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DOJ FRAUD CHIEF: Fraudsters Should Fear a 6 A.M. Knock on the Door

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WATCH: DOJ FRAUD CHIEF: Fraudsters Should Fear a 6 A.M. Knock on the Door

In an exclusive interview, Daily Signal legal analyst Mehek Cooke discussed with Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald why the Justice Department launched its inaugural state partnership roundtable in Ohio, how data sharing could help investigators identify fraudsters who target multiple government programs, and why other states should join the effort.

This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.

Mehek Cooke: Assistant Attorney General McDonald, thank you so much for being here in Ohio today.

Colin McDonald: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Cooke: So, I was able to witness a closed-door roundtable where you’re leading a charge to detect fraud in Ohio with multiple partners and Ohio officials. Can you tell me why you started in Ohio with this?

McDonald: Well, thanks for chatting with me here. It’s so important to get the word out about the fraud efforts that we’re engaged in. We started here on the strength of some great U.S. attorneys who are here in the state of Ohio and some willing state partners who, when we came to them and said, “Hey, we have these ideas for how we can do better together, to come together as one team,” they were willing down the line to say, “Yes, we’re willing to do that and to become one team to fight for the American taxpayer and to make sure that we can stop the bleeding when it comes to the fraud.”

So, this morning’s event was a kickoff event, an inaugural event, with state and federal partners to get together in a room and say, “Hey, if we don’t solve it, no one else will.”

And so, we’ve had great reception here in Ohio. Partnerships including the sharing of data and also including the provision of prosecutors to join the Department of Justice’s Fraud Division and other agreements down the line to make sure that we can remove information silos so that we can have and sing off the same sheet of music when it comes to the data that exists out there, so that we can more quickly illuminate the fraudsters in Ohio and then bring them to justice.

Cooke: Well, thank you. It’s exciting that Ohio’s the first and shining example, but I have to share with you that people in Ohio are deeply frustrated because fraud has been rampant for decades. Why do you think it’s taken so long, and what can we do to make sure we expedite these processes?

McDonald: Yeah, fighting fraud requires resolve and focus and leadership. And I’m grateful on the federal side, under President [Donald] Trump, Vice President [JD] Vance, Acting Attorney General [Todd] Blanche. Those three men are laser-focused on solving this problem for the American people.

And so, I would say that is the biggest sea change, leadership, and the leaders in the room saying, “We’re not going to tolerate this anymore. We’re going to actually do something about it, and we’re going to put our money where our mouth is, which is we’re going to put resources behind this work so that we actually have a broad enough fraud-fighting apparatus to engage with the fraudsters so that we’re not outnumbered.”

So, we’re in that process right now of building out our squad, both in D.C. but more so nationally, to make sure that we have prosecutors out there in the districts, in the states where the fraud is happening so that we can bring bad actors to justice.

So, that would be my answer, leadership. And we have that leadership, steer, and desire and purpose. There’s a purpose behind what we’re doing, and that comes from the top.

Cooke: Well, I have to say there’s no doubt that the political will and desire to protect taxpayers is there by this administration.

I think the deeper concern is Ohio and then Columbus, Ohio. We have the second-largest Somali population, and out of that we have seen a robust operation of home health care fraud. We’re seeing other avenues of fraud in other programs as well.

And the silo approach in our states, and I’m seeing this across the country, where there’s no data sharing even amongst state agencies.

Like a Republican state in Ohio, we have the governor’s office here who’s refusing to give public records. So, we’ve asked for, at the Daily Signal, public records of just how much we’re spending for home health care services, not patient data, nothing confidential. And after five months, the Ohio Governor’s Office Department of Medicaid responded that they subcontracted this to a private operator and that I had to go to them to ask for those records.

What can you do at the DOJ so a taxpayer like me and millions of others across the state just have visibility into how the states are managing our money?

McDonald: Yeah. Well, it’s a very big problem on the federal side where we give over billions of dollars to states across the country, and then in many instances, we never see what happens with that money afterwards. And some states do good, some states do not do well at all with providing proper accounting for that money. So, it is a big problem.

And those information silos that you talk about, where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and the federal government is denied visibility into certain documents, we’re dealing with that in the state of Minnesota right now, and other states who are even going so far as to sue us to prevent us from having access to records that would probably very likely demonstrate fraud.

And you kind of have to ask, why would someone be trying to keep records from us to help us illuminate the fraudulent actors? It is a question I think everyone should pose.

So, what we plan to do, we mentioned this morning at the roundtable, is we are building out a prosecutor-led national fraud detection center, which breaks down those information silos and brings together data from federal agencies and also state partners so that we can bring that data together to see and identify the fraudsters who are defrauding multiple programs at the same time in many instances.

And this has never been done before, to have that cross-program visibility.

We’re going to build that. We’re in the process right now of doing that so that we can identify the very small percentage of people who rip off the United States time and time again. This will give us the ability to put a microscope on those people, and they won’t be able to hide because the data talks and it talks loudly.

And when we get everybody to give it to us and we can look at it, we are going to be able to unmask those fraudulent actors.

Cooke: Will taxpayers have access to this data once you’re able to create it nationwide?

McDonald: So, the fraud detection center will be prosecution-focused.

Cooke: So …

McDonald: It will fall in line with the standard protocols for the treatment and collection of criminal evidence. And so in that regard, no. But in the other sense, what we are trying to do is build out a robust platform for messaging to the American people.

What are we finding and who are we prosecuting?

And also, being able to use what we’re learning to go to the policymakers and share that with the policymakers to say, “Hey, these are the flaws in the system. This is how you need to do better with your security protocols to make sure that the money doesn’t go out the door in the first place.”

Because that’s better for everybody if there are systems in place that can prevent the money and capture the fraudster before they have consummated the fraud.

So, we will be as transparent as possible within the confines of what the federal rules of criminal procedure allow for us to be.

But also, we do plan to tell the American people how they are being ripped off, because the more they know, the more the public will support all the work that we’re doing and will ensure that no one can remain on the sidelines, that everyone will join the team because they’ll see that they need to get in the game.

Cooke: Well, that’s incredible because one of the big things you highlighted is not only transparency but deterrence, so that the bad guys out there know that you’re watching and that you’re exposing it, so they are less likely to commit fraud.

One of the best parts about the conference that you just led, the roundtable, was your drive to say there should be fewer prosecutions in years to come because deterrence is working. Can you comment a little bit more on that?

McDonald: Yes. The best case for a country, for a state, for a society, is in the end you have demonstrated the power of the prosecutor to be able to reach those who are committing crime.

And when you demonstrate that, if there is a crime, there is a consequence, that you will reap what you sow, and you demonstrate that the prosecutor apparatus is large enough to reach you, then people don’t commit crimes. They think twice. They realize, “I shouldn’t lie. I shouldn’t cheat. I shouldn’t steal.” Very basic things.

But where you do not have that apparatus built out, people think they can get away with it.

So, you have a lot of fraudsters who have, for many years, been enjoying the darkness and being able to steal from the American people in the dark, no visibility, and funding their very lavish lifestyles. So, they do not feel the concern that a prosecutor might be knocking on their door, or a federal agent might be knocking on their door at 6 a.m. the next morning. That’s what I want to change.

I want to change that whole dynamic such that if you’re a fraudster and you go to bed tonight, you are worried that you are going to get a knock on your door at six o’clock tomorrow morning. And if you make it to 6:30 tomorrow morning, you should say a prayer because you’ve got another day. But guess what? You’ve got to go to bed that night worried about six o’clock the next morning. That’s what I want. I want fraudsters worried about six o’clock in the morning.

Cooke: Well, I congratulate the drive and the implementation. Ohio’s the first state. What’s your message to other states about getting on board so we have a 50-state solution to fraud? And the most important part of this is, if there’s reluctance, what do you say to those states?

McDonald: I would say leave the reluctance behind. Get on board the fraud-fighting team. We have room for everyone. Our division that we’ve created is the National Fraud Enforcement Division, and we chose that word purposefully, which is that the fraud is national.

And we’ve announced in the last 64 days or so over 550 major fraud takedowns, arrests, convictions, and sentences across the entirety of the United States of America. So, we are moving quickly to build out our fraud-fighting apparatus.

We invite everyone to join us, as you’ve seen today with different members of the Ohio coalition agreeing to join us and come alongside us. That’s what we want. If we come together, we can solve this problem. If we stay in our own corners and not cooperate, it won’t work.

Cooke: Thank you so much for your leadership on this. It’s a pleasure to have you in Ohio, and I continue to see your great work across the country.

McDonald: Thank you so much.

AUTHOR

Mehek Cooke

Mehek Cooke is senior national security and legal analyst for the Daily Signal. Follow on X MehekCooke.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ohio Becomes First State to Share Business Data With Feds to Hunt Fraudsters

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump Crackdown Yields Results: Illegal Aliens Sentenced for Drugs, Guns Trafficking, SNAP Fraud

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As the Trump administration cracks down on illegal immigration, the Justice Department this week advanced cases against illegal aliens running criminal enterprises—including a gun trafficking scheme orchestrated from behind bars.

In Georgia, the Justice Department announced the 25-year sentence of a Mexican illegal immigrant who used a contraband cell phone from inside a Georgia state prison to manage a massive drug and gun trafficking conspiracy.

Servando Corona Penaloza, a Georgia state prison inmate, was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in federal prison for orchestrating the sale of more than 1,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and fentanyl and the purchase of more than 200 military-style firearms transported to Mexico for use by Mexican cartels, according to the Justice Department.

He was in prison serving a sentence for a Gwinnett County drug trafficking offense.

Fourteen other members of Corona Penaloza’s organization were convicted and sentenced, with two defendants awaiting sentencing in the coming months, according to the Justice Department.

“These defendants flooded our community with deadly drugs and used the proceeds of their drug deals to arm narco-terrorist Mexican cartels with high-powered weapons of war,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg in a public statementopens in a new tab.

The Georgia case was part of a larger Homeland Security Task Force initiative established by President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion, signed on the first day of his second term. The task force is a whole-of-government partnership charged with eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad.

