Lawfare Update: Jack Smith and Federal Judges

Judicial Watch Lawsuit Pursues Transparency on Jack Smith–Judge Meetings
Judicial Watch Sues over Illegal Alien DUI Crash that Killed Katie Abraham

Judicial Watch Lawsuit Pursues Transparency on Jack Smith–Judge Meetings

Important questions remain about communications between former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s team and the federal judges involved in President Trump’s cases. The American people deserve full transparency regarding these meetings and any discussions.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records concerning meetings between Smith and members of his team and two Obama-appointed federal judges who presided over matters involving President Donald Trump (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-02027)).

We sued after the Justice Department failed to respond to a March 24, 2026, FOIA request submitted to the Office of Information Policy (OIP) for all records concerning meetings between Smith and/or members of his team and Chief Judge Beryl Howell or Judge James Boasberg from December 2022 through April 2023, including notes, recordings, transcripts, calendar entries, agendas, presentations, and other related documents.

On November 18, 2022, three days after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024, former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing by Trump. The appointment came nine days after then-President Joe Biden announced his effort to make sure Trump did not become president again.

In March 2026, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released briefing notes prepared for Garland from January 2023 that refer to interactions between Smith’s team and Judges Howell and Boasberg. The notes describe a meeting with Howell in which Smith’s team discussed the pace of the investigation over the preceding month and state that Howell “liked our approach of pursuing the executive privilege litigation in an omnibus fashion.” The briefing notes also state that, regarding a planned omnibus executive privilege motion involving former Trump administration officials, “Chief Judge knows it is coming and loves idea.”

The notes also reference “Judge Boasberg = March 18.” Boasberg became chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on March 17, 2023, succeeding Howell and assuming responsibility for supervising grand jury matters before the court.

Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Smith previously was at the center of several other controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them.

We are a national leader in exposing the lawfare and abuse targeting Trump and other American citizens.

In April 2026, we sued the Justice Department for records on the Biden FBI’s search warrants used in the April 2021 raid on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s residence and office (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice(No. 1:26-cv-01158)). Giuliani served as a personal attorney and informal adviser to President Donald Trump.

In May 2026, we obtained records that revealed the FBI’s concerns about the legal basis for the 2022 raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. The records exposed explicit objections from field agents who warned the Justice Department that the unprecedented raid on Trump’s home lacked probable cause.

In March 2026, the Justice Department reported that the FBI found about 1.9 million pages of records that are responsive to our FOIA lawsuit. These documents were reportedly stored in a “hidden room” at FBI headquarters and were first revealed by former Deputy Director Dan Bongino (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-04047)).

In March 2026, we sued the Justice Department for records from the FBI’s Biden-era “Arctic Frost” probe, specifically involving the Criminal Division, the Office of Information Policy, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00746)).

In March 2026, we asked a Georgia state court to reject Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ efforts to continue hiding records about her office’s communications with Jack Smith’s office and the January 6 Committee (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)).

In February 2026, we secured the release of rosters identifying the names of top deputies who worked for former Special Counsel Jack Smith (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01485)).

In January 2026, we sued the Justice Department for communications of FBI agents regarding the prosecution of former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:26-cv-00079)).

In January 2025, a federal court ordered the Justice Department to provide us information on communications between Jack Smith and Fani Willis regarding the prosecution of Trump. In May 2025, the Justice Department was directed to search text messages from the Special Counsel’s Office for responsive records (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 23-cv-03110).

Federal Audit Exposes DHS ‘Honor System’ for Tracking Millions of Illegal Alien Parolees

The federal government entrusted national security to an astonishingly ineffective “honor system” by failing to properly monitor millions of illegal aliens released into the United States under temporary parole programs. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports:

In a significant security lapse that has occurred under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the government failed to track millions of illegal aliens admitted into the United States under a temporary parole because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency that processed the migrants failed to provide identifying information to the DHS agency responsible for monitoring them. The unbelievable breach involves Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the 60,000-employee frontline border agency charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the premier federal law enforcement agency of around 20,000 that preserves national security and public safety by enforcing immigration laws. In a shameful admission ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) reveals that it relies on the “honor system” to ensure parolees in the country illegally report to field offices as directed, according to a scathing federal audit.

The probe was conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, and reveals that from October 2018 through May 2025, CBP granted around 2.4 million illegal aliens humanitarian parole, many with criminal records and over half of them from Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. The agency expanded the use of the temporary humanitarian measure to mitigate a huge increase of migrants crossing into the U.S. along the southwest border, which amounted to around 10.4 million during the period examined. A few months into the Biden presidency, CBP authorized agents to parole apprehended migrants on a case-by-case basis under certain conditions, such as limited immigration detention space, which was pervasive. A few years later the Biden administration greatly expanded access to illegal migration with a special mobile application called CBP One that rewarded nearly all applicants—97%—parole, the GAO found. “Once noncitizens are paroled at the southwest border, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for monitoring them to ensure they adhere to the conditions of their release,” the report states.

In fact, last year DHS and ICE issued guidance that emphasized the importance of ICE reviewing parole cases to determine whether further enforcement action is appropriate. The problem is the immigration enforcement agency does not have the information it needs to readily identify the illegal aliens that CBP paroled at the border. Sounds like a joke, but it is yet another example of government inefficiency, of how individual federal agencies fail to communicate even when national security, and most likely public safety, is at stake. Congressional investigators confirm that ICE ERO “is not conducting its required monitoring of all noncitizens CBP paroled at the southwest border” and that the laughable “honor system” it relies on is clearly not efficient because not all paroled migrants report at least once a year as required. In 2024 alone ICE lost track of a starling 70% of illegal immigrants paroled by CBP and it is not clear what efforts are being made to track them down in communities throughout the U.S.

The good news is that illegal immigration is at a historic low under President Trump and last spring the administration directed DHS to review cases of paroled migrants and terminate the temporary reprieve of approximately 654,000. Tracking them down remains a problem, the GAO found, because the agency that enforces the measure still does not know where the offenders are. “Although DHS and ICE guidance emphasizes the importance of ICE’s monitoring and enforcement efforts for paroled noncitizens, ICE is not well-positioned to carry out these responsibilities because it does not have readily accessible information about noncitizens’ parole status,” the report states. “According to ICE officials, while ICE obtains information from CBP on noncitizens it places in removal proceedings, this information does not include the parole status of noncitizens who should be monitored, including those whose parole was terminated by CBP through the April 2025 notices.” Congressional investigators point out that, while CBP systems have data fields that provide readily accessible information about parole status, officials at ICE’s ERO headquarters maintain its internal systems do not have those specific data fields and therefore the agency has no access to the critical information.

Until next week,

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