(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for details of any investigations, inquiries, or referrals concerning potential misconduct of any person working for Special Counsel Jack Smith (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-00801)).
Judicial Watch sued after the Justice Department failed to respond to two FOIA requests on December 5, 2024, sent to the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of Information Policy requesting:
Records and / or communications about any investigations, inquiries, or referrals concerning potential misconduct of any person working for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office.
The Biden Justice Department requested a clarification in January. Judicial Watch has received no other communication since.
In December 2024 it was reported that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility had opened a review into whether Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team skirted guidelines in during their investigation into President-elect Trump:
Jay Bratt, a top prosecutor on the classified documents probe, previously noted complaints from an attorney representing one of Trump’s co-defendants…. Stanley Woodward, attorney for Trump valet Walt Nauta, accused Bratt of bringing up his interest in a judicial nomination as a pressure tactic.
“Jack Smith and his team were a rogue political operation, whose only purpose was to keep Donald Trump from being elected,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “There were serious complaints about misconduct by this get-Trump DOJ operation. This new Justice Department must get on the ball and stop the secrecy about the lawfare against President Trump.”
Judicial Watch has several FOIA lawsuits related to the prosecutorial abuse targeting Trump:
In March 2025, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis was ordered to turn over 212 pages of records to a state court judge. The court also ordered Willis to detail how the records were found and the reason for withholding them from the public. The records were belatedly found in response to a Judicial Watch request and lawsuit for communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee. Previously in this case, in January 2025, the Superior Court in Fulton County, GA, issued an order granting Judicial Watch $21,578 “attorney’s fees and costs.” Judicial Watch soon thereafter received payment.
In January 2024, Judicial Watch filed lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor by Willis. Wade was hired to pursue unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes.
In January 2025, a federal court in a separate case ordered the Justice Department to provide information on communications between Smith and Willis regarding the prosecution of then-former President Donald Trump. The Justice Department had continued to object to providing any information even after its prosecutions against Trump were shut down.
In February 2024, the Justice Department asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Smith’s office that is targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.
(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Smith previously was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here.)
Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023, Judicial Watch received the engagement letter showing New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of then-former President Donald Trump.
In his book Rights and Freedoms in Peril Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton details a long chain of abuses officials and politicians have made against the American people and calls readers to battle for “the soul and survival of America.”
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