“As a result of the exceptional and dedicated work by our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners under the auspices of Atlanta’s Homeland Security Task Force, there are no more drugs coming in—or firearms going out—at Corona Penaloza’s direction,” Hertzberg said.

U.S. District Judge Mark H. Cohen sentenced Penaloza, 38, to 25 years in prison—at least 15 years of which will be served consecutively to his 30-year state prison sentence. This will be followed by 10 years of supervised release, according to the Justice Department.

In March 2024, federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives identified numerous cash purchases of M249S firearms in the Atlanta area. These are military-style weapons with a retail cost of $10,000 to $12,000 per unit, according to the Justice Department.

Concurrently, the Drug Enforcement Administration learned that Penaloza brokered large-scale cocaine and methamphetamine transactions and coordinated the importation and distribution of hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl and thousands of kilograms of methamphetamine on behalf of a large Mexican drug cartel.

The DEA probe found that Penaloza coordinated the drug and firearm sales by using a contraband cell phone while serving a 30-year state prison sentence.

During the investigation, the ATF determined Penaloza and his conspirators organized the purchase and trafficking of at least 223 guns to Mexico valued at more than $700,000. Most of these guns were purchased with cash obtained through the drug sales.

In November, Penaloza pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic firearms, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine, and conspiracy to engage in concealment money laundering.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, two illegal immigrants from Romania pleaded guilty to running a food stamp fraud conspiracy with others.

The Justice Department worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the case brought against two Romanian illegal immigrants, Aramis Manolea, 35, and Cristina Manolea, 35, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The two have the same last name, but DOJ information and local news reporting on the case do not indicate how they are related.

The stolen benefits were valued at $27,000, according to the Justice Department.

From April 2025 through November 2025, the two conspired to use stolen Electronic Benefit Transfer account information, or EBT accounts, and PINs to fraudulently buy items eligible through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, according to the Justice Department.

The goods were loaded into vans and trucks for shipment to California, according to the Justice Department.

In November, a federal grand jury in Portland indicted the two on 26 counts related to conspiracy to defraud the United States, unauthorized use of access devices, possession, production, and trafficking of device-making equipment, and aggravated identity theft.

Although they have not yet been sentenced, the two face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Both agreed to pay restitution and will be sentenced in late May.

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is senior investigative reporter for the Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

DOJ Report Reveals Biden Admin.’s Expansive Religious Liberty Violations and Hostility to American Christians

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The presidency of Joe Biden was a dark, though relatively brief, chapter in American history, replete with widespread prosecution and persecution of American Christians. President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to establish a federal task force to investigate and eradicate the anti-Christian bias evinced and enacted by the Biden administration, and has delivered on that promise. On Thursday morning, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published a 209-page report entitled, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias within the Federal Government,” detailing not only the numerous abuses of the Biden administration but also the remedies put in place by the Trump administration.

“Our Nation’s origin and system of government bear the imprint of a Christian worldview and ethic, even as its laws protect religious pluralism. Christian beliefs, in conjunction with contemporary political thought and economic realities, influenced colonial settlers in their decision to overthrow tyranny and pursue independence,” the report’s introduction states. “After the Revolutionary War, Christians then informed the structure and contents of the United States Constitution, its amendments, and contemporaneous state constitutions.”

“But, when Christian beliefs about morality and human nature conflicted with the Biden Administration’s views, religious rights often suffered,” the report’s introduction continues. “The Biden Administration generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held but zealously pursued actions to limit Christians’ ability to act in accordance with their faith. This affected matters of deep personal importance to nearly every American: life, family, marriage, and self-identity,” it continues. “The Biden Administration’s policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview and burdened traditional religious practices. These conflicts frequently arose over abortion, gender ideology, and sexual orientation. Ultimately, the Biden Administration penalized Christians who lived in accordance with their beliefs.”

The report details 14 “key findings” regarding the Biden administration’s abuse of power and violation of religious liberties, ranging from a two-tiered justice system and aggressive prosecution of pro-life activists to the coercive violation of conscience rights and the rabid promotion of LGBT ideology. The taskforce also identifies several “remedies” that the Trump administration has enacted to ensure that the federal government is not weaponized against American Christians.

“No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, chair of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, in a statement. He said that the Biden administration’s actions “devastated the lives of many Christian Americans,” adding, “That devastation ended with President Trump. The Department of Justice will continue to expose bad actors who targeted Christians and work tirelessly to restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith.”

During an appearance on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Camille Varone further emphasized that the report was “a whole of government effort,” noting that “the task force has 17 cabinet level members and other agency heads. But there were other agencies who were hearing about the work we were doing and were excited to participate. And so the report has findings from far more than just the task force members.”

Below are the report’s key findings and the Trump administration’s proposed actions to eradicate anti-Christian bias from the federal government.

FACE Act Weaponization

The DOJ previously published a report tracking how the Biden administration used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to aggressively target pro-life Americans, while largely ignoring the law’s provisions protecting pro-life pregnancy resource centers and houses of worship. The new report characterizes the Biden administration’s DOJ as “an enforcement arm” for the abortion industry.

Over the course of Biden’s tenure in the White House, his DOJ “routinely” collaborated with pro-abortion non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — chiefly the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood, and the Feminist Majority Foundation — to prosecute pro-life Americans. The Biden DOJ would regularly request information from the abortion agencies relating to pro-life protests, prayer vigils, and other pro-life activities. In several cases, the Biden DOJ would even launch prosecutions at the request of pro-abortion NGOs, all while “mostly disregard[ing] pro-life groups.”

Varone also observed that “non-governmental organizations could poke around on the internet in ways that the department couldn’t. There were so many different documents that we found from the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood compiling dossiers where they were monitoring pro-life Americans — collecting information about their travel, their whereabouts, their social media posts, including posting of Bible verses. There were even information about the cars that they drove and photos of some of their children. And they compiled all of this to give it to the Department of Justice, to the people who were charged with prosecuting under the FACE Act in case something might happen [that the DOJ] may view as a potential crime.”

The Biden DOJ also withheld evidence requested by defense attorneys for pro-lifers and regularly pursued harsher penalties for pro-lifers than for pro-abortion activists. “The Biden DOJ pursued significantly higher sentences (near the top range of sentencing guidelines) for pro-life defendants, while pursuing more lenient sentences against the handful of pro-abortion defendants that it charged,” the report notes. On average, the Biden DOJ requested an average sentence of 26.8 months for the 21 pro-life defendants it successfully prosecuted, while requesting an average sentence of only 12.3 months for the six pro-abortion defendants it prosecuted. The most stringent sentence was handed to Lauren Handy, who was sentenced to 58 months (nearly five years) in prison. The Biden DOJ originally requested that she be sentenced to 78 months (six-and-a-half years).

Upon taking office last year, Trump pardoned the pro-life activists targeted by the Biden administration and directed his DOJ to dismiss “with prejudice” three civil lawsuits against pro-life defendants. The Trump DOJ also issued a directive ordering that prosecutors “may only bring FACE Act civil actions and prosecutions in extraordinary circumstances or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors.”

Targeting Traditionalist Catholics

In 2023, it was revealed that the Biden administration’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) illegally targeted American Catholics devoted to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the liturgy celebrated prior to the Second Vatican Council, and even spied on traditionalist Catholic parishes. The FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office drafted a memo labeling “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and detailing plans to infiltrate and spy on traditionalist Catholic parishes. While the Trump DOJ notes that the FBI’s Weaponization Working Group will release a more in-depth report “detailing the day-to-day weaponization of the Richmond Field Office against conservative, practicing Catholics on the basis of guilt-by-association because one career criminal attended a local Catholic church,” the DOJ’s report provides an “overview” of the discrimination.

Citing the recently-indicted Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Richmond field office labeled traditionalist Catholics as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and began crafting its memo, which was originally intended to be circulated nationwide across the agency. The arrest of career criminal Xavier Louis Lopez for possession of weapons including Molotov cocktails, improvised napalm, and hollow-point bullets provided an opportunity for the Richmond FBI to target a Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) parish with which Lopez was affiliated. Although Our Lady of Fatima parish in Richmond “played no role whatsoever in Lopez’s acquisition or possession of the destructive devices,” the FBI interviewed the pastor, Father James Hewko, who asked to speak with the parish’s legal representation before speaking to the FBI about Lopez. The FBI subsequently monitored both Hewko and his uncle, in addition to interviewing and monitoring others associated with the parish.

Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, has vowed that this “weaponization and politicization of law enforcement” will never be “allowed to happen again.” The FBI’s Weaponization Working Group will disclose further details.

Targeting Concerned Parents

In 2021, as parents across the country were voicing their discontent with radical LGBT policies at local school board meetings, Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, issued a DOJ-wide memo alleging that parents who protest at local school board meetings should be treated as potentially violent domestic extremists. Garland recommended forming a DOJ task force to explore the use of domestic terrorism statutes against parents and “recommended that United States Attorney’s Offices and FBI Field Offices coordinate with local law enforcement and school districts, and that the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center assist by directing credible threats to appropriate law enforcement partners.”

Although some within the DOJ warned that the actions of parents at school board meetings were almost certainly protected under the First Amendment and, even when parents did take action that constituted crimes, those crimes were often not federal offenses. “Those concerns did not win the day,” the Trump DOJ’s report notes. Garland revised his memo, but still urged the Biden DOJ to target concerned parents, who were characterized as “threats” to school boards. The Biden DOJ “quickly acted to follow through.” While the Biden DOJ’s criminal division was “skeptical,” Garland and his team forged ahead with plans to prosecute parents who protested at school board meetings via “possible application of color of law provisions that criminalize conduct that interfere with those participating in programs receiving federal financial assistance.”

Investigation of Christian Charities

Under Biden, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) weaponized the Johnson Amendment against Christian nonprofit organizations. The Johnson Amendment is a U.S. tax code provision prohibiting most nonprofit organizations from endorsing or explicitly opposing political candidates. Biden’s IRS, the Trump DOJ’s report explains, used the Johnson Amendment to target “Christian churches and non-profit institutions, particularly those who espoused traditional Christian views that could be construed with a political valence, scrutinizing their statements for violations.”

