(WASHINGTON) — In a memo never before made public, the Presidential Personnel Office under the direction of John McEntee, a favorite aide of former President Donald Trump, made a case for firing then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper three weeks before Esper was terminated, according to reporting in a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
The contents were first reported by Karl in The Atlantic for an article adapted from his forthcoming book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”
The memo from McEntee’s office, dated Oct. 19, 2020, provides what Karl calls a remarkable window inside the thinking of the Trump White House during the final months of his presidency and the power held by the then-29-year-old director of the Presidential Personnel Office.
It includes bullet points outlining what Karl calls Esper’s “sins against Trumpism,” including that he “barred the Confederate flag” on military bases, “opposed the President’s direction to utilize American forces to put down riots,” “focused the Department on Russia,” and was “actively pushing for ‘diversity and inclusion.'”
Three weeks later on Nov. 9, 2020, Karl says, Trump fired Esper in precisely the way McEntee recommended and replaced, as recommended, by Christopher Miller. The firing also came two days after Trump lost reelection and as the former president was expected to purge top members of his administration with whom he had long been unhappy.
Obtained by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan KarlObtained by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl
Esper’s termination was made official with a terse two-sentence letter dated Nov. 9 and signed by McEntee that has also, until now, never been made public.
The Presidential Personnel Office, what Karl describes as a normally under-the-radar group responsible for the hiring and firing of the roughly 4,000 executive branch appointees, transformed into an internal police force in the final year of the Trump administration, with employees scouring for acts of dissidence in their ranks.
“Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show” is scheduled to be released on Nov. 16, 2021.
(NEW YORK) — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in an interview over the summer he “wouldn’t be surprised” if somebody who worked for him at some point sat on his lap.
“I don’t recall anyone specifically. But, you know, I have people who have worked with me 14 years, 10 years,” Cuomo said, according to a newly released transcript of a July interview with attorneys deputized by the New York Attorney General to investigate claims of sexual harassment. “If somebody were to sit on my lap, you know, I wouldn’t push them off.”
Cuomo resigned in August after a monthslong investigation by State Attorney General Letitia James found he sexually harassed 11 women, including current and former state employees.
The interview began just after 8 a.m. on July 17 in the governor’s Manhattan office. The 515-page transcript, which was released Wednesday, depicts Cuomo as standoffish from the start, sparring with attorneys Joon Kim and Anne Clark over their titles and reminding them of his potent political resume.
“I’m a former attorney general,” Cuomo reportedly said in the 11-hour interview. “I’m aware of the attorney general’s power. I’m aware of the special prosecutor power, independent investigator power.”
Cuomo was governor of New York for 10 years and previously served as the state’s attorney general. In all of that time of government service, Cuomo said he only recalled taking sexual harassment training in 2019.
“I don’t remember what years I did or didn’t take sexual harassment training,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo also told the investigators he had come to believe some of the sexual harassment accusations were the work of political opponents who “have been part of orchestrating and resonating the complaints against me.”
“That’s what you think now?” Kim asked. “That’s what I know now,” Cuomo replied.
The investigation included interviews with 165 witnesses, including several of Cuomo’s accusers, including former New York Executive Chamber employee Brittany Commisso.
According to the transcript, Commisso alleged throughout her interview that Cuomo would hug and kiss her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable and that he made “inappropriate comments about her marital status.”
“His hugs definitely got closer and tighter to the point where I knew I could feel him pushing my body against his,” she alleged.
“I definitely noticed that when he would kiss me on the cheek, I took it as OK, he is being friendly,” she said. “Then obviously when he would turn his head and get me on the lips, it startled me. It obviously wasn’t normal.”
When asked about the allegations made by Commisso, Cuomo said they were “not even feasible” because he believed that his conduct was constantly under scrutiny, including by Kim when the lawyer served as acting U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.
“You’ve investigated me for six years,” he told Kim, referring to corruption investigations conducted by federal prosecutors during Kim’s tenure. “I would have to lose my mind to do some — such a thing. It would be an act of insanity to touch a woman’s breast and make myself vulnerable to a woman for such an accusation.”
Cuomo cast Commisso as the “initiator” of any intimate conduct.
