Exclusive: Watchdog Files Complaint Against Obama Judge At Center Of Arctic Frost Lawfare
Submitted on Monday to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), the complaint obtained by The Federalist “addresses probable judicial misconduct” by D.C. Senior District Judge Beryl Howell. The filing specifically highlights “recent reports that [Howell] consulted with members of the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) in strategizing on how to prosecute President Trump and other members of his administration, specifically the Arctic Frost investigation and prosecutions.”
As The Federalist previously reported, Arctic Frost ultimately became Special Counsel Jack Smith’s elector lawfare against Trump.
The complaint cites revelations disclosed in documents recently unearthed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and other GOP senators.
Those files appear to show Howell’s involvement in Smith and his team’s invasive efforts to acquire the phone records of Republican members of Congress and Trump-aligned figures like now-FBI Director Kash Patel.
Among the records released by Grassley and Co. were a series of January 2023 “AG Briefing” materials, which seemingly indicated plans by Smith’s team to brief Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland on their investigation. Included in these materials was a scheduled meeting with Howell.
While some of the information is redacted, the records show that the Arctic Frost investigators planned to brief the Obama appointee on the inquiry’s “pace over the last month.”
More notably, however, the materials from Smith’s team indicated that Howell “liked our approach of pursuing the executive privilege litigation in an omnibus fashion,” which effectively means “the consolidation of various motions into a single filing rather than handling each separately,” as Hans Mahncke summarized in these pages.
“Even if we assume for argument’s sake that the communications were technically permissible under grand jury administration rules, the language attributed to Howell, saying she ‘liked’ and ‘loved’ the DOJ’s approach, reveals a deeper problem,” Mahncke wrote. “Judicial impartiality does not mean having no opinions, but these opinions must be formed through the proper adversarial process. Expressing personal enthusiasm for one party’s litigation strategy is not neutral.”
The briefing materials also forecasted a scheduled meeting with D.C. District Judge James Boasberg on March 18, 2023 — the day after the anti-Trump Boasberg took over as chief judge from Howell…..
‘The Timing Is Suspicious’: Intel IG Admitted Under Oath He Changed Whistleblower Rules For Anti-Trump Ukraine Op In 2019
Former Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson admitted under oath that he personally ordered a secret rewrite of the whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 that was used as the basis for a phony impeachment operation against President Donald Trump, going so far as to admit changing the form looked “suspicious.”
Newly unveiled testimony from October of 2019 shows that Atkinson conceded the change he ordered to the whistleblower complaint form “looks suspicious” but said the timing was merely “unfortunate.”
“So the timing is unfortunate. It looks suspicious, I get that,” Atkinson testified.
Atkinson said that after several media inquiries highlighted that the then-current form required first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in order for a complaint to meet the urgency threshold to be sent to Congress, he ordered his staff to secretly change the rules so that second-hand hearsay complaints could be a legitimate basis for expedited processing.
“What I should have done was I should have explained when we changed the form why we were changing it,” he said. “I should have been more transparent about the reasons and the motivations for the change in the forms.”
The admission vindicates years of reporting by The Federalist that exposed the “suspicious” change that conveniently coincided with the first impeachment inquiry into the president — reporting that was attacked as a conspiracy theory but is now confirmed by the IG’s own testimony.
The Federalist co-founder and CEO Sean Davis reported that between May 2018 and August 2019 the intelligence community quietly got rid of the requirement that whistleblowers must have “direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing” to file an expedited complaint to Congress. The intelligence community’s “Background Information on ICWPA Process” required the ICIG to have first-hand information to find an urgent concern complaint “credible” and transmit it to Congress.
The old form – approved in May of 2018, according to Davis – explicitly warned under a bold heading that the ICIG “cannot transmit information” based on second hand-knowledge and rather, the ICIG would need “FIRST-HAND INFORMATION.”
The original form went so far as to state that whistleblowers unable to provide “nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions” would not have their complaint processed under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA).
While the underlying law does not require the complainant to have first-hand knowledge to file a complaint, the ICIG’s own guidance made clear that second-hand information alone was insufficient for the ICIG to deem a complaint credible and expedite it to Congress.
But the form was quietly changed, with a new version uploaded to the DNI website in September of 2019 that removed the entire aforementioned section, according to Davis’ reporting.
“The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed,” Davis reported. The new version permitted complaints that had only second-hand information to be processed for expedited review.
