Judicial Watch
Washington, DC – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court ordered the Department of Justice to provide information on communications between Special Counsel Jack Smith and District Attorney Fani Willis regarding the prosecution of then-former President Donald Trump. The Justice Department had continued to object to providing any information even after its prosecutions against Trump were shut down.
Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that because the cases against Trump were closed, the Justice Department’s arguments against disclosure were no longer applicable:
Since DOJ filed its motion for summary judgment and supporting Declaration in March 2024, the Special Counsel’s criminal enforcement actions have been terminated…. The cases are “closed—not pending or contemplated—and therefore are not proceedings with which disclosure may interfere.” … Thus, the agency’s sole justification for invoking the Glomar doctrine under Exemption 7(A) is no longer applicable.
Accordingly, the Court will deny DOJ’s motion for summary judgment and grant the plaintiff’s cross motion. DOJ is directed to process the plaintiff’s FOIA request and either “disclose any [responsive] records or establish both that their contents are exempt from disclosure and that such exemption has not also been waived.”
Judicial Watch sued in October 2023 after the Department of Justice failed to comply with an August 2023 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records detailing the “Fulton County District Attorney’s Office’s requesting or receiving federal funds or other federal assistance … regarding the investigation of former President Donald Trump” and others (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 23-cv-03110).
On December 18, 2023, the Justice Department issued its final response to this request, refusing to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records. It argued that releasing the records could be reasonably expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. The Justice Department refused to change its position or inform the court in light of the “proceedings” against Trump that were shut down.
The court has now ordered the Justice Department to meet with Judicial Watch on or before February 21, 2025, and to report the status of the discussion to the court.
“President Trump truly needs to overhaul the Justice Department from top to bottom. It is a scandal that a federal court had to order the Justice Department to admit the truth that their objections to producing records about collusion with Fani Willis had no basis in reality,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
Judicial Watch has several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits related to the prosecutorial abuse targeting Trump:
In January 2025, the Superior Court in Fulton County, GA, issued an order granting $21,578 “attorney’s fees and costs” in the open records lawsuit for communications Willis had with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee. Judicial Watch recently received payment.
In February 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that is targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.
(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Specia Counsel Jack Smith previously was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Jack Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here.)
In January 2024, Judicial Watch filed lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor by District Attorney Fani Willis. Wade was hired to pursue unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes.
Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023, Judicial Watch received the engagement letter showing New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.
In his new book Rights and Freedoms in Peril Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton details a long chain of abuses officials and politicians have made against the American people and calls readers to battle for “the soul and survival of America.”