“She was very affectionate. I would say more she was the initiator of the hugs,” Cuomo said, according to the transcript. “She said that she was Italian and Italians are very affectionate people. But she was a hugger.”
A state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail also said she felt “completely violated” during an encounter at the end of a 2019 groundbreaking ceremony for a new arena for the NHL’s New York Islanders
The trooper told investigators she held open the door when it came time for the governor to leave.
“And while he’s walking and we’re in motion, while he’s walking into the door, he takes his left hand and basically like thumb facing down, I felt the palm of his hand in the center of my stomach on my bellybutton and like pushed back towards my right hip like where my gun is. So he’s walking one way, his hand is running across my stomach in the opposite direction,” the trooper said, according to the transcript.
“And I felt completely violated because to me, like, that’s between my chest and my privates, which, you know, if he was a little bit north or a little bit south, it’s not good.”
When Kim asked Cuomo about the alleged incident in the interview, the former governor said if he did touch her, “It was incidental, and I don’t remember doing that.”
Cuomo also denied asking if he could kiss the trooper as she also alleged.
“Do you remember ever asking her on any occasion, ‘Can I kiss you? May I kiss you?’” Kim asked.
“No, I don’t remember that,” Cuomo replied.
A spokesperson for Cuomo called the investigation a “fraud” in a statement.
“These transcripts include questionable redactions and raise even more questions about key omissions made during this slanted process, which reeks of prosecutorial misconduct,” spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said.
Members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee have been invited to Albany to review the report next week, Assemblymember Charles Lavine, chair of the committee, said in a statement sent to ABC News.
ABC News’ Luc Bruggeman, Celia Darrough and Soorin Kim contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued 10 subpoenas on Tuesday to former members of the Trump administration — including West Wing aides and senior officials who were in or around the Oval Office and former President Donald Trump when the riot unfolded on Capitol Hill.
They include senior adviser Stephen Miller, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, personnel director John McEntee, deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell, and Keith Kellogg, who served as former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser and was with Trump watching coverage of the riot on television, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril.
With this latest tranche, the committee has now issued at least 35 subpoenas as part of its investigation.
The panel has asked for documents to be produced by Nov. 23, and for the recipients to appear for closed-door depositions in late November to mid-December.
On Monday, the committee issued six subpoenas to senior Trump campaign officials and advisers, including campaign manager Bill Stepien and spokesman Jason Miller.
Separately, a federal judge on Tuesday evening rejected Trump’s efforts to block the Jan. 6 select committee from obtaining records out of the National Archives that the panel has sought in its investigation of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
D.C. district judge Tanya Chutkan made it clear in her opinion that President Joe Biden’s decision to not assert executive privilege over the documents outweighs Trump’s own assertions.
“At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President,” Chutkan writes. “And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbent’s view is accorded greater weight.”
The Trump team immediately filed an appeal of the decision to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
(WASHINGTON) — New Hampshire GOP Gov. Chris Sununu announced Tuesday that he will not run for Senate in the 2022 midterms, likely hurting Republicans chances to gain a seat in Washington.
Instead, Sununu plans on running for his fourth term as governor.
While many anticipated he would announce a Senate run, Sununu, speaking at a news conference at the governor’s mansion, said his “responsibility is not to the gridlock of and politics of Washington.”
The 2022 midterms are key for Republicans to gain back majorities in Congress — needing to scoop only one seat in the Senate and nine seats in the House.
Sununu acknowledged the importance of the race in gaining back the party’s Senate majority, but said the office is not his “style.”
The race “is clearly seen as one of the best opportunities America has to have a 51st vote to stop Chuck Schumer from implementing what we all see as a losing agenda for America,” he said.
Sununu was seen as a formidable challenger to Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who is running for reelection.
Two Republicans have filed for candidacy to challenge her, and her campaign recognizes the race will be hard-fought no matter who emerges as the Republican candidate, Hassan’s campaign manager Aaron Jacobs said in a statement.
While Sununu ruled out running for Senate next year, he didn’t completely close the door on heading to Washington.
Short of saying he is considering a run for president in 2024, Sununu said he might be open to a Cabinet position later in the future.
Sununu admitted that at one point he was leaning towards running for Senate. But after speaking with other senators, he said he realized he could have more of an impact as governor.
