5 Million Names Cleaned from Voter Rolls!

Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch Weekly Update
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April 04, 2025

JUDICIAL WATCH VICTORY: Five Million Names Removed from Voter Rolls Nationwide
Judicial Watch Sues for Info on Biden Grants to Leftists
‘The Gravy Train is Over’—HUD, DHS End Subsidized Housing for Illegals
D.C. Anti-Crime: Ex-Con Hired as Violence Interrupter Charged with Murder

 

JUDICIAL WATCH VICTORY: Five Million Names Removed from Voter Rolls Nationwide

A major milestone in our work to clean up voter rolls!

Over the last several years, our analysis and use of voter registration lists have led to lawsuits and legal actions under theNational Voter Registration Act (NVRA) that have resulted in the removal of five million names from voter rolls in nearly a dozen states and localities.

Recently, the Commonwealth of Kentucky reported that 735,000 ineligible voter registrations have been removed from its voter rolls since 2019 by the State Board of Elections as part of its 2018 consent decree settling a lawsuit with us.

As part of its 2022 settlement, New York City alone has removed 918,139 ineligible names from its rolls: recent data show 477,056 removals between March 2023 and February 2025, which is in addition to the 441,083 previously reported removals.

These latest developments come as a result of our 2017 lawsuit against Kentucky under the NVRA (Judicial Watch, Inc. and the United States of America v. Alison Lundergan Grimes, et al. (No. 3:17-cv-00094)) and our 2022 lawsuit against New York City that pointed out that it had removed only 22 names under the federal law over six years (Judicial Watch v Valentine et al. (No.1:22-cv-03952)).

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory.

In May 2022, Los Angeles County confirmed the removal of 1.2 million ineligible names from its rolls as part of asettlement in a federal lawsuit we filed in 2017. (Legal pressure from Judicial Watch ultimately has led to the removal of ineligible names from voter rolls in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio.)

Other voter roll clean-up lawsuits by Judicial Watch continue in Illinois, Oregon, and California.

Our clean-up of over five million dirty names from voter rolls is a historic achievement for clean elections. I have no doubt that our election integrity heavy lifting helped stop the steal in 2024. But there are millions of more names to be removed from voting rolls, which is why we are in federal court in three states.

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights.

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declined to rehear its previous ruling in which it agreed with us that it was unlawful for Mississippi to count ballots that arrived after Election Day.

In March 2025 we filed a federal lawsuit against California on behalf of U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa to prevent state election officials from extending Election Day for seven days beyond the date established by federal law. California counts ballots received up to seven days after Election Day.

Also in March, we sent a notice letter to Lt. Governor Deidre M. Henderson, notifying her that Utah is currently in violation of the NVRA’s public disclosure requirements. The notice letter warns of a lawsuit after 90 days if the issues are not resolved.

 

Judicial Watch Sues for Info on Biden Grants to Leftists

There’s no end to the malicious use of your tax dollars by the far-left bureaucrats working at the direction of Joe Biden.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for records on grants made by the Biden State Department to various Hungarian media outlets and educational organizations opposing conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:25-cv-00836)).

Judicial Watch sued after the State Department failed to respond to a January 29, 2025, FOIA request for:

All records regarding any grants provided under the Independent Media Support Fund/Free Media Grant Program to any organization or individual in Hungary. This request includes, but is not limited to, all records depicting the recipients and purposes of the grants, the timing of the awards, and all related records of communication between former Ambassador David Pressman or Chargé d’Affaires David Holmes and any other individual or entity.

The complaint explains:

According to media reports, on the final day of the Biden Administration, the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary, awarded grants worth millions of Hungarian Forints to various Hungarian media outlets and educational organizations aligned with opponents of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an ally of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump. See, e.g., “U.S. Embassy Awards Millions in Grants to Opposition Media on Trump Inauguration Day,” Hungarian Conservative, Jan. 21, 2025 (available athttps://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/us-embassy-hungary-opposition-media-funding-interference-pressman/ )

According to the Hungarian Conservative:

Recipients of the grant include several well-known anti-government media outlets, aligned with the Hungarian opposition but posing as independent press. Among the grantees, 444 received more than 8 million HUF (over 20,000 USD), Átlátszó 10 million HUF approximately 25,000 USD), Jelen 7 million HUF (around 18,000 USD), and both Magyar Hang and Klubrádió were awarded 10 million HUF each in Category A. In Category B, which supports media education and journalism training, Transparency International’s Hungarian foundation—one of the most prominent organizations within the Soros network—received more than 7 million HUF.

