America First Legal (AFL) scored a major victory against the Biden Administration as it successfully pressured Biden’s DHS into dissolving the panel of “experts” that was ultimately a threat to American’s free speech rights.
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As RedState previously reported, Alejandro Mayorkas brought on James Clapper and John Brennan to take part in a panel of national security “experts” to help with issues regarding “terrorism, fentanyl, transborder issues, and emerging technology,” at the DHS.
Both men are credibly accused of lying to Congress and you’ll know them as two of the men responsible for declaring the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop being “Russian disinformation,” a lie that ended up having positive effects for Biden during the 2020 election.
According to the DHS, this group of experts that these two men would be taking part in would hold “a wide range of views and perspectives, with a membership that includes former senior intelligence officials, journalists, and prominent human rights and civil liberties advocates.”
As Becky Noble wrote, Mayorkas said this group is to see to the security of America by collecting and disseminating intelligence, but Sen. Josh Hawley wasn’t convinced:
Secretary Mayorkas said in a statement after the group was announced that “The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners.” But perhaps Sen. Hawley and other Republicans on the Committee are curious, in light of the track record of some of those who make up the membership of the group and the recent appeals court ruling on the Biden administration’s relationship with social media, as to what their and Secretary Mayorkas’ definition of “security” might be.
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Hawley demanded the firing of these two individuals from this DHS panel of “experts” which he said was formed to censor free speech:
Enlisting the support of these discredited officials as the nation prepares for the 2024 presidential election appears to signal that DHS will continue its attempts to censor speech that is inconvenient to the current Administration.
It was clear that this panel was dangerous from the word “go,” and as such, America First Legal decided to take action. Now, thanks to the threat of a lawsuit by the AFL, Mayorkas’s panel of experts is no more.
According to Fox News, the Biden Administration blinked first and is dissolving the panel after AFL argued it violated federal law:
America First Legal, which filed the lawsuit, found that of all the political contributions of those named to the group, just 1% went to Republicans, while 98% went to Democrats.
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The lawsuit alleged that the alleged bias violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, citing alleged lack of balance, a lack of public notice and inappropriate influence by the Biden administration.
According to a joint notice and stipulation of dismissal, DHS “maintains its position that the establishment and operation of the Experts Group did not violate the FACA” but agreed to wind the group down.
“The Experts Group shall be wound down within thirty (30) days of the entry of the Order, it will not hold any future meetings, and the Department will not reconstitute the Experts Group inconsistent with the FACA or the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Department will also provide the Experts Group meeting agendas and meeting minutes with participant identifying information redacted within fifteen (15) days of the entry of the Order,” it said.
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The AFL has agreed to now dismiss the lawsuit with its goal achieved.
“As a result of our lawsuit in federal court, DHS is surrendering in total to our demands: they are closing down their new partisan intelligence board featuring Clapper and Brennan — which would have been used to promote censored, unethical spying, and gross civil rights invasions of political enemies — and they are surrendering their documents, handing them over to our possession. We won. We beat Biden and DHS,” said AFL President Stephen Miller.
Miller called this an “unqualified legal victory over Mayorkas and Biden.”