James Comey: Indicted

Former FBI Director James Comey Faces Indictment
Getting Answers on Biden Administration’s Denial of Military Funeral for Ashli Babbitt
Judicial Watch and Allied Educational Foundation Clarify Supreme Court Arguments for Elimination of Race-Based Congressional Districts
Supreme Court Battle Continues in Historic Illinois Election Integrity Case

Former FBI Director James Comey Faces Indictment

Justice and accountability have finally moved forward with the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on charges of making a false statement and obstruction of justice. Comey (in conspiracy with Hillary and Obama, helped launch smear campaigns and spy operations against the innocent Donald J. Trump) has been protected for far too long by a corrupt U.S. Department of Justice and FBI. Comey’s crimes are legion, but this indictment is one small step toward holding accountable those who engaged in the worst political abuse in the history of the country. More justice must come.

In August, we sued the Justice Department for all records regarding the FBI, under then-Director James Comey, initiating an investigation of then-2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In July 2019, we uncovered FBI records, showing that in June 2017, a month after Comey was fired by President Donald Trump, FBI agents visited his home and collected “as evidence” four memos that allegedly detail conversations he had with President Trump.

In August 2018, a federal court ordered the Justice Department to preserve federal records located in Comey’s personal email accounts.

In May 2018, emails we uncovered showed Comey was advised by FBI officials in May 2017 to consult with Special Counsel Robert Mueller prior to testifying before any congressional committees regarding Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and his firing as FBI director.

In February 2018, in response to our lawsuit, the FBI agreed to review 16,750 pages of Comey’s records that were archived after he was dismissed.

In January 2018, a lawsuit we filed forced the FBI to turn over to the court for in camera, non-public review former Comey’s memos allegedly detailing conversations he had with President Donald Trump.

In November 2017, the Justice Department compared Comey to Wikileaks. After Comey was fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017, he gave The New York Times a February 14, 2017, memorandum written about a one-on-one conversation he had with President Trump regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

In June 2016, we sent Acting FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe a warning letter concerning the FBI’s legal responsibility under the Federal Records Act (FRA) to recover records, including memos Comey subsequently leaked to the media, unlawfully removed from the Bureau by Comey.

Getting Answers on Biden Administration’s Denial of Military Funeral for Ashli Babbitt

We recently announced that the U.S. Air Force will finally provide full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was unlawfully ambushed, shot and killed inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Ashli was the only official January 6 homicide victim that day.

Now, we have begun court action to get to the bottom of the Biden administration’s despicable denial of a military funeral for her (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:25-cv-03249)).

We filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit after the Air Force failed to comply with a May 15, 2024, request for:

All records concerning the request for military funeral honors for the funeral of SrA Ashli McEntee (Babbitt), the denial of that request by Lieutenant General Brian T. Kelly, USAF, and the circumstances reported to the Department of the Air Force concerning SrA Ashli McEntee’s (Babbitt) death, including but not limited to correspondence via emails, texts, and letters; phone calls; memoranda; notes; reports; audio recordings; voicemails; videos; entries in books or logs; directives; policies and procedures; guidance documents; and legal opinions.

On February 9, 2021, Lt. Gen. Kelly, who at the time was the Air Force’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel and Services (A1), signed a letter addressed to Aaron Babbitt denying military funeral honors for his wife, SrA Ashli McEntee (Babbitt), USAF.

On July 23, 2025, Judicial Watch Senior Counsel Robert Sticht wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asking him to reverse the Biden administration’s “grave national injustice” of denying Babbitt and her family military funeral honors:

I am writing to urge you to make a new determination granting military funeral honors for SrA Ashli Elizabeth Pamatian, aka Ashli Elizabeth McEntee, and Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt, a War on Terror veteran of the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard.

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I respectfully encourage the Department of Defense to favorably consider two major recent developments and also Ashli’s lengthy and meritorious military service.

First, on January 20, 2025, President Trump granted clemency for certain offenses relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Presidential proclamation states, “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” President Trump (a) commuted the sentences of certain individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021; (b) granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted  of [similar] offenses….

Second … on July 2, 2025, the United States of America paid a damage award of nearly five million dollars to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Judicial Watch and I brought forward on behalf of the Estate of Ashli Babbitt and her husband Aaron Babbitt to ensure justice and accountability for the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021. Once again, Gen. Kelly’s denial of military funeral honors for Ashli’s funeral cannot be reconciled with this landmark legal settlement. Many well-documented facts now clearly show that the fatal shooting was not justified.