The Biden IRS seemingly singled out churches and nonprofit organizations that were characterized as supportive of Republican candidates and conservative issues, while failing to apply the Johnson Amendment to churches and nonprofit organizations aligned or affiliated with Democrats, even those that explicitly supported Democratic candidates or politicians. The investigations were not limited to the speech of pastors, but sought wide-ranging information on the finances and operations of targeted churches and nonprofit organizations. “The Biden IRS’s pattern of enforcement,” the Trump DOJ’s report says, “raised serious concerns about the IRS attempting to regulate what certain pastors could say from the pulpit and chilled the speech of many other clergy.”

The Trump administration’s Treasury Department has subsequently revised its standards for application of the Johnson Amendment, clarifying that houses of worship can communicate to their congregations regarding moral and political matters in accord with their respective teachings without falling afoul of the Johnson Amendment. “Bona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services,” neither “participate” nor “intervene” in political campaigns, “any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates.”

Fining Christian Universities

The Biden administration’s Department of Education levied hefty fines against Christian colleges and universities, while largely failing to pursue similar penalties against secular, non-religious institutions for similar regulatory violations. According to the Trump DOJ’s report, the “average fine against a Christian school was $815,000, compared to $228,571 against public and private institutions.” The two largest fines levied against Christian universities were against Grand Canyon University ($37.7 million) and Liberty university ($14 million).

The fines against Liberty University were for supposed violations of the Clery Act, which provides the public with information regarding a university’s safety. The Trump DOJ’s report notes that the fines against Grand Canyon University and Liberty University “dwarfed the fines levied against Pennsylvania State University ($2.4 million) for 11 Clery Act violations involving the school’s failure to report sex offenses relating to its assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s serial child molestation, and against Michigan State University ($4.5 million) for its failure to disclose sex offenses committed by Larry Nassar, a team physician who sexually assaulted hundreds of athletes.”

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Education has not only dismissed its case against Grand Canyon University, but rescinded its fine and has “also committed to no longer disproportionately targeting Christian colleges and universities and to affirming the rights of Christian colleges and universities to act in accordance with their faith-based identity.”

Conscience Violations

In numerous cases, the Biden administration also failed or refused to prosecute federal conscience violation cases, allowing institutions to coerce Christians into violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or penalizing them for adhering to their Christian morals. In one example, the Biden DOJ dropped a lawsuit against the University of Vermont Medical Center for compelling Christian employees to participate in committing abortions.

“This case is emblematic of the Biden Administration’s approach to conscience enforcement: When the scope of federal protections was legally contested, the Administration generally chose the interpretation least protective of religious objectors and resolved active enforcement matters through administrative means, if possible, rather than litigation,” the Trump DOJ’s report comments. “Government inaction of this kind is an especially damaging source of anti-Christian bias precisely because it is difficult to see and harder to remedy.”

Anti-Christian Policy

The Biden administration’s anti-Christian bias was not relegated to enforcement actions, but also to policy choices. The administration supported the “Equality Act,” which would have “fully eliminate[d] statutory religious protections for Christians and other religions that hold traditional social values” by barring, without exemption, “discrimination” on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity in areas such as public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Although numerous academics and religious leaders warned that the legislation would amount to a significant infringement on First Amendment rights, the Biden administration forcefully supported the legislation in Congress.

“Although the Biden Administration was ultimately unsuccessful in its push to enact the Equality Act, it sought to implement the same policy goals wherever possible through executive actions, guidance memoranda, and rulemakings,” the Trump DOJ’s report announced. The administration’s “overbroad” application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County targeted Christians and Christian organizations for their biblical worldview on biological sex and human sexuality, while Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) worked overtime to entrench transgender ideology in the federal bureaucracy and classify gender transition procedures as necessary and life-saving medicine.

Biden’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) “dismissed sincerely held religious beliefs regarding sexual orientation and gender identity as ‘discrimination in hiring … cloaked as religious practice,’” while the Department of Education likewise shifted its non-discrimination policies to promote and hide gender transition procedures for children. The Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor, and Agriculture all similarly revised their guidance on key statutes and legal precedents, such as Bostock and Titles VII, IX, and X of the Civil Rights Act, to shield progressive agenda items.

In many cases, when Christians and other professionals or professional organizations suggested, based on empirical evidence and research, that gender transition procedures (especially for children) may not be harmless or beneficial, the Biden administration and its agencies often sidelined or outright silenced those voices, or ignored them. For example, when the British government published the extensive Cass Review, detailing the significant dangers posed by exposing minors to gender transition procedures and ultimately terminating the British government’s support for the practice, the Biden administration “maintained that the report did not alter their support for minors’ access to sex-rejecting procedures and medical intervention.”

The Biden administration’s policy decisions also encouraged state and local governments to bar Christian couples from participating in foster programs, claiming that the couples’ sincerely held religious beliefs on biological sex or human sexuality would pose a threat to children who identify as transgender or homosexual. Other actions targeted talk-based Christian therapy designed to assist those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction and even attempted to bar Christians from practicing therapy in many areas.

Numerous executive actions were also taken by the Biden administration to proliferate the practice of abortion, even after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Biden administration actions attempted to skirt federal statutes barring taxpayer funding from being used for abortions and directly used federal agencies to facilitate abortions. The Biden administration regularly replaced departmental faith offices with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and repeatedly sidelined Christians and Christian organizations.

Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for example, hosted 59 meetings and roundtables with non-Christian faith-based organizations to discuss potential terrorist threats and safety. The Biden DHS hosted only two such meetings with Christian organizations. The Trump DOJ referred to Family Research Council’s report on increasing hostility against Christians to note that the “disparity is notable given that Christians comprise an estimated 62 percent of the U.S. population and have faced increased hostility and violence in recent years.”

Other Biden administration actions that targeted Christians included adverse employment actions, such as eliminating religious discrimination safeguards in the EEOC and issuing blanket denials of religious exemption requests, particularly those related to COVID-19 restrictions and mandates. According to a survey of federal employees, nearly one third (30.1%) were denied pay based on their religious objections to COVID-19 mandates, while others were denied travel, reassigned, lost their security clearances, or were formally reprimanded. Nearly one fifth (18.3%) reported having been removed from their posts and nearly 12% said that they were fired.

What’s Next?

While the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias will continue its work through 2027, it has already begun working to eradicate anti-Christian bias from the federal government. Pursuant to the taskforce’s recommendations, most federal agencies have opened and operate faith offices, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued memos reinforcing religious liberties, and the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued guidance on religious liberty protections afforded by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, in addition to other actions taken by federal agencies. The task force will publish further remedial actions taken in its 2027 report.

Religious liberty advocates have thanked the Trump administration for its efforts to tackle the issue of anti-Christian bias and the weaponization of the federal government against Americans of faith, but have warned that there is still much work to be done. “This is a very good report on the pervasive anti-Christian bias under the Biden administration; capturing many of the domestic religious liberty concerns we have noticed in recent years, especially on marriage, family, sexuality, and life issues — as well as hostility against Christianity in general,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a statement. He noted that hostility towards Christians skyrocketed under Biden’s tenure, including violent attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers and Christian churches. “Yet, as this DOJ report shows, the Biden administration did very little in response and instead weaponized its resources to target Christians including imprisoning grandmothers praying outside of abortion centers.”

“This report does raise questions about what comes next. And what happens the next time a radical progressive like President Biden comes to power? We must ensure this targeting never happens again under any future administration,” Perkins asserted. “We must ensure that the bedrock of American society and culture is placed on a firm footing in which freedom is respected for everyone. What better time to do this than our nation’s 250th birthday? Religious freedom is seldom handed to the passive; it is claimed by those who exercise it even when a hostile culture says they may not.”

“Now is the time to take this insight and put in safeguards at the federal, state, and local levels that will prevent future Democrat administrations from hollowing out the First Amendment, making it difficult for them to pervert America,” Perkins continued. “Ultimately, the preventative prescription to anti-Christian bias from our own government is Christians sharing the gospel and living out their faith in a God honoring way. While we should press on the government to act justly, it’s up to the church to change the culture that has given rise to this anti-Christian bias.”

During “Washington Watch” Thursday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Varone indicated that the DOJ is currently investigating whether leftist NGOs violated the law in their dealings with the Biden administration. “At minimum, it would violate best practices,” she noted. “And so we’d start with that. There are concerns that some of the conduct here may have gone further. I can’t get into specifics because DOJ handles all of its internal personnel and investigations privately. But as the report mentions, appropriate referrals have been made.”

Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at FRC, said in comments to The Washington Stand, “With this report, President Trump and his administration have issued an important corrective to the anti-Christian bias that was tolerated, advanced, and/or enabled for too long by the Biden administration. Yet we must not stop here, but rather must determine next steps and consider how this hostility manifests in our culture and the local communities on which our country is knit together.” He added, “For America to flourish in the long-term, we must move beyond the political ‘see-saw’ we are currently on and regain that ‘common ground’ of national consensus on which freedom rests.”

“We must remember that what the Trump administration is responding to politically is — more deeply — a cultural and spiritual issue,” Weber observed. “We are often ‘responding’ to bias and hostility. Instead, we need to think proactively about how to shift our culture back toward a respect for freedom and faith — and the role that both play in society, for the benefit of ALL members of society. As the Trump administration considers what to do with the findings detailed in this report, Christians in America also need to be asking ourselves the same question: ‘What’s our next step?’”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Receipts of Deceit: Indictment Exposes Corrupt Motives of Southern Poverty Lie Center

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There’s more than one layer to the 11-count indictment for wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering that a federal grand jury issued Tuesday against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Underneath the political drama lies a simpler, more biblical interpretation to unearth. In essence, the SPLC lies, and it has used its lies to enrich itself at the expense of both innocent third parties and the country as a whole.

Political thespians will choose to read the situation in terms of political drama alone. Here is yet another episode in the second Trump administration’s campaign of political retribution. The twist is, this time the Trump administration’s target is an unsympathetic adversary who richly deserves every spoonful of calumny heaped upon it. Let the spigots’ unsolicited opinions spew forth!