Conveniently, that form change came around the same time that the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower filed a complaint based on second-hand information that would later be used to impeach Trump.
(In a phone call with the president of Ukraine, Trump suggested investigations into political corruption that could implicate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter should continue.)…
‘Truly sick individuals’: ICE arrests convicted murderer and sexual predators
On Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents nabbed several criminal illegal aliens whom Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin described as “truly sick individuals.”
A DHS press release, obtained exclusively by Blaze News, highlighted ICE’s recent arrest of five illegal immigrants across the country who were taken into federal custody.
These individuals have been “convicted of voluntary manslaughter, lewd battery on a child, attempted statutory rape of a child, and other horrific crimes,” the press release read.
The DHS stated that nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens with prior criminal charges or convictions.
Immigration officers captured Rodolfo Sanchez, an illegal alien from Mexico who was previously convicted of voluntary manslaughter and burglary of a building in Houston, Texas.
ICE agents nabbed Jose Rivera-Orta, a 56-year-old illegal alien from Cuba who was convicted of lewd/lascivious battery on a child 12 to 15 years old in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Federal agents arrested Jacobo Pablo-Ramirez, an illegal alien from Guatemala. His rap sheet includes a conviction for attempted statutory rape of a child in Duplin County, North Carolina….
Israel marks Holocaust Memorial Day amid war; U.S. says ball in Iranian court TV7Israel News 14 Apr.
1) Israel commemorates the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
2) The Trump Administration reiterates its determination to frustrate Iran’s aspirations to attain nuclear weapons.
3) China urges the United States and Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz.
Eric Swalwell Accuser Speaks out
An accuser of Rep. Eric Swalwell spoke to the media with her attorneys in Beverly Hills, CA Tuesday. Lonna Drewes accused Swalwell of drugging and sexually assaulting her. In a statement on X, Swalwell apologized for “mistakes in judgment” he’s made in the past and said he’d fight the “serious, false allegation” made against him.
Glenn’s SCATHING Open Letter to Eric Swalwell
Rep. Eric Swalwell has resigned from Congress after suspending his California gubernatorial campaign in light of a quickly escalating scandal.
Glenn Beck reads the open letter he wrote to Swalwell reminding him of how he treated people like Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the age-old principle: “as you judge, so shall you be judged.”
JOHN SOLOMON: Today The Department Of Justice Released A Report On How The FACE Act Was Weaponized Against Pro-Life Advocates. It Was Uncovered That There Was A 2:1 DISPARITY IN SENTENCING Between Pro-Lifers And Pro-Choicers
JOHN SOLOMON: Within Three Weeks, Iran Will Be At Full Capacity, Meaning There Is Nowhere Else To Store Oil If They Can’t Get Out Of The Strait Of Hormuz! Trump Has Played The Ultimate Game Of Chicken
I Did A Deep Dive Into Our Welfare System, And It’s WORSE Than I Thought
A woman moved into a multi-million-dollar mansion she didn’t own, and the system let her stay. Even after being arrested, she came right back, exposing how broken property rights and enforcement have become.
Little Kids, Big Government: How Regulations Make Daycare Less Available and More Expensive
Many parents can’t afford day care centers.
They want a cheaper option: small, in-home day care.
What stops them?
Government rules.
“They are layering on regulations that make it impossible,” says Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Appeals court orders judge to end contempt investigation of Trump administration deportation flights
A federal judge must end his “intrusive” contempt investigation of the Trump administration for failing to comply with an order over flights carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last year, a divided appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.
Chief Judge James Boasberg abused his discretion in forging ahead with criminal contempt proceedings stemming from the March 2025 deportation flights, according to the majority opinion by a three-judge panel from U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ruling is the latest twist in a yearlong legal saga that has became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The White House has portrayed Boasberg as a biased judge who overstepped his authority.
Trump’s administration has a “clear and indisputable” right to the termination of the contempt proceedings, Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
“The legal error at the heart of these criminal contempt proceedings demonstrates why further investigation by the district court is an abuse of discretion,” Rao wrote. “Criminal contempt is available only for the violation of an order that is clear and specific. (Boasberg’s March 2025 order) did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody.”….
‘EPIC FURY’ LATEST: 10,000 US troops, 12+ warships, BLOCKADE Strait of Hormuz
Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy reports on the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warns of an ‘Iran war tax.’ Retired USMC Col. Mike Jernigan provides analysis on ‘The Faulkner Focus.’