The Biden State Department, on Joe’s last day in office, apparently sent a cash infusion to Hungary’s left-wing, anti-Orban opposition organizations. Let’s hope the new State Department stops the cover-up and produces records on this meddling.

In February 2025, we also sued USAID for records regarding waste, fraud and abuse tied to aid money sent to Ukraine.

In November 2024, we sued the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for records about to the $27 million in U.S. grants awarded to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” that have been designated for use in Gaza.

In October 2023, we sued the State Department for communications and records regarding the eligibility of citizens of Hungary to participate in a visa waiver program.

In 2018, we obtained State Department documents showing top Soros representatives in Romania collaborating with the State Department in a program jointly funded by, among others, Soros’s Open Society Foundations – Romania and USAID, called the “Open Government Partnership.”

Additional State Department records uncovered in 2018 showed USAID funding for George Soros’s left-wing nonprofit organizations in Albania. The documents dealt primarily with the activities of Soros’ top operative in Albania, Andri Dobrushi, the director of Open Society Foundation-Albania, who was actively engaged in channeling funding to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls Soros’ “mercenary army.” The documents showed U.S. grant money flowing through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profess to promote “civil society,” while in fact attacking traditional, pro-American groups, governments and policies.

Other records related to the USAID’s activities in Albania showed that the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a group backed by Soros, which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also detailed how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding.

 

‘The Gravy Train is Over’—HUD, DHS End Subsidized Housing for Illegals

The Trump administration is creating a process to save taxpayers billions of dollars given to illegal aliens by the Biden administration. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.

Over half of illegal immigrant households in the United States use at least one taxpayer-funded welfare program, according to congressional testimony provided recently by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and it costs the government tens of billions of dollars. Clamping down on the unprecedented flow of migrants is only the first step to mitigate the damage of the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies. One major area of concern is government-subsidized public housing, which became available to illegal aliens under policies established by the previous administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

To reverse the damage amid a nationwide affordable housing crisis, two key government agencies have teamed up to crack down on illegal immigrants benefiting from taxpayer-funded public housing. Trump HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to end the wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal aliens instead of American citizens, especially veterans in need. Under the agreement HUD will provide a full-time staff member to assist in operations at the Incident Command Center (ICC), creating an interagency partnership to facilitate data sharing and ensure taxpayer-funded housing programs are not used to harbor or benefit illegal aliens. “We will safeguard precious taxpayer resources, and we will stop the harmful practices of the former Biden Administration, which favored and prioritized illegal aliens over American citizens in the expenditure of housing funds and subsidies,” the HUD-DHS MOU states.

The agencies will collaborate to facilitate and coordinate efforts to place Americans first by establishing lines of communications and developing joint measures to accomplish President Trump’s directive to protect Americans and their resources. “Further, we will work together to identify criminal aliens who prey upon and victimize the American people,” the MOU reads. “By working more closely together and with greater collaboration, we will identify illegal aliens who are ineligible for Federal housing assistance and take remedial measures to end this waste and abuse, including referral for immigration enforcement actions.” A few days later HUD also announced that illegal immigrants would no longer qualify for government-backed mortgages through a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) program that lends to “non-permanent residents.” The new policy ensures that illegal aliens cannot access FHA-insured financing and refocuses the use of taxpayer-funded federal housing programs to benefit U.S. citizens.

DHS Secretary Noem points out that the Biden administration prioritized illegal aliens over American citizens, including by giving them taxpayer-funded housing. “Not anymore,” she says in the press release announcing the new HUD partnership. “The entire government will work together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally.” The DHS Secretary further warns that the gravy train is over for those in the country illegally. “If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now,” Noem said. HUD Secretary Turner assures his agency’s new agreement with DHS will leverage resources to ensure American people are the only priority when it comes to public housing.

