Litigation against the Department of Homeland Security’s “Intelligence Experts Group” was dropped last week when President Joe Biden agreed to follow a court order disbanding the group and forfeiting its records.
The lawsuit was brought by America First Legal (AFL) and Richard Grenell, a former Trump official who served as Director of National Intelligence in 2020.
“The Biden Admin will dissolve & disband its unlawful DHS Intelligence Experts Group stacked with deep state partisans like James Clapper and John Brennan following our lawsuit with @RichardGrenell,” proclaimed AFL on Friday.
As part of the court order, the Intelligence Group must dissolve within 30 days and hand over all internal documents and records to AFL within 15 days.
In addition to James Clapper and John Brennan (two former Obama officials who led the Russia collusion investigation against Trump in 2016), the partisan panel included several “Letter of 51” officials (former senior intelligence officers who joined Clapper and Brennan in claiming the now-infamous Hunter Biden laptop story was likely part of a Russian disinformation campaign despite the fact that the FBI had validated its authenticity).
The Intelligence Group was formed in 2023 by now-disgraced DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas as a way to control the flow of information (and silence conservative voices) under the guise of “national security,” thus decreasing the chances of a Trump victory in the 2024 election.
A group of Republican Senators including Rick Scott (FL), Ron Johnson (WI), and Rand Paul (KY) wrote immediately to the DHS to remove certain individuals from the group who were known to have promoted disinformation. AFL pursued litigation against the group when Mayorkas refused their request.
According to AFL President Stephen Miller, the Intelligence Group would have been used to “promote censored, unethical spying and gross civil rights invasions of political enemies.”
In legal terms, the group’s partisan imbalance made it inconsistent with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (a law designed to prevent the formation of advisory panels that lack objectivity). As detailed in the lawsuit, roughly 98% of the panel’s political contributions went to Democrats vs. a mere 1% to Republicans.
And as noted by Grenell, Mayorkas’s immediate surrender to the court order suggests he knew the Intelligence Group was breaking the law.
America First Legal (AFL) is a pro-Democracy organization led by senior members of the Trump Administration including Stephen Miller, Gene Hamilton, Reed Rubinstein, and Daniel Epstein. Its mission is to preserve and protect Americans’ Constitutional rights and defend the nation against the “radical Left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”
This is the second time the Biden Administration has been forced to disband a group that was in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In 2022, the Department of Education agreed to dissolve its “Parents Council” after a lawsuit brought by AFL and members of “Parents Defending Education” and “Fight for Schools and Families.”
Sources:
Judge Disbands Biden’s DHS Intelligence Group Led by ‘Hoaxers’
DHS Shuts Down Partisan ‘Intelligence Experts’ Panel after Lawsuit from Conservative Legal Group