If we only manage to hold our heads above the torrent of outrage sloshing odorously through the airwaves, then we shall be so much filthier but none the wiser. Let us then salvage what facts we can and extricate them from the flood of political opinion, that we may better examine them in the purer light of God’s Word.

“The story here is that the SPLC, which bills itself as an organization aimed at rooting out racism, was actually secretly bankrolling major figures in racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist (i.e., Nazi) Party of America, and a member of the leadership group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin summarized concisely.

“The indictment details just shy of $2 million in transfers to those figures over the past twelve years,” McLaughlin added. “Given the small and marginal nature of these groups, the obvious conclusion is that the SPLC found that demand for racism outstripped the supply, so it had to spread cash around to keep talking up these fringe groups.” Furthermore, “this wasn’t just a matter of paying the small fish in these groups to rat out the big ones. The SPLC was allegedly bankrolling the leaders.”

Thus, while the SPLC was “holding itself out to be promoting justice,” said Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “what they were really doing was deceiving the American people, deceiving their donors, and deceiving financial institutions, all to promote … fake racism throughout the country.”

Two facts offer the clearest evidence that the SPLC realized what they were doing was wrong. First, they funneled payments to their “informants” through shell corporations that existed only on paper. Second, when caught, SPLC’s Interim President and CEO Brian Fair announced, “We no longer work with paid informants.”

Of course, no conservative with previous experience of the SPLC’s malevolence was surprised by the revelation that an organization that habitually smears mainstream conservative organizations as hate groups is willing to lie.

Where the indictment broke new ground was in exposing the unseen double-face of the SPLC — with one half condemning “hate” while the other half bankrolled it. “For years, the SPLC has used its platform to label and target organizations with whom it disagrees, often blurring the line between legitimate concern and ideological attack,” exclaimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “That kind of reckless characterization doesn’t just damage reputations, it has put lives at risk.” In 2012, a gunman inspired by the SPLC “hate map” opened fire at FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., an incident for which the SPLC has never apologized nor been held accountable.

Thus, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) spoke for most when she said on “Washington Watch,” “I have known for a long time that SPLC was a fraud, but I never had the understanding that they were the ones that were creating their own straw men so that they could knock them down.”

Those are the facts. Now, before we catch cholera, let us haul them out of the political muck to assess these actions in the clarifying light of God’s Word.

The question that presents itself to our minds most forcefully is: why would anyone do something like this? The Bible’s book of wisdom offers an answer: “Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart” (Proverbs 26:24). However, this only leads to further questions. How is hatred connected to deceit? And, if the SPLC harbored hatred, who was the object?

Perkins attempted to answer those questions by describing how the SPLC has changed from being a civil rights organization targeting racists to a left-wing organization targeting conservatives. “They were creating these groups and propping them up so that they could raise more money — but there seems to be more to that,” Perkins suggested. “They were raising these groups up, elevating them, making the threat look great, and then taking conservative organizations and putting them alongside them. And then the corporate America actually took this labeling that the Southern Poverty Law Center had and began to deplatform, ‘cancel,’ other conservative organizations.”

Thus, by presenting a false front as an “anti-hate” group, the SPLC managed to harmfully smear the groups it hated — anyone who dared to stand for conservative principles. The irony is too apparent to miss: the organization that popularized the “hate” label also harbored what they condemned.

What were the consequences of the SPLC’s lies? Once again, Proverbs provides an answer, “deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil” (Proverbs 12:20). It’s hard to describe what the SPLC did as anything other than “devising evil.” Even the SPLC publicly condemned the fringe extremist organizations whose leaders they secretly bankrolled.

This duplicitous behavior was “predatory,” said Singh. “They were actually propping all this up by paying these sources to go out and incite racial acts, all while holding themselves out to be the arbiter of who is right and wrong in the public speech space.”

For the SPLC to hold itself out as a moral arbiter, despite the corruption it knew within, suggests that it suffered from delusions of invincibility, like the wicked oppressor in Psalm 10. “As for all his foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, ‘I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.’ His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under his tongue are mischief and iniquity” (Psalm 10:5-7).

From within this delusion of invincibility, the SPLC plotted to fraudulently destroy its political opponents. “Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit” (Psalm 52:2).

Sadly, the SPLC’s deceitful schemes caused harm not only to its political opponents but to the nation as a whole. “They have done such lasting and horrific damage to race relations,” Hageman exclaimed. “They have torn us asunder with false allegations of racism and hatred and danger.”

It’s too early to say what might result from the federal indictment — what new evidence may emerge, what charges may be added or dropped. But it is clear that the SPLC’s public credibility has suffered a major blow from the exposure of its cynical fundraising ploys.

Such eventual accountability for the SPLC tastes like yet another proverb, “Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel” (Proverbs 20:17). The reason is that, ultimately, the true arbiter of right and wrong, truth and falsehood holds court not in any human jurisdiction but in heaven. To the ultimate Judge, David prayed, “You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man” (Psalm 5:6).

However, not everyone has learned the same lessons from the SPLC’s exposure. Those who prefer to float in the bilge water of politics never gain the perspective necessary to compare its practice to biblical wisdom. As a result, “I’m seeing organizations out there still defending this group,” said Hageman, when “everybody should be running from SPLC right now.”

As just one media example, USA Today claimed that the SPLC was only employing informants in “a tactic federal agencies have used for decades.” But “it wasn’t somebody who was an informant [in an extremist group]; it was people leading it,” Perkins countered. “Many of these organizations have been dead, and [the SPLC] resurrected them with their funds.”

For such indefensible behavior, the SPLC now must publicly answer.

This moment provides relief for those who found themselves innocent targets of the SPLC’s malicious hate. These unfairly smeared groups can now declare, “Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes, and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause. For they do not speak peace, but against those who are quiet in the land they devise words of deceit” (Psalm 35:19-20).

Perhaps human justice will hold the SPLC accountable. In any event, God certainly will.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DOJ Review of Voter Rolls Uncovers Alarming Names—and It’s Only the Beginning

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The Justice Department is finding thousands of noncitizens and dead people on voter rolls as it pursues more state election records, said Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, in an interview.

“We’re finding tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls, hundreds of thousands of dead people on the voter rolls, and duplicate registrations between states,” Dhillon said on “Just the News, No Noise.”

Dhillon based her claim on a review of only 16 Republican-leaning states, such as Florida and Texas, that voluntarily complied with the Justice Department’s request for the election records.

The administration is suing 29 states for the records, seeking to ensure that states are complying with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Those laws require states to update their voter registration lists and ensure they are free of names of dead people, or people who no longer reside in jurisdictions where they are registered to vote.

This comes in light of several prosecutions of noncitizens for illegal voting.

This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI announced the arrest of Mahady Sacko, an illegal alien from Mauritania, for voter fraud in Philadelphia. ICE asserted he had been illegally voting in the United States since 2008.

Sacko entered the U.S. near Miami, and an immigration judge ordered him removed. Sacko exhausted all appeals, and the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld his removal on Nov. 14, 2002—over two decades ago.

In December, Joe Ceballos resigned as mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, after being arrested for voting multiple times, though he was not a citizen. The Department of Homeland Security announced removal proceedings but Ceballos, a legal permanent resident from Mexico, voted in multiple elections, according to the agency, and faced state charges.

The lawsuits contend the Justice Department has the authority to request and review election records under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The DOJ has sued both red and blue states. Most recently, the Justice Department sued Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the Democrat-leaning New Jersey.

The Justice Department has also sued major Democrat-leaning states, such as California and New York, for voter rolls, as well as battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia.

“It’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job,” Dhillon said.

The Justice Department could have a tough road ahead, noted J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group that has sued states for information on “dirty voter rolls.”

Adams is a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“It’s decades-old news,” Adams told The Daily Signal of dead voters and noncitizens on voter lists. “Good luck doing anything about it.”

He noted that in cases by the foundation, both the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled states can’t be compelled to clean up voter rolls if they are already making an effort. The Supreme Court declined to hear the cases.

“It’s one thing to get data, it’s another thing to enforce cleaning up the rolls,” Adams said.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to The Daily Signal by publication time to provide more details about the number of ineligible voters found on the voter lists so far.

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Fred on X: .

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White House Creates DOJ Anti-Fraud Task Force to Protect Taxpayer Dollars

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Decades of lax immigration policy have resulted in widespread welfare fraud in the U.S., robbing taxpayers of billions of dollars, but President Donald Trump is equipping the Justice Department to target abuse and protect Americans’ investments in state and federal programs. Vice President J.D. Vance announced Thursday that the White House is creating a new role in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), an assistant attorney general (AAG) responsible for investigating and prosecuting fraud across the country, answering directly to the president and vice president.

“We are creating a new assistant attorney general position who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud,” Vance shared in a press conference. “That person’s efforts will start and focus primarily in Minnesota, but it is going to be a nationwide effort, because, unfortunately, the American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.”

“If you’re a young parent struggling to afford child care in the United States of America, there are programs that we have to make it easier for your kids to get in day care, for your kids to get in preschool,” Vance explained. “Those programs should go to American citizens, not be defrauded by Somali immigrants and others, making it hard for you to get the access to the resources you need,” he continued.

Minnesota’s large Somali immigrant community has become the focal point for fraud investigations in recent months, but the vice president noted that bad actors across the nation have defrauded the federal government and various state governments of billions of dollars through abuse of welfare programs. “We know that the fraud isn’t just happening in Minneapolis. It’s also happening in states like Ohio, it’s happening in states like California.”

In a recent example, Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.) sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warning of potential fraud affecting child care and nutrition programs in his state. “Washington families deserve to know their tax dollars are paying for real meals and real care, not padding the pockets of scammers,” Baumgartner wrote.