Uncle Sam spends a whopping $42 billion to provide illegal immigrants with an array of welfare services, according to CIS figures presented to Congress less than a year ago. This includes housing, food, healthcare, public education, and other social services. As an example of the toll this is taking on local communities, CIS revealed that the city of New York has spent or expects to spend $12 billion over the next three years on housing, food, health care, and other services for recently arrived illegal immigrants. Chicago spent around $361 million to accommodate recently arrived migrants, the District of Columbia about $36.4 million and Denver approximately $180 million, more than triple what it spends on the homeless. A few years ago, Judicial Watch reported on a congressional probe that determined the cost of illegal immigration is greater than the annual gross domestic product of 15 states.

 

D.C. Anti-Crime: Ex-Con Hired as Violence Interrupter Charged with Murder

The local DC government can be a dangerous mess. Consider its attempts to fight crime. From our Corruption Chronicles blog:

The scandals keep piling up in the District of Columbia’s ill-fated program to curb violence with an ex-con charged with two felonies since D.C. officials hired him to be a violence interrupter, a disgraced councilman—Trayon Whites—busted for taking tens of thousands of dollars in cash bribes to help extend violence prevention and youth services contracts and another high-ranking official pleading guilty to bribery for using her official government position to help a friend get contracts and grants. As millions of taxpayer dollars pour into D.C.’s questionable anti-violence initiative, fraud and corruption continue to rock the program, and crime remains high in the neighborhoods it is supposed to help.

The repeat criminal works for Cure the Streets, a public safety program launched by former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to reduce gun violence by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted and stopped from spreading. Cure the Streets typically hires people with criminal histories as violence interrupters because they know first-hand about the challenges that residents of crime-infested communities live with. Racine, a two-term D.C. Attorney General who is currently a partner in a major corporate law firm, claimed the “transformed criminals” hired by his program perform community-driven public safety work that can avoid using police by interrupting potentially violent conflicts because they have relationships and influence within targeted neighborhoods. The program operates in notoriously high-crime sections throughout D.C., which are broken down by wards, including Eckington/Truxton and Trinidad in Ward 5, Marshall Heights/Benning Heights in Ward 7 and Bellevue, Washington Highlands, and Congress Heights in Ward 8.

A Cure the Streets employee, Cotey Wynn, was recently arrested and faces a first-degree murder charge related to a nightclub shooting in which a 31-year-old former college basketball player was killed. Wynn has an extensive rap sheet and had served ten years in prison when Racine, D.C.’s then chief legal officer, hired him as a violence interrupter. His record includes felony murder, first degree murder, possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, and distribution of a controlled substance, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. The most recent criminal charge is not the first since becoming a D.C. violence interrupter. In 2020 Judicial Watch reported that Wynn got arrested and charged for fatally shooting a 53-year-old man in 2017 near the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast Washington. At the time of that arrest Wynn was under the supervision of the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia, a federal agency that believes preventative detention should only be a last resort for defendants, who should live in the least restrictive conditions while awaiting court.

The public officials embroiled in bribery scandals are part of the D.C. Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE), the umbrella agency that more broadly focuses on reducing violence in the nation’s crime-infested capitol area. White, recently expelled by the D.C. Council and scheduled to be tried in 2026, took $156,000 in cash payments in exchange for using his position as a D.C. councilman to pressure government employees at ONSE and the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) to extend several contracts. “The contracts at issue were valued at $5.2 million and were for two companies to provide Violence Intervention services in D.C.,” according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which reveals that the disgraced lawmaker took payments of $35,000 in cash on four separate occasions. Just a few days ago, the agency disclosed the most recent ONSE official nabbed in a bribery scheme, a former deputy director named Dana McDaniel who has pleaded guilty to accepting at least $10,000 in exchange for using her position to award contracts and grants to businesses owned by a Maryland-based associate. As ONSE deputy director, McDaniel managed agency programming and community-based services focused on providing resources and interventions for at-risk individuals in at-risk communities impacted by violence in D.C. She faces 15 years in prison.

 

Until next week,