African Aid Agency Must Recover Illegally Removed Records

Judicial Watch Demands African Aid Agency Recover Removed Records
Judicial Watch Sues Justice Dept for Records on Professor’s Role in Stock Market Probe
Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Killing of ‘Most Wanted’ Terrorist
VA Reclaims L.A. Veterans’ Facility Years after Judicial Watch Exposed Issue

 

Judicial Watch Demands African Aid Agency Recover Removed Records

Government officials cannot evade federal transparency laws by conducting government business on personal email accounts. Federal law requires the preservation and recovery of all agency records. Any destruction or unlawful removal of records must be investigated and remedied immediately.

In that regard, we sent a letter to Peter Marocco of the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) demanding compliance with the Federal Records Act following whistleblower allegations that senior agency officials used personal email accounts for official government business and that agency records may have been destroyed.

Our letter details allegations that former U.S. African Development Foundation President Travis Adkins and former Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui used non-government email accounts to conduct official foundation business, including communications related to government contracts, grants, and financial transactions. We have further learned that foundation records may have been destroyed.

The letter asserts that the Adkins and Zahui emails sent through personal accounts are still government records that the agency is required to maintain and preserve. Concerning any unlawfully removed records, the letter states:

As you may be aware, the Federal Records Act imposes a direct responsibility on you as an agency head to take steps to recover any records unlawfully removed from USADF. Specifically, upon learning of “any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency,” you must notify the Archivist of the United States…. Upon learning that records have been unlawfully removed from USADF, you then are required to initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of records.

The allegations are particularly troubling in light of the recent announcement that Zahui has agreed to plead guilty to allegedly accepting gratuities from a foundation contractor and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

Should the agency fail to take these steps, the letter states that we are ready to file a lawsuit in federal district court seeking compliance:

Please advise us no later than February 27, 2026, if you intend to take the action required under the law. If we do not hear from you by that date, we will assume that you do not intend to take any action. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

We sued the agency in August 2025 for records regarding its expenditures and deposits related to credible allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse committed by senior officials, contractors, and grantees and retaliation against whistleblowers as well as its attempt to block Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audits (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. African Development Foundation (No. 1:25-cv-02623)).

In January 2026, we announced that, in a status conference hearing related to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking documents regarding corruption in the U.S. African Development Foundation, the Justice Department publicly announced an ongoing criminal investigation related to the agency. This announcement comes after years of whistleblowing by Judicial Watch clients.

In May 2015, we filed a Federal Records Act lawsuit against Secretary of State John Kerry after the State Department failed to respond to a letter notifying Kerry of the unlawful removal of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. The letter had requested that Kerry initiate enforcement action under the Federal Records Act, including working through the attorney general to recover the emails. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later ruled that the State Department had not done enough to recover all emails that Clinton had failed to return.

 

Judicial Watch Sues Justice Dept for Records on Professor’s Role in Stock Market Probe

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records concerning Columbia University law professor Joshua Mitts during the Biden Justice Department’s investigation into short selling by hedge funds (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00356)). Short selling involves borrowing shares and selling them, hoping to buy them back later at a lower price for a profit.

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond to a December 1, 2025, FOIA request for:

• All communications of or about Joshua Mitts, including joshua.mitts@gmail.com, and joshua.mitts@law.columbia.edu,

• All contracts and related correspondence involving M Analytics, including Contract 15JCRM24P00000078.

In 2020, Mitts published research titled “Short and Distort,” in which he notes that anonymous negative reporting aboutpublic companies often coincides with stock price drops followed by sharp reversals. He argues this pattern may be due to manipulative trading by the authors, and suggests they be banned.

Mitts’ research was cited in public reporting and discussion about federal probes into short selling. Short sellers pushed back strongly, arguing Mitts’ conclusions were flawed or biased due to his consulting roles.

Mitts also has a consulting practice, M Analytics LLC that describes itself as “a boutique consulting firm specializing in financial economics,” providing “testimony in high-stakes litigation and regulatory investigations.”

On January 30, 2024, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division awarded a $70,000 Time and Materials contract for expert witness services to M Analytics.

Did Joshua Mitts write the research that helped spur the Justice Department’s investigation of short selling and then start a firm that consulted on that investigation? Our lawsuit intends to find out if this was a coincidence.

 

Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Killing of ‘Most Wanted’ Terrorist

On January 25, 2015, Zulkifli bin Hir, also known as “Marwan,” reportedly was killed during a raid by the Philippine National Police Special Action Force. Forty-four members of the police’s elite Special Action Force were also killed in the assault.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records about Marwan (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-00386)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond to an April 2025 FOIA request for records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding Marwan, including documents, communications, reports, images, audio, data, and any other records—regardless of format. The request seeks records primarily from 2010 through 2017, including:

• Records concerning FBI personnel deployed to the Philippines in support of Oplan Exodus or efforts to identify Marwan;
• Communications between the FBI and the Philippine National Police, U.S. Special Operations Forces, Joint Special Operations Task Force–Philippines, the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines, and other U.S. and Philippine government entities regarding Marwan’s location, targeting, capture, or killing;
• Intelligence reports, surveillance materials, and operational summaries relating to Marwan’s movements and identification prior to the January 25, 2015, operation;
• Records regarding any FBI briefing or debriefing tied to Oplan Exodus;
• Records concerning claims for the FBI reward offered for Marwan, including communications with the U.S. State Department and Philippine government officials; and
• Records relating to 2017 public statements by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte alleging CIA and FBI involvement in the operation.