“Minnesota is a cautionary tale for every state: when state authorities fast-track welfare payments with weak front-end controls and lax enforcement, fraudsters will pounce,” he continued. The congressman clarified that he is not alleging wrongdoing on the part of Washington’s state government, but is seeking “independent confirmation that Washington’s safeguards are working, and if they are not, fix the problems now rather than after a headline-grabbing scandal.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, former federal prosecutor Joe Teirab, who was involved in prosecuting the Feeding Our Future fraud cases in Minnesota, lauded the creation of a new fraud division as “a great idea.” He added, “It’s sad that it’s necessary, but I applaud President Trump and his administration for coming up with that idea.” He continued, “It’s really a shame that hard-earned taxpayer money was just wasted on these fraudsters who just spent millions and millions of dollars to support their lavish lifestyles and took money that was meant to go to feed hungry kids and support people finding housing and such.”

“The fraud in Minnesota was widespread. It was a deep rot. It is a deep rot,” Teirab observed, relying on his four years of experience as an assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota. “The checks and balances in these programs didn’t work. They were designed to be based on the honor system, and a lot of folks had no virtue and so [they] just stole money. It has to stop, so it’s good that there’s now this new anti-fraud unit,” he continued.

Teirab pointed to the Feeding Our Future case as an example of the rampant fraud committed in Minnesota. “That was the big investigation and prosecution of — now it’s over 70 individuals who stole money from the federal child nutrition program, basically said that they were feeding kids, and it was all a lie. They stole over $250 million,” he recounted. “Now we know that was really just the tip of the iceberg. Now, there [are] all other kinds of fraud that the federal government has charged individuals for.”

A White House fact sheet released Thursday detailed the purpose and responsibilities of the DOJ’s new anti-fraud division. “To combat the rampant and pervasive problem of fraud in the United States, the DOJ’s new division for national fraud enforcement will enforce the Federal criminal and civil laws against fraud targeting Federal government programs, Federally funded benefits, businesses, nonprofits, and private citizens nationwide,” the White House clarified. “The Assistant Attorney General for this new division will be responsible for leading the Department’s efforts to investigate, prosecute, and remedy fraud affecting the Federal government, Federally funded programs, and private citizens.”

The anti-fraud AAG will be responsible for managing multi-district and multi-district fraud investigations, aiding other federal prosecutors with fraud cases, and working with multiple law enforcement agencies and federal entities “to identify, disrupt, and dismantle organized and sophisticated fraud schemes across jurisdictions.”

“They’re going to investigate fraud where it should be investigated. So you’re going to have wrongdoers being held accountable and, hopefully, taxpayer money going back into public coffers. That’s a good thing,” Teirab commented of the anti-fraud division’s responsibilities. He also noted that the resources available to the anti-fraud division will effectively supercharge fraud investigations and prosecutions nationwide. “This is way more ability for the federal government to investigate and prosecute widespread fraud and other kinds of crimes,” Teirab noted. “I was a state prosecutor for a while and then a federal prosecutor, and there’s just a big difference in the amount of resources that you can bring to bear in these investigations and prosecutions. So you’re going to deter crime and fraud.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and state Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) have both been implicated in the Somali immigrant-run fraud schemes fleecing Minnesota’s welfare programs and federal tax dollars. Numerous reports and witnesses have charged Walz and other Minnesota Democrats with knowingly and willingly turning a blind eye to fraud, refusing to investigate or prosecute fraud, and even silencing and threatening whistleblowers, auditors, and investigators.

Teirab expressed his hope that the federal anti-fraud unit is “going to incentivize state actors to get off their butts and actually do something to stop fraud.” He continued, “So now Tim Walz and Keith Ellison, instead of sitting on their hands, they might have a little bit more of an incentive, hopefully politically and literally, to actually do something if they know that the federal government might come in and make them look bad for not getting the job done.” Teirab added, “That’s clearly what’s happened here. I mean, they don’t look good because they didn’t do a good job.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Obama DEA Official Indicted For Laundering Money For Mexican Drug Cartel

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The Department of Justice announced that a former top Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) official who retired near the end of the Obama administration has been indicted on multiple charges, including conspiracy to engage in narcoterrorism, money laundering and conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole and United States Attorney Jay Clayton of the Southern District of New York revealed the indictment of Paul Campo in a Friday evening release, saying he agreed to help the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) launder $12 million in proceeds from drug trafficking. The DOJ said that Campo, who served as Deputy Chief of the Office of Financial Operations at the DEA, also advised CJNG on acquiring drones and assault rifles after Robert Sensi — an associate of Campo — put him in touch with a representative of the cartel.

“The alleged conduct occurred after he left DEA and was unrelated to his official duties here, but any former agent who chooses to engage in criminal activity dishonors the men and women who serve with integrity and undermines the public’s confidence in law enforcement,” Cole said in the release regarding Campo. “We will not look the other way simply because someone once wore this badge. There is no tolerance and no excuse for this kind of betrayal.”

Upon taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to address illegal immigration and border security, including designating the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 and Mexican drug cartels, including CJNG, as foreign terrorist organizations. According to the indictment, the person Campo and Sensi believed was a representative of CJNG was actually a confidential source working at the direction of law enforcement.

The indictment alleges that Campo and Sensi met with the CJNG representative to advise them on laundering the funds through cryptocurrency purchases, real estate investments, pre-paid gift cards and assisted in three transactions involving $750,000. The indictment states that Campo and Sensi believed that the third and final transaction would trigger a shipment of about $5 million worth of cocaine, and that they would receive a portion of the proceeds.

“By participating in this scheme, Campo betrayed the mission he was entrusted with pursuing for his 25-year career with the DEA,” Clayton said. “CJNG is a violent and corrupting criminal enterprise that New Yorkers want broken. I commend the extraordinary efforts of the DEA in aggressively pursuing CJNG and those who support their deadly and corrupt efforts, no matter who they may be.”

If convicted, Campo and Sensi could face up to life in prison, according to the DOJ release.

AUTHOR

Harold Hutchison

Media Reporter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

No Surprise in ‘Arctic Frost’ Scandal, as Every Dem President in 21st Century Has Weaponized the Government

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Cries of “Worse than Watergate” quickly followed Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley’s (R-Iowa) revelation from a whistleblower within the FBI that eight Republican senators and a House GOPer had been illegally spied upon during the Biden administration’s failed prosecutions of then-former President Donald Trump.

Grassley called Arctic Frost “arguably worse than Watergate” during his opening remarks at an October 6 committee hearing, a cry that was quickly echoed by multiple GOP senators. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the emerging scandal during the hearing, and Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) warned that the FBI targets may well be “suing the hell out of the Department of Justice and the individuals involved.”

Subsequent investigation and revelations may indeed confirm that Arctic Frost was an even more profoundly serious constitutional violation than the Watergate scandal in which President Richard Nixon and members of his inner circle sought to cover up their knowledge of a “third-rate burglary” of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 election campaign.

But when viewed in a wider context, Arctic Frost should not come as a surprise to anybody for the simple reason that every Democratic president during the 21st century — including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — has weaponized tax and law enforcement resources of the federal government against Republicans, conservatives, and Christians.

During the Clinton era (1993-2001), the White House staff produced a 331-page report in 1995 entitled “The Communication Streams of Conspiracy Commerce” that argued multiple conservative political figures, think tanks, and media outlets were all part of a conspiracy to discredit the president. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton famously described the groups as “a vast right-wing conspiracy.”

In the months after the report became public, multiple conservative groups, including most notably the Heritage Foundation think tank and Citizens Against Government Waste, found themselves being subjected to intense tax audits by the IRS. When no complaints about similar IRS audits were heard from liberal groups, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation convened an investigation that led to passage by Congress in 1998 of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act to prevent such abuses.

Barack Obama was the next Democrat elected to the Oval Office in 2008 and then re-elected in 2012. His administration also used the IRS against groups perceived to be political enemies, but rather than harassing audits, the tax agency found multiple ways to slow-walk tax-exemption applications submitted by conservative, Tea Party, and evangelical Christian groups.

The IRS effort was centered in its Cincinnati regional office, but direction came from the tax agency’s headquarters in the nation’s capital from then-IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner. The scandal prompted multiple congressional hearings, and Lerner was found in contempt of Congress.

Then-House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) explained that “the Oversight Committee upheld its obligation to pursue the truth about the IRS targeting of Americans because of their political beliefs. Our investigation has found that former IRS Exempt Organizations division Director Lois Lerner played a central role in the targeting scandal and then failed to meet her legal obligations to answer questions after she waived her right not to testify.”

Lerner’s criminal contempt citation was upheld by the full House of Representatives and referred to the Department of Justice, which opted not to take Lerner to court in the matter.

Another Obama-era example of weaponization of government against perceived opposition could generate renewed attention as a result of Arctic Frost because it involved CIA agents breaking into the computer system of the Senate Intelligence Committee and spying on committee staffers.

Then-CIA Director John Brennan apologized to the committee after initially insisting no such illegal activities had taken place because doing so would be “beyond reason.” Senator Diane Feinstein, the California Democrat who chaired the intel panel, told the Senate after receiving Brennan’s apology that “the investigation confirmed what I said on the Senate floor in March — CIA personnel inappropriately searched Senate Intelligence Committee computers in violation of an agreement we had reached, and, I believe, in violation of the constitutional separation of powers.”

Not long after the Senate intel controversy, Brennan was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s manufacturing of false intelligence reports designed to discredit Trump after he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The false reports claimed Trump was elected in part with assistance from President Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence assets.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a July 23 news release:

“The ODNI records released on Friday, Senator Chuck Grassley’s release on Monday of the appendix to the DOJ OIG’s June 2018 report known as the ‘Clinton annex,’ and the HPSCI oversight report released today confirm a treasonous conspiracy led by President Obama and his national security team, including James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey, to manipulate and manufacture intelligence that promoted a contrived false narrative falsely claiming: ‘Putin aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances, when possible, by discrediting Secretary Clinton.’

“President Obama directed the creation of this January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment after President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and it served as the basis for what was essentially a years-long coup against the duly elected President of the United States, subverting the will of the American people and attempting to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency.”

A federal grand jury recently indicted Comey on two charges, one of lying to Congress and the other of obstructing a congressional investigation into matters related to the Trump-Russia allegations.