“I’d rather push myself 120 miles an hour delivering wins for New Hampshire, than to slow down and end up on Capitol Hill debating partisan politics without results,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump Organization secured a partial victory on Monday as a Washington, D.C., superior court judge dismissed a portion of a lawsuit brought by the D.C. attorney general over actions by former President Donald Trump’s 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
The judge dismissed a claim by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine that Trump’s inaugural committee “wasted” $1 million in rented ballrooms at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel, writing that they have not met the standard of proof that would allow that part of the lawsuit to proceed.
“In short, there is no genuine dispute that the value paid for the space at the Trump Hotel reaches the extreme burden that Plaintiff need to carry a waste claim to its fruition,” Judge José López wrote.
But López did allow the case to proceed, in part, on the claim of “private inurement” — the question of whether the inaugural committee used their funds for private benefit and not for nonprofit purposes — which means the case could proceed to trial.
“It’s a big deal that our lawsuit is moving forward and going to trial. The Inaugural Committee misspent more than $1 million in nonprofit funds to unlawfully benefit private interests,” a spokesperson for the D.C. attorney general’s office said in a statement. “We cannot allow those in power to get away with using money to illegally enrich themselves and their families. AG Racine is working to get that money back and make sure it supports a legitimate public purpose.”
The ruling removed the Trump Organization as a named defendant in the case, yet still keeps the former president’s Washington hotel as a named defendant, as well as the inaugural committee itself.
The judge ordered a status hearing be held in February to determine how the remaining parties want to proceed.
The AG’s probe has been looking into the spending of the Trump inaugural committee, specifically at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The investigation began, in part, after claims were leveled by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a one-time adviser to former first lady Melania Trump, who worked on the inauguration events and later wrote a tell-all book, “Melania and Me,” about her relationship with the Trump family
“I’m working with three different prosecutors, and it’s taken over my life,” Winston Wolkoff told ABC News in an interview last year, referring to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and local attorneys general in New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
No case has yet to be brought by prosecutors from New York’s Southern District or New Jersey.
The Trump Inaugural Committee, a private tax-exempt organization, raised nearly $107 million in donations and spent $104 million of that on the event, the most ever for an inauguration and twice as much as the amount spent on President Barack Obama’s first inauguration.
The money not spent — totaling about $3 million — was reportedly donated to charity.
(PARIS) — Vice President Kamala Harris is set to travel to France late Monday, a high-profile visit following President Joe Biden’s efforts to soothe tensions with America’s oldest ally in the wake of controversy over a nuclear submarine deal that Biden described as “clumsy.”
Harris is scheduled to have a one-on-one meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday. She will also participate in two international summits, and attend ceremonial events on Nov. 11 to mark Veterans Day in the U.S. and Armistice Day in France, observing the end of World War I. The trip will be Harris’s third venture outside of the U.S. as vice president, giving her the diplomatic opportunities often afforded to vice presidents, but scarce her tenure thus far due to the pandemic.
“This visit from the vice president really signals the strength of our alliances as our nations work together to advance prosperity, security and stability,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters ahead of the trip.
The visit comes nearly two months after the U.S. rolled out a partnership with Australia to share nuclear submarine technology, leading Australia to cancel a $65-million submarine order with the French. With French officials, including Macron, seemingly blindsided by the deal, the French ambassador was temporarily recalled from Washington.
President Biden, sitting down with Macron on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome, said publicly that U.S. handling of the submarine deal “was clumsy.”
“It was not done with a lot of grace,” Biden admitted. “I was under the impression certain things had happened that hadn’t happened. And uh, but uh, I want to make it clear. France is an extremely, extremely valued partner.”
Now, Harris will continue to drive home that message, attending a dinner at Elysee Palace in addition to the bilateral meeting with Macron.
Administration officials would not say on a briefing call with reporters whether a lower-level official would have gone on this trip if it were not for the rift between Macron and the U.S. over the “submarine snub.”
“I don’t have a crystal ball here. I’m not going to play the ‘what if’ game,” a senior administration official said. “There are things that happened three months ago that I would not have predicted three months before that, but I can tell you as the vice president is looking forward to this trip. This trip is extremely important.”