Marwan was a high-profile international terrorist on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Most Wanted List with a $5 million reward. In August 2007, he was indicted by the Justice Department for conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists:

Zulkifli Abdhir, aka “Zulkifli Bin Abdul Hir,” aka “Hulagu,” aka “Marwan,” age 41, a fugitive believed to be in the Philippines, is charged in the indictment with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists. In September 2003, the U.S. government designated Abdhir as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist pursuant to Executive Order 13224. In March 2007, the State Department added him to the most-wanted list of its Rewards for Justice program and authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest or conviction

We should have transparency regarding events surrounding this high-profile international terrorist on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. The operation that brought him down over a decade ago was a major event in Philippine and U.S. counterterrorism history. After this much time, there is no reason for secrecy.

Judicial Watch filed a previous lawsuit in June 2025 against the Justice Department for records related to the killing of Marwan (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-01991)). The lawsuit asks for records about the collection, analysis, and chain of custody of a severed left index finger alleged to belong to Marwan, as well as photographs of his body and any related identification or forensic documentation.

 

VA Reclaims L.A. Veterans’ Facility Years after Judicial Watch Exposed Issue

Some good news out of Washington for homeless veterans in California: President Trump’s administration is going to restore a piece of property originally donated to help disabled vets. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the details.

Nearly a decade after an elderly Army veteran was federally prosecuted for displaying the American flag at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (VA) to protest its failure to make full use of the vast property to benefit those who served, the facility is finally being reclaimed for its rightful purpose. Judicial Watch represented the veteran, Robert Rosebrock, back in 2017 and helped bring much-needed attention to the problem at the sprawling southern California parcel deeded to the federal government over a century ago for the specific purpose of caring for disabled military veterans. A California federal court eventually ruled that Rosebrock was not guilty of violating federal law for displaying two four-by-six-inch American flags above the fence of the West L.A. VA but little changed to help veterans in need, especially the thousands living on the streets surrounding its lush grounds.

Instead, the 338-acre West L.A. property, dedicated to the federal government in 1888 to serve disabled vets, has long been used for unrelated causes. Among them is a stadium for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) baseball team, an athletic complex for a nearby private high school, laundry facilities for a local hotel, storage and maintenance of production sets for 20th Century Fox Television, the Brentwood Theatre, soccer practice and match fields for a private girls’ soccer club, a dog park and a farmer’s market. For years Rosebrock and a group of fellow veterans assembled at the “Great Lawn Gate” that marks the entrance to the Los Angeles National Veterans Park to demand that the VA make full use of the property to benefit vets, particularly those who are homeless. The elderly vets were a thorn in the government’s side and federal authorities retaliated against them for exposing the fraudulent use of the grounds, including a scam involving a VA official who took bribes from a vendor that defrauded the agency out of millions. VA police harassed and intimidated Rosebrock and his troop—fondly known as Old Veterans Guard—at their weekly rallies and Rosebrock got criminally charged for posting a pair of four-by-six-inch American flags on the outside fence on Memorial Day in 2016. It is worth noting that Rosebrock’s absurd criminal charges were filed during the Obama administration, but the first Trump administration moved forward with the prosecution.

Even after the elderly Army vet’s federal case got resolved, the VA continued to use the L.A. VA grounds for causes unrelated to veterans. The agency threw a few crumbs during the COVID-19 pandemic by offering a fraction of homeless vets temporary housing. Several small tents were erected in the parking lot of the VA healthcare system campus to accommodate a couple dozen vets who were sleeping on the sidewalk immediately adjacent to the grounds. It was a tiny gesture that barely put a dent in the crisis and Rosebrock called it a Band-Aid considering at the time there were around 4,000 homeless veterans in the city of L.A. Judicial Watch published somber photos of decaying tarps, tents, umbrellas and an assortment of ragged items, including large piles of belongings in white plastic trash bags, suitcases, lawn chairs, bicycles and wheelchairs, covering the swale adjacent to the VA fence on Veterans Parkway. The area surrounding the VA fence perimeter depicted impoverished shanty towns in the middle of some of the city’s most upscale communities. While droves of veterans suffered right outside the VA, its resources sadly benefited others.

To right the wrong, President Trump issued an executive order in May to provide veterans with better care by, among other things, establishing a National Center for Warrior Independence at the West L.A. VA to supply care, benefits and services. “Previous administrations have failed veterans by allowing the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center—hundreds of acres in Los Angeles given to the Federal Government more than a century ago to help veterans—to fall apart,” the president’s order states, adding that parts of the property are leased to a private school, private companies, and the UCLA baseball team—sometimes at rock-bottom prices. “Los Angeles has approximately 3,000 homeless veterans—more than any other city in the country and accounting for about 10% of all homeless veterans in America,” according to the executive order. “Many of these heroes live in squalor in Los Angeles’s infamous skid row.” Finally, this month the VA announced that it is terminating “illegal and wasteful West Los Angeles” leases and licenses to clear the path for the construction of a center that will provide housing and support for up to 6,000 homeless veterans by 2028. The terminations will enable the VA to reclaim the property for its rightful purpose, the announcement confirms.

 

Until next week,

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