Obama was followed in 2020 by his former vice president, Joe Biden, whose four years in the Oval Office were marred by scandal after scandal in which the Department of Justice, the FBI, intelligence agencies, and other departments of government were turned against individuals and groups perceived by White House officials as opponents.

Those included multiple Republican and conservative organizations, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, prosecutions of Catholic pro-life demonstrators for praying in front of abortion facilities, investigations of parents protesting “woke” educational policies at public school board meetings, and the multiple prosecutions of Trump, including the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, compound in which agents conspicuously went through Melania Trump’s underwear drawer in search of classified documents that weren’t there.

Now that Trump is back in the White House, Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) repeatedly blast the 47th president, as in this recent statement claiming “he has turned this judicial system to be his own political fighter, do what he wants politically, so that he tells them to go after people he doesn’t like, he tells them to exonerate people that he likes.”

Such assertions by Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, the academic and corporate communities about Trump “weaponizing” the Department of Justice by investigating Arctic Frost should be viewed in the context of this background of politicized actions by every Democratic president of the 21st century.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Top 10 Donors of Va. AG Candidate Jay Jones Won’t Say If They Want Their $5.2 Million Back

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ex-FBI Director James Comey Indicted on Federal Charges

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Former FBI Director James Comey, a key player in the “Russian collusion” hoax, has been indicted on federal charges. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed late Thursday that a federal grand jury has indicted Comey on one charge of obstructing a congressional investigation into the leaking of sensitive or classified information and one charge of lying to Congress while under oath. According to the DOJ, Comey authorized then-deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe to leak information to the press related to manufactured allegations that then-president-elect Donald Trump had benefitted from illegal election interference on the part of Russia. Comey allegedly lied when asked about the event by Congress.

“No one is above the law,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” she added. Current FBI Director Kash Patel observed, “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust.” He continued, “Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account — no matter their perch.”

“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social, in response to news of the indictment. “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI. Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts,” the president said. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”

In an Instagram video responding to the indictment, Comey claimed that he was being unfairly targeted by the Trump administration. “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t, either,” Comey said, standing in front of a wall and speaking directly into the camera. Referring to the president as a “tyrant,” he continued, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial.”

The judge assigned to Comey’s case is Michael Nachmanoff of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Nachmanoff was appointed to the judiciary by former president Joe Biden on the recommendation of Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the latter of whom was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s running mate against Trump in the 2016 election, which resulted in the “Russian collusion hoax.”

Kaine himself said in a statement, “I’ve had my differences with James Comey in the past, but I can spot trumped-up charges a mile away.” He continued to allege that Trump is targeting political opponents. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) followed suit. “Trump ordered this prosecution. I’m sure he ordered it behind closed doors, but he also ordered it right there on Truth Social,” Klobuchar said in an interview Thursday night. “He is literally weaponizing the Justice Department,” the senator quipped.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), a rising star in the Democratic Party, warned Republicans not to support the Comey prosecution. “I want the American people to know that when you stand up to a bully, you win. Do not back down. Do not bend. You allow them to go and wage their threats,” Crockett said. “If everybody starts to bend, for sure, what is left of our democracy will be gone. And unfortunately, that is exactly what [Trump] wants. And even more sadly is that many of his followers agree with this,” the congresswoman added. “If he decides that he wants to continue down this path, I think that they’re going to continue to lose. I don’t see the former FBI director saying that he is going to just go ahead and enter into a plea deal, or he’s just going to take this lying down.”

Last month, the DOJ launched a grand jury investigation into the “Russian collusion” hoax and its origins, following the declassification and publication of numerous documents by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard. Those documents revealed that Comey was a key player in orchestrating and disseminating the falsified narrative that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election in an effort to install a compromised Trump in the White House. Other key players include then-President Barack Obama, then-DNI James Clapper, and then-CIA Director James Brennan.

The statute of limitations to bring federal charges against Comey was set to expire on Tuesday. His arraignment has been scheduled for October 6.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE:

Former FBI Director Comey Indicted

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DOJ Officials Brainstorming Ways to Restrict Access to Firearms for Trans-Identifying People

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Officials inside the U.S. Department of Justice have convened several internal meetings about how to limit access to firearms for people who identify as transgender, according to multiple sources. But any policy formulated from these meetings would raise multiple concerns.

The meetings, first reported by the Daily Wire, have now been confirmed by more than half a dozen news outlets across the political spectrum. “Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” a DOJ spokesperson confirmed to Fox News, but “no specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time.”

The meetings follow a mass shooting by a transgender-identified man at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. That tragedy adds to a string of high-profile mass shootings by mentally troubled, transgender-identifying people. Mass shootings by transgender-identified perpetrators are infrequent but disproportionately high.

Current federal law does not prevent all people with a mental illness from owning a firearm. However, the current Firearms Transaction Record (ATF Form 4473) does ask prospective gun purchasers, “Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?”

For some DOJ officials, the move is instinctual. “Democrats have called for common sense gun laws for a long time,” one DOJ source blabbed. “This seems pretty common sense to me.” Some righ-twing activists have also encouraged the move. Last week, Charlie Kirk posted on X, “If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.”

Naturally, the news has drawn criticism too. “This precedent being used against trans people could be used against veterans with PTSD. It’s a slippery slope to make anyone lose their 2nd amendment rights,” complained Alejandra Caraballo, a prominent trans activist with a post at Harvard Law School. Human Rights Campaign Communications Director Laurel Powell made a similar point, “The Constitution isn’t a privilege reserved for the few; it guarantees basic rights to all. Transgender people … deserve the full protection of our nation’s laws, not anti-American nonsense from the White House.”

DOJ officials should beware playing into the narrative of transgender activists. By noodling a way to deprive people who identify as transgender — and only them — of the ability to keep firearms, the Justice Department leaves itself open to charges of discrimination. Not every transgender-identified person is a potential mass shooter, and activist lawyers would quickly enlist a sympathetic case. Activist lawyers may cite even these preliminary discussions as evidence of discriminatory intent in unrelated cases.

A second concern is the constitutional issues at play. Far more than other cultural flashpoints, firearms possession is explicitly protected under the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Left-wing lawyers could easily argue that any policy preventing transgender-identifying Americans from owning firearms violates this constitutional right, not to mention the equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Third, even if the DOJ set aside the merits of the inevitable legal challenges that would result, it is questionable whether any policy designed to keep transgender-identified people from possessing firearms would even accomplish its intended effect — namely, to prevent mass shootings, particularly school shootings. The argument here is identical to the argument against all gun control. Somehow, criminals who want to have guns still manage to get guns, even if they have to do it illegally. After all, if they plan to kill people, why would they care about breaking a law to obtain a deadly weapon?

The fourth problem is arguably the thorniest for any policy the DOJ might devise: how would the class of affected individuals be defined? The category is nebulous, with some people identifying as transgender (or “gender-diverse”) yet making minimal efforts to modify their body, dress, or behavior. The category can also be unstable with some people changing their gender identity based on how they feel on a given day. Thus, it’s difficult to precisely define the class at all — either for activist lawyers seeking to win judicial protections, or activist executive officials seeking to impose exclusionary policies.

It’s likely that some participants in the DOJ meetings wisely recognized at least some of these same concerns. On nearly every issue, the second Trump administration has acted rapidly, even to a fault. Yet here, after several meetings, the DOJ only states that “no specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time.”

Time will tell whether it stays that way. But for now, it seems like a prudent choice for the DOJ to hold meetings on the topic before rushing out an ill-conceived policy. “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety (Proverbs 11:14).

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: A History of Trans Mass Murderers

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Immigration, Deportation, and ‘Sanctuary’ City Updates

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Despite numerous political and even legal hurdles, President Donald Trump and his administration are working hard to deliver on the promise of a secure border and the deportation of illegal immigrants. Here are some of the latest updates surrounding the president’s immigration agenda.

National Guard Tackles Deportation Paperwork

The president has already federalized the National Guard to assist in immigration-related operations in several instances, but now he’s asking National Guardsmen to help fill out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paperwork. According to several reports, thousands of National Guard troops will be deployed across at least 20 states and stationed at ICE facilities. Initially, Guardsmen will be tasked with “alien processing,” filling out detention and deportation paperwork so that ICE agents can continue their field operations.

The National Guard troops will not be federalized but will be operating under Title 32 authorities, which allows for Guardsmen to perform law enforcement duties as long as they are under state — not federal — command. At present, U.S. Marines and Naval Reserve soldiers are assisting ICE in an operational capacity, but they will soon be replaced by the National Guard.

Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told The Washington Stand, “The fact that ICE needs to supplement its ranks with the help of the National Guard to speed up deportations shows: (1) millions of deportable aliens continue to reside in the U.S.; and (2) the deportation process is too slow.” She added, “Americans continue to support mass deportations, but the Left obstructs and delays deportations for political power.” Ries continued, “In addition to prosecuting those who interfere with the execution of federal law, the Justice Department should streamline the deportation process to end third and more bites at the apple that deportable aliens currently get to remain in the country.”

Dissident Maryland Judges Claim Immunity

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against all 15 U.S. district court judges for the District of Maryland back in June. At issue is a “standing order” from the judges, automatically granting an injunction to any illegal immigrant detained within the court’s jurisdiction who files a habeas corpus complaint. In short, the standing order temporarily bars the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from carrying out any deportation.

Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) said in comments shared with TWS, “It’s certainly unusual for DOJ to sue judges, let alone all of the judges on a court, and sue them in that same court, but then these are not your usual standing orders, either.” He observed that the DOJ first brought its concerns to the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body which oversees the federal courts, but Maryland’s district judges made it clear that they would not rescind their standing order. Arthur observed, “If any court issued automatic stay orders like the ones in the U.S. District Court in Maryland, it would have been incumbent on DOJ to challenge them, regardless of who was in the White House.”