In addition to sitting down with Macron one-on-one, Harris will participate in the Paris Peace Forum, focusing on global health in a post-pandemic world, and she’ll attend the Libya Conference, meeting with 20 heads of state to encourage an end to violence in Libya and open democratic elections on Dec. 24.
While in Paris, Harris will also mark Armistice Day in France and Veterans Day in the U.S. by visiting Surenes, an American World War I military cemetery in France. On the day of arrival, Harris will visit the Institute Pasteur to see the work of French scientists combatting COVID-19. That visit will be particularly special, given Harris’s mother conducted breast cancer research at the institute in the 1980s.
The Libya Conference promises to be especially thorny. Co-hosted by Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the conference is meant to acknowledge that after a tough decade after the fall of Qaddafi, civil war and violence, an election offers hope, a senior administration official said. European leaders are especially invested in creating the conditions for peace in Libya, in order to stem the tide of migrants to the European mainland.
“The vice president thinks it’s important for the United States to be at that table. And to lend our support for legitimate and effective elections that lead to international consensus on not just having these legitimate, effective elections, but bringing into power a government that Libya wants and getting the foreign forces out of the country. So that’s why she’s going to be there with that important message from the United States,” a senior administration official said.
The second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, will also travel to Paris, and participate in independent events focused on gender equality, sports diplomacy, and educational exchanges.
(WASHINGTON) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Monday issued six new subpoenas to senior Trump campaign officials and advisers, including campaign manager Bill Stepien and spokesman Jason Miller.
The panel also subpoenaed conservative attorney John Eastman for records and documents. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s recent book, he aggressively lobbied Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results from his ceremonial post in the House on Jan. 6 — when he presided over the counting of electoral votes.
The committee also subpoenaed former national security adviser Michael Flynn, one of the prominent voices around Trump after the election who publicly called on the president to take drastic actions to overturn the results.
The panel has asked all six individuals to turn over records by Nov. 23 and appear for depositions between Dec. 3 and Dec. 13.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LAS VEGAS) — With an eye on both the midterm elections and 2024, a host of Republican lawmakers — including many potential presidential contenders — spoke in Las Vegas at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting this weekend. Most called this past week’s election outcomes a signifier of things to come during midterms.
“As we move forward, the signs are clear and the trends are unmistakable,” House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy said Saturday. “A Republican wave is underway.”
Attendees aim to ensure that GOP gains continue through 2024’s presidential election, with possible candidates making their case without explicitly stating their intentions.
“A lot of people have come here to audition,” said Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Saturday night.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and former Vice President Mike Pence all spoke at the event. The conference also featured a video message from former President Donald Trump.
“We will win back the House. We will win back the Senate,” Trump said in his video address. “And we will win back in 2024 that beautiful white building sometimes referred to as the White House.”
While there has been no shortage of commentary on the fact that Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin kept Trump at an arm’s length, most of the speakers in Las Vegas leaned hard into their support of Trump.
“President Trump’s single most redeeming characteristic — the man has a steel backbone and he doesn’t back down,” Cruz said Friday to boisterous applause. “After years of Republicans scared of their own shadows, there’s a reason we celebrate a leader who’s willing to stand up and fight.”
“Who’s going to be the nominee [in 2024]? I don’t know, but I do know this, that Donald Trump was a hell of a president,” said Graham.
On Friday night, Scott, who is the chair of the National Republican Senate Committee, told ABC News that Trump will do “whatever he can” to help Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress in 2022. Depending on the race, it could mean standing back.
“You should listen to the candidate because they know their state and they know their race,” Scott said. “And so you should let them figure out how involved you should be and that’s anybody, including the NRSC.”
On Saturday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told attendees that connecting voters on issues they care about and presenting a united party to the electorate are the keys to winning more elections.
The Republican Jewish Coalition meeting typically centers on foreign policy, like relations with Israel and with other nations in the region. Former Vice President Mike Pence largely touted the accomplishments of the Trump administration as it pertains to Israel, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
“Under the Trump-Pence administration, if the world knew nothing else the world knew this. America stands with Israel,” said Pence. “Our administration was able to take historic steps to strengthen the ties in the American people and the Jewish state of Israel.”
In addition to U.S.-Israeli relations, this time around at the annual meeting there was a great deal of attention paid to domestic issues.
