald Trump as a Nazi. Further investigation showed that "while the owner of the billboard founded the group that received city funding for the Art Detour event during which the Trump image went up, the billboard project itself did not receive city funding".
Lawsuits against climate scientists Judicial Watch has filed lawsuits seeking to force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to release the correspondence of climate scientists who published a 2015 study in the journal
Science. The study had debunked one of the common claims made by those who reject the
scientific consensus on climate change, namely that there existed global warming "
hiatus" between 1998 and 2012. The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF), American Meteorological Society and Union of Concerned Scientists condemned Judicial Watch, saying that the disclosure of private communications between scientists "would harm (or halt altogether) government scientists' ability to collaborate with colleagues, damage the government's ability to recruit or retain top scientists, and deter critically important research into politically charged fields like climate change". The Judicial Watch lawsuit was inspired by Rep.
Lamar Smith, a
climate change denier who had accused the authors of the study of "alter[ing] data" to "get the politically correct results they want."
Mueller and FBI investigations into Russian interference In 2017, Judicial Watch helped to stoke Republican attacks against
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016 election. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton has called for the Special Counsel investigation to be shut down, arguing that prosecutors in the probe were too biased against President Trump to conduct a credible investigation, a claim rejected by Republican Senators
Thom Tillis and
Bob Corker. Fitton furthermore called for shutting down the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) based on the claim that the Obama administration had turned it into a "
KGB-type operation."
Accusations against the Clinton Foundation In January 2018, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton repeated accusations against the Clinton Foundation that it had funneled money intended for charity work in Haiti to pay for Chelsea Clinton's wedding.
The Washington Post fact-checked the claim a year earlier and found that it was "lacking any evidence". After widespread condemnation, Fox stated that Farrell would no longer be booked. Judicial Watch had been engaged in what NPR described as a "full-throated campaign against Soros". Among other things, Judicial Watch raised money by running ads with a call to action: "Expose Soros!"
Senator's letters to IRS According to
Media Matters for America, in 2015, Judicial Watch claimed that three newly obtained letters sent by Democratic senator
Carl Levin to the commissioner of the
Internal Revenue Service "discuss how to target conservative groups the senator claimed were 'engaged in political activities'." Media Matters for America reported that Judicial Watch provided a link to the documents on its site, but said it failed to note that one Levin letter did not mention conservatives, while the other two mentioned an equal number of liberal/Democrat and conservative/Republican entities. The Judicial Watch claim was amplified by several conservative media outlets.
Statue removal Judicial Watch has sought to remove a statue of Mexican revolutionary
Pancho Villa from downtown Tucson. Judicial Watch said the statue "needs to go" because "Pancho Villa did great harm to people." ==Larry Klayman lawsuits==