The decision to finally extend military funeral honors was confirmed in a letter on August 15, 2025, written by Under Secretary of the Air Force Matthew L. Lohmeier to Aaron Babbitt and Ashli Babbitt’s mother, Michelle Witthoeft:

On behalf of the Secretary of the Air Force, I write to extend the offer for Military Funeral Honors for SrA Ashli Babbitt. I understand that the family’s initial request was denied by Air Force leadership in a letter dated February 9, 2021. However, after reviewing the circumstances of Ashli’s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect.

For four years, the Biden administration stuck with the false narrative that Ashli Babbitt, who served her country honorably, was a violent insurrectionist. Your Judicial Watch has fought for Ashli and her family, and won on several fronts. Now we are suing for a full account of the Biden Pentagon’s denial of a military funeral for Ashli.

We obtained a $4.975 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. Government on behalf of Babbitt’s family (Estate of Ashli Babbitt and Aaron Babbitt, et al. v. United States of America (No. 1:24-cv-01701 (formerly 3:24-cv-00033))).

We have been pursuing several lawsuits to secure transparency regarding Babbitt’s killing and other government activities on January 6.

In January 2023, documents from the Department of the Air Force, Joint Base Andrews, MD, showed Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In November 2021, we released multiple audio, visual and photo records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the shooting death of Babbitt in the U.S. Capitol Building. The records included a cell phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police interview of the shooter, Byrd.

In October 2021, your Judicial Watch uncovered records from the DC Metropolitan Police about the shooting death of Babbitt. The new records included the January 6, 2021, Metro PD Death Report for Babbitt (identified as Ashli Elizabeth McEntee-Babbitt Pamatian). The investigators noted that the possible Manner of Death was “Homicide [Police Involved Shooting].”

Judicial Watch and Allied Educational Foundation Clarify Supreme Court Arguments for Elimination of Race-Based Congressional Districts

We, along with Allied Educational Foundation (AEF), filed an amici curiae (friends of the court) brief to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the court to eliminate woke, race-based congressional districting and ban the use racial preferences in drawing up “majority-minority” congressional districts. It is past time the court took this important step to return the U.S. Constitution and federal law to its previous color-blind principles.

The filing comes in the case Louisiana v. Phillip Callais et al. (No. 24-109), which is up on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The lower court ruled 2-1 against Louisiana after it adopted a racially drawn congressional map for future elections.

In January 2025, your Judicial Watch and AEF filed an initial amicus brief in this case, asking the court to affirm a lower court ruling that Louisiana violated the constitution when it crowded minority voters into congressional districts.

Rather than ruling on the appeal last term, the Supreme Court postponed ruling and ordered the case be reargued in October 2025. Your Judicial Watch and AEF submitted today’s supplemental brief in response to the court’s August 1, 2025, order directing the parties and amici to address “whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14^th [equal protection] or 15^th  [the right of citizens to vote] Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

In our brief we argue that there is a conflict between the Voting Rights Act and prior court precedent, and that “dividing of citizens by race … is now doing more harm than good:”

The longstanding conflict between this Court’s interpretation of § 2 of the VRA [Voting Rights Act] and its Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence has run its course.…The former mandates racial districting while the latter prohibits intentional racial classifications. For almost 30 years, courts and states have struggled to balance the conflicting mandates under [Supreme Court precedent] Gingles and the Equal Protection Clause. The dividing of citizens by race, as required by Gingles, is now doing more harm than good.

We argue that the proposed drawing of racial districts violates the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, that states “lack any interest, much less a compelling one, to create racial gerrymanders, even if done in a good faith effort,” and that Louisiana “impermissibly used race to create a second majority-minority district.”

In our amici brief, we recount:

This Court has compared race-based districting to segregation of “public parks, … buses, … and schools,” and warned that we “should not be carving electorates into racial blocs.” … That is because “[c]lassifications of citizens solely on the basis of race ‘are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.’” … Racial gerrymandering, like all “[r]acial classifications of any sort” cause “lasting harm to our society” because “[t]hey reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin.” …

There should be no question that race-based division of citizens for purposes of compliance with § 2 and Gingles is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, the “central purpose” of which “is to prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis of race.”… The same may be said of the Voting Rights Act.