Among the most talked-about issues was teaching so-called critical race theory in schools, a topic that has emerged as a flashpoint in conservative circles. Every speaker referred to critical race theory during their remarks, with some, like Haley, calling it “liberal indoctrination.”
“We’ve got the midterm elections next year where the stakes couldn’t be higher,” she said Saturday. “Those elections are about whether we stop socialism, defend our borders, return on fiscal sanity and get the liberal indoctrination out of our schools.”
“We’re watching critical race theory and during the woke curriculum infiltrate our school districts,” Noem said.
Opposition to vaccine mandates was also a frequently mentioned topic.
DeSantis spoke of his opposition to voting reform, framing changes as a danger to Republican ability to wield power.
“They want to make conservative Americans second-class citizens,” said DeSantis. “They want to lock us out from being able to exercise power to be able to exercise policy.”
President Joe Biden’s agenda, including his newly passed infrastructure plan, also made waves. Most framed Biden’s agenda as being hijacked by progressives in comparison to how he campaigned. The word “socialism” was used freely to describe the Democratic agenda throughout the event.
During Christie’s remarks Saturday, he cited his record of supporting Trump, but implored the crowd to give up on trying to relitigate the 2020 election. The response from the crowd to Christie, an ABC News contributor, was tepid.
“We can no longer talk about the past and past elections. No matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over,” said Christie.
(WASHINGTON) — In an angry conversation on his final day as president, Donald Trump told the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee he was leaving the GOP and creating his own political party — and that he didn’t care if the move would destroy the Republican Party, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
Trump only backed down when Republican leaders threatened to take actions that would have cost Trump millions of dollars, Karl writes his upcoming book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
The book gives a detailed account of Trump’s stated intention to reject the party that elected him president and the aggressive actions taken by party leaders to force him to back down.
The standoff started on Jan. 20, just after Trump boarded Air Force One for his last flight as president.
“[RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel] called to wish him farewell. It was a very un-pleasant conversation,” Karl writes in “Betrayal,” set to be released on Nov. 16.
“Donald Trump was in no mood for small talk or nostalgic goodbyes,” Karl writes. “He got right to the point. He told her he was leaving the Republican Party and would be creating his own political party. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was also on the phone. The younger Trump had been relentlessly denigrating the RNC for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. In fact, at the January 6 rally before the Capitol Riot, the younger Trump all but declared that the old Republican Party didn’t exist anymore.”
With just hours left in his presidency, Trump was telling the Republican Party chairwoman that he was leaving the party entirely. The description of this conversation and the discussions that followed come from two sources with direct knowledge of these events.
“I’m done,” Trump told McDaniel. “I’m starting my own party.”
“You cannot do that,” McDaniel told Trump. “If you do, we will lose forever.”
“Exactly. You lose forever without me,” Trump responded. “I don’t care.”
Trump’s attitude was that if he had lost, he wanted everybody around him to lose as well, Karl writes. According to a source who witnessed the conversation, Trump was talking as if he viewed the destruction of the Republican Party as a punishment to those party leaders who had betrayed him — including those few who voted to impeach him and the much larger group he believed didn’t fight hard enough to overturn the election in his favor.
“This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me,” Trump told McDaniel, according to the book.
In response, McDaniel tried to convince Trump that creating his own party wouldn’t just destroy the Republican Party, it would also destroy him.
“This isn’t what the people who depended on you deserve, the people who believed in you,” McDaniel said. “You’ll ruin your legacy. You’ll be done.”
But Trump said he didn’t care, Karl writes.
“[Trump] wasn’t simply floating an idea,” Karl writes in the book. “He was putting the party chairwoman on notice that he had decided to start his own party. It was a done deal. He had made up his mind. ‘He was very adamant that he was going to do it,’ a source who heard the president’s comments later told me.”
Following the tense conversion, McDaniel informed RNC leadership about Trump’s plans, spurring a tense standoff between Trump and his own party over the course of the next four days.
While Trump, “morose in defeat and eager for revenge, plotted the destruction of the Republican Party … the RNC played hardball,” according to the book.
“We told them there were a lot of things they still depended on the RNC for, and that if this were to move forward, all of it would go away,” an RNC official told Karl.
According to the book, “McDaniel and her leadership team made it clear that if Trump left, the party would immediately stop paying legal bills incurred during post-election challenges.”