In response to the Trump administration’s lawsuit, Maryland’s federal judges claimed immunity. “The district court itself possesses sovereign immunity, and the judges and clerk of court have immunity for their official acts,” the judges wrote. They added, “The complaint does not identify any statutory waiver — unequivocal or otherwise — of district courts’ sovereign immunity from suits seeking injunctive or declaratory relief, and Defendants are not aware of one.” The judges argued that “when a plaintiff attacks the official acts of members of the Judiciary in a standalone lawsuit, judges generally have absolute immunity.” They concluded, “Sovereign immunity bars this suit as to the district court itself, and judicial immunity bars it as to the judges and clerk in their official capacities.”

The DOJ, however, argued that neither sovereign nor judicial immunity would prevent a challenge against an unlawful standing order. “Unlike issuing rulings in particular cases, promulgating standing orders and local rules that violate procedural and substantive requirements is not a ‘function’ traditionally protected by judicial immunity. Thus, courts have often ruled on challenges to local rules with nary a peep about immunity,” the DOJ countered. Furthermore, sovereign immunity does not apply, the DOJ noted, in cases where judges have “acted beyond the scope of their powers and/or in an unconstitutional manner.” The DOJ said that its “lawsuit asserts that Defendants acted outside the scope of their authority — here, the scope as delineated both by Congress and by the Federal Rules. … Immunity does not apply.”

Since the judges of the Maryland district have had to recuse themselves from the case, being defendants, the case is being overseen by Judge Thomas Cullen of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, a Trump appointee, who was assigned by Albert Diaz, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Biden-Appointed Judge Halts Deportations

One of the first moves the Trump administration made was shutting down the parole program used by former President Joe Biden and his administration to usher hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into the country. The program allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol (USBP) to arrest foreigners attempting the enter the U.S. illegally but, instead of detaining them or removing them, simply “parole” them into the U.S. to await an appointment in immigration court. Trump’s DHS ended the program and moved to deport those who had been “paroled” into the country.

On Friday, Judge Jia Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a Biden appointee, issued a “stay of agency action,” barring the Trump administration from deporting many of those paroled into the country by the Biden administration. Cobb wrote that illegal immigrants “arrived for inspection at the United States border pursuant to procedures created and advocated by the U.S. Government. They were paroled into this country under those procedures and given the chance to prove their claims for asylum or other relief authorized by our laws. In a world of bad options, they played by the rules.” She continued, “Now, the Government has not only closed off those pathways for new arrivals but changed the game for parolees already here, restricting their ability to seek immigration relief and subjecting them to summary removal despite statutory law prohibiting the Executive Branch from doing so.”

The Trump administration has already requested a stay of Cobb’s order and has appealed her decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “The Court’s order effectively prevents the Government from applying expedited removal to potentially hundreds of thousands of paroled arriving aliens, thereby halting its ability to expeditiously remove aliens who have no basis to remain in the country,” the administration argued. It further argued that Cobb’s order is in violation of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. CASA barring district courts from issuing universal injunctions. “Indeed, in Trump v. CASA … the Supreme Court held that this sort of intrusion on the Executive Branch’s enforcement policies establishes irreparable harm. Finally, CASA also means that the Court’s nationwide remedy is impermissibly broad and instead the remedy should be tailored to Plaintiffs’ members.”

Overstaying Visas Now Costs $15,000

The U.S. State Department implemented a new pilot program on Tuesday, requiring a $15,000 bond for most tourism and work visas, in an effort to curb illegal overstaying. “Aliens applying for visas as temporary visitors for business or pleasure (B-1/B-2) and who are nationals of countries identified by the Department as having high visa overstay rates, where screening and vetting information is deemed deficient … may be subject to the pilot program,” the State Department’s announcement said.

Early in June, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a travel ban impacting countries identified as high terror and crime risks, but also barring travel from countries noted for high visa overstay rates.

DOJ Puts ‘Sanctuary’ Cities on Notice

On Tuesday, the DOJ published a list of nearly three dozen “sanctuary” cities, counties, and states that shield illegal immigrants from federal authorities and refuse to enforce immigration law. “Sanctuary” states named include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Cities, counties, and other jurisdictions include Albuquerque, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, Baltimore County in Maryland, Cook County in Illinois, and San Diego and San Francisco Counties in California, among others.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement, “Sanctuary policies impede law enforcement and put American citizens at risk by design.” She continued, “The Department of Justice will continue bringing litigation against sanctuary jurisdictions and work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to eradicate these harmful policies around the country.” Already, the DOJ has filed lawsuits against the three largest U.S. cities, all of which are “sanctuary” cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Watchdog Sues State Department to Force Release of Docs on Van Hollen El Salvador Junket to Aid MS-13er

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Judicial Watch is asking a federal court to order the U.S. Department of State to turn over all official documents concerning Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen’s (Md.) recent trip to El Salvador to aid deported illegal immigrant and accused MS-13 gang member and human trafficker Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the nonprofit government watchdog told the court that on April 22, 2025, it filed a request with the State Department for “any and all records concerning, regarding, or relating to the April 2025 visit to El Salvador by Senator Chris Van Hollen. This request includes, but is not limited to, all related agendas, briefing materials, and records of communications.”

The State Department acknowledged receiving the Judicial Watch FOIA request and assigning it a processing number. In a May 29, 2025 email, the government told Judicial Watch that its Van Hollen request was “In Process.” But then just four minutes after sending the “In Process” email, Judicial Watch received another email from the State Department saying its request processing was “closed.”

Judicial Watch told the court that it “has received no further communication from the State Department regarding the request” since the “closed” email.

The federal FOIA law requires federal agencies and departments to provide all official documents requested by any individual citizen or group of citizens within 20 business days, except those covered by a series of exemptions such as personal privacy, protecting commercial secrets, and national security considerations.

The law further requires officials to explain to a requester which documents it opted to withhold and why each of those documents was covered by an exemption. If a particular requested document cannot be found or is thought to have been lost or destroyed, officials are also required to provide an explanation for such circumstances.

To date, the State Department has not explained why it closed the Judicial Watch request without providing any documents or a required explanation for its actions.

In its suit, Judicial Watch asked the court to “(1) order Defendant to search for any and all records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request and demonstrate that it employed search methods reasonably likely to lead to the discovery of records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request; (2) order Defendant to produce, by a date certain, any and all nonexempt records responsive to Plaintiff’s request and a Vaughn index of any responsive records withheld under claim of exemption; (3) enjoin Defendant from continuing to withhold any and all non-exempt records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request; [and] (4) grant Plaintiff an award of attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred in this action …”

Judicial Watch has filed thousands of FOIA requests and obtained critically important documents that exposed waste, fraud, prevarication, coverups, and criminal wrongdoing in countless federal government scandals since the nonprofit’s founding in 1994.

Van Hollen’s April 17 trip to El Salvador was paid for with taxpayer dollars. The day before the senator departed for the Latin American country to which Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials had deported Garcia, federal immigration officials released documentation that Garcia was associated with MS-13, one of the most violent and murderous of the many Latin and South American criminal gangs.

Garcia has since been returned to America where he is being held pending further litigation in his case in a federal prison in Tennessee.

The Judicial Watch suit seeking to force the State Department to release the Garcia documents comes as something of a surprise since that agency has an above-average record for responding promptly to simple FOIA requests, according to data maintained by foia.gov.

On average, the State Department responds as required by the FOIA law within 15.49 days of receiving a request judged not to be complex or to require a time-consuming and costly search for older documents that may be difficult to locate in official archives. But the department’s record is much worse when requests are considered complex, requiring an average of 564 days.

The Washington Stand recently reported, based on official data compiled by Open the Books, that many federal agencies and departments are guilty of taking hundreds more days than required by the FOIA law to respond to requesters.

Government-wide, the average response time for simple requests of 836 days was compiled by the Commerce Department’s Office of the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs. The second-longest wait time among federal departments and agencies was 811 by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Enterprise Integration.

Third among the longest wait times was the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) at 367 days. The fourth-longest average wait was registered by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board at 360 days, followed in fifth by the Executive Office of the President in the White House at 350 days.

The five federal agencies with the fastest average turnaround time in responding to simple FOIA requests include the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at one day, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1.69 days, followed by the Job Corps, the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) at two days. The average response time for all federal departments and agencies for complex requests was 267 days.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

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Judicial Watch Sues State Dept for Records on Sen. Van Hollen’s Visit to Deported Illegal Alien in El Salvador

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Johnson: Dems Had These Files for Years and Never Mentioned the Word ‘Epstein’

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Nobody likes putting in overtime, but in Congress — a body allergic to five-day work weeks — the idea of sticking around for any amount of time is cause for a quiet mutiny. In the Senate, the possibility of extra hours in August holds an extra sting, since the House decided to beat it out of town early to escape the heat of the Epstein files. Some GOP senators are especially peeved, griping anonymously to reporters about the injustice of the situation. Others coped by claiming superiority over the other chamber. “The high school usually goes a lot longer than the elementary school,” an unnamed Republican taunted.

Look, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) wanted people to know, the backlog of work on the other side of the Capitol is significant. “There’s a stack of House bills that are waiting over there, so if they start moving them, we’ll come back and give them some more to do,” he promised. It’s also the unfortunate reality of the Senate, since it’s the body tasked with moving Donald Trump’s nominees. And as far as the president is concerned, there needs to be more moving, less vacationing.

“Hopefully the very talented John Thune, fresh off our many victories over the past two weeks and, indeed, 6 months, will cancel August recess (and long weekends!), in order to get my incredible nominees confirmed,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We need them badly!!!”

Of course, part of the reason for the GOP’s current predicament is the Democrats’ stonewalling. “Trump’s the first president in history that hasn’t had a [nomination] adopted by this point in his presidency,” Thune explained, “either by unanimous consent or voice. Not a single one.” He added, “Trying to get his team in place is something that we’re very committed to, and we’re going to be looking at all the options in the next few weeks to try and get as many of those across the finish line as we can.”

As The Washington Times highlights, most of the president’s picks have been stalled because Democrats haven’t returned blue slips signing off on Trump’s picks. Under Senate tradition, the committees won’t move a nominee unless both home state senators send back the blue slip of approval. But in recent years, the once-routine formality has become a weapon in the hands of the minority party, used to gum-up the process and stymie the other side. Not to mention, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R) shakes his head, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s party is “filibustering like every single nominee.”

