Random Politics & Religion #38: The 38th One

There is no hypocrisy, not sure if you fully understand the meaning of the word. The Gateway Pundit is an alt-right rag that, in typical right wing fashion, posts false information and misleading links. I do not give that site 1 second of my time. It's trash.

Whats false about it?

No one answers, just reflex liberal “facts I don't like” bleating.

Activities and controversies
Judicial Watch’s main targets have been Democrats, particularly Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.[12]

Commerce Department trade mission scandal
Main article: Commerce Department trade mission controversy
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.[13] 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."[14]

Vince Foster conspiracy
Judicial Watch helped promote the conspiracy theory that Vince Foster was murdered by the Clintons.[15][12][16]

White House visitor logs
August 10, 2009 Judicial Watch sent a FOIA request to the US Secret Service asking that official White House visitor logs be made public. In August 2011, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the agency to process the group's data request.[17] 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.[17]

False Nancy Pelosi claims
In 2010, Judicial Watch made inaccurate claims about air travel spending by Nancy Pelosi's congressional delegation; Judicial Watch's claims were picked up by the conservative conspiracy site WorldNetDaily.[18] Judicial Watch also made false claims about Pelosi's air travel in 2008.[19]

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.[20] 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.[21]

The Federal Government failed to produce any records within the required 20-day time period. 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 was forced to release Operation Neptune Spear documents to Judicial Watch. One obtained email had the subject line OPSEC Guidance / Neptune Spear and is proof that days after 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.[22]

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 tenure as the U.S. Attorney General. The records covered sensitive intelligence operations conducted during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations.[23]

Hillary Clinton email lawsuits
Judicial Watch has currently filed twenty FOIA lawsuits involving the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails.[9][10]

On February 8, 2016, the FBI confirmed it was investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. The Bureau was forced to formally acknowledge the investigation due to an ongoing FOIA lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch. FBI director James Comey had previously referenced the investigation, although the FBI had declined to confirm or deny it in court filings.[24][25]

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.[11]

In May 2016 U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted “discovery” to Judicial Watch into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email system. This ruling allowed Judicial Watch to question two close Clinton aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, under oath. In a separate FOIA lawsuit concerning Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi terrorist attack, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Judicial Watch can conduct discovery into the email practices of Clinton and her top aides.[26]

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.[27]

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.[28]

False claims about George Zimmermann protests
In 2013, Judicial Watch claimed that the Department of Justice under the Obama administration organized protests against George Zimmermann 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."[29]

ISIS in Mexico scares
In 2014 and 2015, Judicial Watch falsely claimed that ISIS had set up camp in Mexico; Judicial Watch's claims were picked up by several right-wing news outlets.[30][31][32][15][33]

Collaboration with Steve Bannon and Breitbart News
In 2013, Judicial Watch collaborated with Steve Bannon, executive chairman of the alt-right website Breitbart, on the film "District of Corruption", which critiqued the Obama administration.[34] Judicial Watch paid Bannon's group Victory Film Project $382,143 for the film.[34] Politico described the film as an "infomercial for the work of Judicial Watch".[35]

Judicial Watch has for a number of years advertised on Breitbart News, the alt-right website run by Steve Bannon.[36] Judicial Watch's president Tom Fitton said "Liberal activists want to destroy Breitbart, but we won’t be cowed".[36]

Murder of Seth Rich conspiracy theory
In 2017, Judicial Watch requested documents related to the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich; Seth Rich's death led to debunked rightwing conspiracy theories which alleged that Hillary Clinton or the Democratic Party had him killed.[37]

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).[38] 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".[38] California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Judicial Watch's claims were "baseless", and "bad math and dubious methodology".[38][39] When the Los Angeles Times asked Judicial Watch to share its analysis of voter registration in California, Judicial Watch declined.[39] Judicial Watch's voter fraud claims came in the wake of President Donald Trump's false claims of extensive voter fraud in California during the 2016 presidential election.[39]

Judicial Watch president Tom 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."[40]