“But, more significant, the RNC threatened to render Trump’s most valuable political asset worthless,” Karl writes, referring to “the campaign’s list of the email addresses of forty million Trump supporters.”
“It’s a list Trump had used to generate money by renting it to candidates at a steep cost,” says the book. “The list generated so much money that party officials estimated that it was worth about $100 million.”
Five days after revealing plans that could have destroyed his own political party on that last flight aboard Air Force One, Karl writes, Trump backed down, saying he would remain a Republican after all.
Asked this week to respond to Karl’s book, both Trump and McDaniel denied the story.
“This is false, I have never threatened President Trump with anything,” McDaniel told ABC News. “He and I have a great relationship. We have worked tirelessly together to elect Republicans up and down the ballot, and will continue to do so.”
Trump, responding to the story, said, “ABC Non News and 3rd rate reporter Jonathan Karl have been writing fake news about me from the beginning of my political career. Just look at what has now been revealed about the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It was a made up and totally fabricated scam and the lamestream media knew it. It just never ends!”
Trump has long denounced news reports that he had considered starting his own party as “fake news.” In Karl’s final interview with the former president for his book, Trump claimed to not recall his conversation with McDaniel on Jan. 20, saying, “a lot of people suggested a third party, many people” — but that he himself had never even thought about leaving the GOP.
“You mean I was going to form another party or something?” Trump asked Karl incredulously. “Oh, that is bulls**t. It never happened.”
(WASHINGTON) — Three Muslim Americans subjected to FBI surveillance inside their places of worship will ask the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow a religious discrimination lawsuit against the agency to move forward despite government concern about national security.
Yassir Fazaga, a former imam at the Orange County Islamic Foundation, and Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser AbdelRahim, both members of the Islamic Center of Irvine, allege the government and its agents illegally targeted members of the faith communities solely because of their religion.
The FBI has acknowledged running a surveillance program at several Southern California mosques between 2006 and 2007 in a hunt for potential terrorists, but the Bureau has not publicly revealed the basis for its covert operation or directly addressed claims of religious bias.
“Can you be spied on because of where you worship?” said Hussam Ayhoush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is backing the plaintiffs. Muslims “deserve to feel comfortable practicing their faith with friends in the safety of mosques.”
The men say that the presence of an undercover government informant, who was asking about jihad and recording conversations, breached a sacred trust all Americans deserve when exercising religious freedom.
“I’m very angry. Privacy is very important,” said Fazaga. “To know the government is doing this makes me not just angry, but humiliated.”
None of the plaintiffs or the places of worship have been implicated in any known criminal activity or federal charges.
“We are hoping to shed light on the agency that continues to treat Muslims as second-class citizens … unlawfully targeting Americans on the basis of their religion,” Ayhoush said.
When the men sued the FBI in 2011, the agency invoked state secrets privilege to block the lawsuit from proceeding, insisting a trial would require the disclosure of sensitive evidence that could threaten national security.
The privilege shields information whenever the government believes “there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military [or other] matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged,” it says in court documents.
A federal district court sided with the FBI, but a panel of judges reversed that decision on appeal in favor of the Muslim men.
The appeals court said that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 allows a judge to evaluate secret evidence and determine whether the government can keep some or all of it secret.
The FBI rejects that view.
“The Executive Branch has the critical responsibility to protect the national security of the United States,” the Biden administration wrote in Supreme Court documents, defending the FBI. “The state-secrets privilege helps enable the Executive to meet that constitutional duty.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA Law School professor who is arguing the plaintiffs’ case before the Supreme Court, said he hopes the justices will set limits on the government’s ability to keep secrets.
“The question is very simple: Will these people ever get a day in court, or can the government slam the door shut whenever they say they’re acting in the interest of national security?” Arulanantham said.
Ali Malik, who helped mentor the FBI informant in matters of Islamic faith — not knowing his true identity — said he was outraged after later learning about the government operation.
“When I found out my government spied on me because of my faith, I felt betrayed … by the very institution meant to defend the Constitution of the U.S.,” Malik said. “I’m suing the FBI to protect them and their children. The government must be held accountable for violating our religious freedom.”
The Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision in the case by the end of June 2022.