But that approach also has its downsides, Republicans warned. “I guess if they want to be here for all of August and grind this out,” Hawley shrugged, “we can do it that way, but it’s going to get pretty painful here pretty soon.”

To the grumblers in his caucus who think it’s unfair to let the House go and keep the Senate in session, Thune could only say, “We’re in the human resources business. They’re not. … It is what it is. You’ve got different rules,” he noted. “It’s easier to get things done [in the House]. You can do stuff with simple majorities.” That said, he continued, “[I]t’s also hard to get things done, especially when you have narrow margins. I have an appreciation for what they’re dealing with over there,” he said. “We got our work to do here, and we’re going to stay focused.”

Johnson, meanwhile, has his own fires to put out. He may not be in regular session, but the Louisiana leader is definitely putting in plenty of time in Epstein damage control. As for his decision to shoo House leaders out the door early for August, the speaker blames the Left. “Democrats did their dead-level best to quite literally shut down the operation of Congress because they found a wedge issue. … [W]e’ve had the most productive first six months of arguably any Congress, any administration in the history of the United States. … Meanwhile,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “[Democrats are] suddenly trying to manufacture something … with the so-called Epstein files.”

But, the speaker underscored, “Remember, the Biden Department of Justice had all of these files in their possession for the previous four years. Not one time did [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) or Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), or Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), or any of the Democrats who have made so much noise over the last two weeks — not one time in the last four years did they mention the word ‘Epstein’ at all.”

The hypocrisy, Perkins agreed, “is over the top with Democrats.” For literally months, Johnson reiterated, “It’s nowhere in their social media and their interviews or anything. And now, suddenly, it’s the most important thing in the world. We’re not buying it, and I’m not going to allow them to drag Congress into this,” he vowed.

And their audacity surprises even Johnson. “… [Democrats are] trying to claim that this is some sort of cover-up. Remember, each of them [was] involved in orchestrating what was the largest political cover-up and political scandal in the history of the United States — and was covering up for the rapid mental decline of the previous occupant of the White House, when Joe Biden was no longer fit to serve.” He shook his head. “And they went out and tried to convince us of the opposite — [which is] very, very dangerous stuff. They need to answer for that. And there needs to be a lot of accountability all the way around. And House Republicans are the ones urging that and pushing it along with every tool in our arsenal.”

In the meantime, if they’re trying to accuse Trump of hiding something, they’re wrong. The president “has said himself he wants full release of all credible evidence,” the speaker pointed out. Even so, “he wants to also be very careful about protecting people who have already suffered in this, the people who are the victims of the Epstein evils. And that’s a very delicate and important thing to do,” the speaker reiterated. “You’ve got to make sure you redact the names of minors who were subjected to this, and so that process is underway.”

Regardless, Johnson assured everyone, “… We want the full weight of the system of justice [and] the full weight of the law to be brought down upon the heads of anyone who is involved in any way [with] the evils that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and the rest were involved in.” But as that situation unfolds, the speaker cautioned, it’s not exactly helpful for members to grind work to a halt. “[All Democrats do] is to complain about that and not address the policy matters that we’re delivering on.”

At least one member of Jeffries’s caucus seems to get it, telling Axios that the issue may be an “opportunity to throw some red meat” to the “insatiable” grassroots base, but, he warned, “We have to be careful not to get led around by the nose by feeding the beast every hour. At the end of the day, we have to be for something.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Tulsi Gabbard Gives the Deep State the Boot

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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard referred two intelligence officials to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution over their alleged leaks of classified information Wednesday.

The two officials reportedly leaked top-secret military information to The Washington Post and The New York Times, purportedly to hamper President Donald Trump’s foreign policy and stir up public opinion for their own partisan political gain.

“Politicization of our intelligence and leaking classified information puts our nation’s security at risk and must end,” Gabbard told Fox News, noting that a third criminal referral is on its way. “Those who leak classified information will be found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

This isn’t the first time Gabbard has cracked down on intelligence community leakers. In March, she announced her department’s intention to aggressively pursue such activity and gave examples of how leakers recently shared classified info ranging from American intel on Israel and Iran to the U.S.’s relationship with Russia with left-wing media allies such as The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and NBC.

At the time, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton (R) praised Gabbard for working to end “the weaponization of the intelligence community.”

Yet the weaponization of the intelligence community against the Trump administration is far from over. Gabbard’s recent criminal referrals for two intelligence leakers come as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces a slew of coordinated media attacks meant to slander his reputation and give him the boot at the Pentagon — all thanks to partisan intel officials leaking to their allies in the press. For example, The New York Times recently tried to resurrect “Signal-gate” by alleging Hegseth sent classified info via Signal to his wife and other personal contacts. NPR joined the psyop, by reporting that an unnamed “U.S. official” told the outlet the Trump administration is now looking for a new Defense secretary (the White House immediately repudiated the claim). Notably, both “scoops” rely entirely on anonymous sources for their articles (NPR’s “story” relies on only one anonymous source).

These anonymous sources are the partisan operatives within the intelligence community Gabbard hopes to root out. Because they are diametrically opposed to Hegseth and the threat he poses to both the military industrial complex and pointless foreign conflicts, as well as the PC-ification of the military, they regularly leak to their ideologically-aligned allies in the press and jeopardize the integrity and cohesion of Trump’s intelligence agencies.

“Leaking is always designed to damage a specific target and promote a narrative,” Chris Gacek, senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The Deep State cannot be given free shots on goal. It appears Gabbard realizes this, and she is taking action.”

The Trump administration has learned its lesson from its first term, where leaks abounded and intelligence officials and federal employees — both overwhelmingly Democratic Party-affiliated — tried thwarting President Trump’s agenda at every turn, many times through coordinated media attacks made possible by anonymous leakers.

But this time around, it’s different. “We are aggressively investigating other leaks and will pursue further criminal referrals as warranted,” a Gabbard official told Fox News. “Any intelligence community bureaucrat who is considering leaking to the media should take this as a warning.”

AUTHOR

Victoria Marshall

Victoria Marshall is a news reporter for FRC’s Washington Watch and is a contributor to The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washignton Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Leftist Attacks on Tesla Are ‘Domestic Terrorism’: DOJ

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Progressive Marxism reduces down to two basic instincts: 1) rich businessmen are evil, and 2) government is god (rich politicians, therefore, get a pass). So, it’s no surprise that progressive Marxists were outraged when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, got an inside pass to knock the waste, fraud, and abuse out of government agencies like a bull in a china shop.

Unfortunately, the response by these progressive Marxists was no less surprising. Alarmed at the utterly fascistic powers wielded by a man with no official office, these courageous freedom fighters resorted to every democracy’s tool of choice — the Molotov cocktail.

But these misled radicals had to confront a glaring, strategic contradiction: the American people had placed the institutions they most revered in the hands of the people they most despised. Attacking the American government is no way to save the American government. Therefore, they had to target Musk some other way. Blessed with all the strategic foresight and aim of a Stormtrooper, they chose to assault private property and businesses instead — in particular, anything carrying the “T” for Tesla, Musk’s most successful company.

Yes, as strange as it sounds, for the past month leftist radicals have turned America’s top electric-car company into a totem for Nazism. This has given them a mental excuse to treat Teslas with all the disgust normally felt for a sworn enemy. All over the country, the built-in cameras on Teslas have recorded random passers-by doing everything from subtly keying the hated car’s door to smearing feces on it.

Such malicious, irrational behavior is almost a performative, religious act, for an insecure progressive to prove (at least to him or herself) that he or she is a good citizen — a mandatory requirement for those who believe government is god. The acts seem like a bizarre, voluntary form of fumie, the 17th century Japanese practice whereby people were forced to step on an image of Jesus Christ to prove they were not Christians.

The sudden animosity towards Tesla from its erstwhile customer base has seriously hurt the business, whose shares have fallen 35% this month and 42% this year (the company also issued a major recall last week). Even Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), a recent candidate for vice president of the United States, was induced to mock the brand online, “If you need a boost during the day, check out Tesla stock.”

But the catty turned catastrophic when several individuals chose to escalate the violence to arson attacks. In Salem, Ore., a man armed with an AR-15 rifle threw approximately eight Molotov cocktails into a Tesla dealership. In Loveland, Colo., another man attempted to ignite Teslas with Molotov cocktails, while in Charleston, S.C. a man turned his fiery rage against Tesla charging stations.

The Department of Justice swiftly arrested all three perpetrators and announced on Thursday that they “will face the full force of the law.” Each faces charges carrying a minimum of five years in prison, and a maximum of 20 years.

“The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,” declared U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”

Two days earlier, Bondi had warned, “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism. … We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

President Donald Trump endorsed the DOJ’s vigorous prosecution in his own statement. “Those people are going to go through a big problem when we catch them. We’ve got a lot of cameras up. We already know who some of them are. We’re going to catch them,” he said. “And they’re bad guys. They’re the same guys that screw around with our schools and universities, the same garbage.”

While the Trump administration’s approach to law enforcement is sometimes open to the charge that it is unmeasured or hasty, here Bondi and Trump are on solid ground, suggested the editors of National Review, who are by no means instinctual Trump cheerleaders.

“It was appropriate for Attorney General Pam Bondi to describe what is happening as a ‘wave of domestic terrorism,’” they wrote, “in the sense that the perpetrators are resorting to violence to achieve a political or ideological goal; they want to convince people not to buy Teslas and to do enough damage to Musk’s company that it drives him out of public life.” Non-state actors resorting to violence to achieve a political goal is the definition of terrorism.

Boycotting a store or product — as conservatives did to Target and Bud Light — is one thing. It preserves a respect for property rights, violates no laws, and puts no one’s life in danger. Actively destroying someone else’s property or business by arson is something entirely different.

It’s no surprise, then, that the column of radicals torching Teslas is the group with little ideological allegiance to private property, the rule of law, or the value of human life — or even to America itself. But, when government-worshipers confront the unwelcome reality that government is now run by their sworn enemies, their tactical options are limited. Violence is the expected result.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.