False claims about Trump Nazi billboard
In 2017, Judicial Watch falsely claimed that taxpayer money went into a billboard which depicted President Donald Trump as a Nazi.[41]

Lawsuits against climate scientists
Judicial Watch, which has claimed that climate science is "fraud science", 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.[42][43] 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 1998-2012.[42] 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".[42] The Judicial Watch lawsuit was inspired by Rep. Lamar Smith, a climate change denier[44][45][46] who had accused the authors of the study of "alter[ing] data" to "get the politically correct results they want."[42][47]

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.[48] 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 Tom Tillis and Bob Corker.[49] Fitton furthermore called for shutting down the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) based on the false claim that the Obama administration had turned it into a "KGB-type operation."[50]

In July 2018, the DOJ complied with a Judicial Watch (FOIA) request for release of documents pertaining to the FISA surveillance application for Carter Page.[51] After the release of the documents, Fitton said that they seemed to "confirm the FBI and DoJ misled the courts in withholding info about Clinton-DNC being behind the info used to get the FISA warrant."[51] Mainstream news outlets noted that the documents did in fact note that FBI and DOJ informed the FISA court that the Steele dossier was opposition research.[52][53] The documents also made clear that the Steele dossier was just one of many reasons that the FBI were concerned about Page and his relationship with Russia.[52][53]

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.[54] The Washington Post fact-checked the claim a year earlier and found that it was "lacking any evidence".[54]

Misleading report about FISA court hearings
On August 31, 2018, Judicial Watch reported on its blog that the Justice Department "admitted" in a court filing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings regarding the surveillance application for former Trump adviser Carter Page. In their blog post,[55] Judicial Watch linked to the court filing,[56] which was in response to a FOIA lawsuit, but nowhere in the blog post was it mentioned that, rather than an "admission", the court filing clarified that hearings were not typically held: "Specifically, FOIA staff consulted with knowledgeable subject matter experts in the Office of Intelligence. Those experts confirmed that, as is typical in proceedings before the FISC, no hearings were held with respect to the acknowledged Carter Page FISA applications, and thus no responsive transcripts exist."[56]

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton appeared on Fox News that night and stated that the Justice Department said there were no hearings for the Page application,[57] but did not mention that the DOJ said this was "typical in proceedings before the FISC."[56] The Judicial Watch story was reported as scandalous by conservative websites, such as The Gateway Pundit.[58][59] The following day, Trump tweeted about the story.[60]

George Soros smears
In October 2018, Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch stirred controversy when he appeared on Lou Dobbs' Fox Business show and used what many described as an anti-Semitic trope to suggest that the State Department was "Soros-occupied" territory. The remark echoed the anti-Semitic trope of a "Zionist-occupied government" to refer to Jewish control of the U.S. government.[61][62][63] The remarks came days after bombing attempts on Soros, and the remarks were replayed on Fox Business hours after an anti-Semitic attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue which killed 11 people.[64] After widespread condemnation, Fox stated that Farrell would no longer be booked.[65][62]

Farrell promoted the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that a migrant caravan traveling through Central America towards the United States was being directed or funded by the "Soros-occupied State Department".[66] 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!"[66][67]

Statue removal
Judicial Watch has sought to remove a statue of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa from downtown Tucson.[68] Judicial Watch said the statue "needs to go" because "Pancho Villa did great harm to people."[68]

what is false about THIS claim?

The notion other claims are false is not an argument for this claim.

Lol source for that?

Says the guy claiming everything is facts I don't like.


Maybe ... just maybe you should start being skeptical about them just a little bit.

I don't believe many of you can admit that not everything bad you hear about the, Hitler reincarnation known as Donald Trump, is true, no matter how much you wish it was.

Heck, I hate to admit it, but there were times I even would agree with something Obama did. It was rare and not as much as I would like, but it happened.

Now it's like y'all want us to go to war because "*** TRUMP RESISTTSSSSSSSS!!!"

C'mon, y'all can do better.