Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is being weaponized against opposing voices. Fitton’s group filed a lawsuit against the DOJ recently to get documents connected to the department’s election threat task force, after almost a year of no response to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Fitton thinks the DOJ has something they don’t want the public to know.
Fitton’s comments come after the DOJ’s July action to form an election threats task force to investigate alleged widespread threats to election officials.
According to Judicial Watch, the group is “a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, politics, and the law.”
“So not only do you have the DOJ involved, you get the FBI, you’ve got I think their national security operation involved as well, and the Department of Homeland Security. And you know, I read it as, ‘Don’t you dare ask questions about the way elections are being conducted, otherwise, you’ll be on our government radar.'”
Fitton believes that these efforts by the DOJ violate the public’s constitutional rights and target political opposition, and work more to intimidate people.
“So, what they do is they pretend that their political opponents are to be treated as national security threats, potential terrorists, lawbreakers, and then follow up with an intimidation effort that suggests law enforcement will be watching you if you talk on these specific topics.”
Broader Problem of Corruption
“Well, … frankly, most federal agencies are irredeemably corrupt, and they need to be really reformed in dramatic ways, if not dismantled, depending on the agency entirely,” said Fitton.When it comes to bad public policy and misconduct, the Justice Department is at the center of the storm, he said.
“They defend the indefensible,” said Fitton. “So, everything you don’t like, if the federal government’s breaking the law, and you think that’s going on and there’s abuse, usually, there’s a Justice Department attorney or agency that’s more than willing to defend that and is pushing it or protecting them from accountability by pretending that records about government misconduct are secret and can’t be turned over.”
Fitton said the DOJ is too big and has too much money. “You’ve got this basic waste, fraud, and abuse issue, in addition to the politicization because no one’s watching the store. We need the watch the watchers.”