AEF is a charitable and educational foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life through education. In furtherance of that goal, the Foundation has engaged in a number of projects, which include, but are not limited to, educational and health conferences domestically and abroad. AEF has partnered frequently with your Judicial Watch to fight government and judicial corruption and to promote a return to ethics and morality in the nation’s public life.

As you know, we are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

In August, we filed a brief to the Supreme Court that opposes the State of Mississippi’s attempt to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision, which struck down a law allowing ballots received after Election Day to be counted.

Federal courts for Oregon, California and Illinois have ruled that our lawsuits may proceed against those states to force them to clean their voter rolls.

Your Judicial Watch announced in May that its work led to the removal of more than five million ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide.

Supreme Court Battle Continues in Historic Illinois Election Integrity Case

The fight for an Election Day as established in federal law has many fronts, one important one is in Illinois. We filed a reply brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in a case on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors, who are before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law extending Election Day for 14 days beyond the date established by federal law (Rep.Michael J. Bost, Laura Pollastrini, and Susan Sweeney v. The Illinois State Board of Elections and Bernadette Matthews (No. 1:22-cv-02754, 23-2644, 24-568)).

The Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument for October 8, 2025. This is an appeal of the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, finding that Bost and the electors lacked standing to challenge Illinois’ practice of counting ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day. The Election Day lawsuit was initially filed on May 25, 2022.

Our new Supreme Court brief states:

Illinois counts mail-in ballots received up to two weeks after Election Day. Petitioners, candidates for federal office, claim that under controlling federal law that is two weeks too long. As a result, Illinois is counting unlawful ballots and producing inaccurate vote tallies, while simultaneously hurting petitioners’ prospects at the ballot box and injuring their pocketbooks. Everyone from the United States to the ACLU and the ACLJ agrees that petitioners have standing. Illinois disputes that remarkable consensus only by ignoring common sense (and the dangers produced by the Seventh Circuit’s rule) and by imagining non-existent waivers that did not deter the Seventh Circuit from denying standing because Congressman Bost’s electoral prospects were too bright and his pocketbook injuries too speculative.

We submit that the Seventh Circuit’s decision “is wrong and dangerous:”

It is wrong because candidates have standing to challenge the rules that govern their elections, especially when their merits theory (which must be credited for standing purposes) is that the challenged rule produces an inaccurate final tally. At a minimum, the candidate has standing when (as here) he plausibly alleges that the challenged rule will harm his electoral prospects and reduce his bank balance because he needs to pay campaign staff an extra two weeks. And the decision is dangerous because it forces judges to play political prognosticators, skews standing rules to favor certain kinds of candidates, and funnels election disputes to the worst possible context—namely, after the election where judges are asked to declare political winners. This Court should reverse.

We assert that Congressman Bost has standing to challenge the Illinois law:

At the very least, Congressman Bost has standing to challenge the Illinois ballot-receipt deadline here, as a host of diverse amici confirm. Congressman Bost plausibly alleged a substantial risk that counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day will harm his electoral prospects both by risking electoral defeat and reducing his margin of victory. The plausibility of those allegations was amply reinforced by the Illinois Democratic Party’s attempted intervention and voting and litigation patterns nationwide. And he has also plausibly alleged a classic pocketbook injury because he expended additional campaign funds as a direct result of the state’s extended deadline for receiving mail-in ballots. Here too, the notion that an election artificially extended a fortnight costs more than one that ends on Election Day hardly strains credulity. The state’s contrary arguments lack merit.

In our previous Supreme Court brief, we stated:

Federal law sets the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the federal Election Day.

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Candidates have an obvious interest in the lawfulness and fairness of the rules that govern the elections into which they pour their time and resources. They also have an obvious interest “in ensuring that the final vote tally accurately reflects the legally valid votes cast.”

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Candidates pour enormous resources into running for election and have an obvious interest in the rules that dictate how long their races will last and how the ballots will be counted. They also have a distinct interest “in ensuring that the final vote tally accurately reflects the legally valid votes cast.”

Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

Judicial Watch in August 2025 filed a brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, opposing the State of Mississippi’s attempt to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision, which struck down a law allowing ballots received after Election Day to be counted.

Federal courts for Oregon, California and Illinois have ruled that Judicial Watch’s lawsuits may proceed against those states to force them to clean their voter rolls.

Judicial Watch announced in May that its work led to the removal of more than five million ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide.

Until next week…

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