Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department, FBI, and ODNI for Records on Spying Targeting Trump Campaign Advisor Michael Caputo

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after the agencies failed to respond adequately to requests for records regarding the investigation of former Trump campaign adviser and communications strategist Michael Caputo (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-02631)), (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-01903)), (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (No. 1:25-cv-02469)). 

Judicial Watch submitted the requests in response to information that Caputo’s email was the subject of a secret search warrant of his Google email account in September 2023, three weeks after he began working for the Trump 2024 presidential campaign. (Dan Scavino, another Trump campaign adviser and current White House aide, also disclosed he was targeted by a similar secret subpoeana.)

Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department, FBI, and ODNI after the agencies failed to adequately respond to FOIA requests for records about the targeting of Caputo, including:

All investigative reports, memoranda, intelligence products, interview transcripts and summaries, or similar records regarding Mr. Michael Caputo.

All subpoenas and other requests for information submitted to, records received from, and records of communication with Google/Alphabet, Inc. or any other search engine or social media company regarding Mr. Michael Caputo. 

All records of communication between any official or employee of the four Justice Department components and any official or employee of any other branch, department, agency, or office of the Federal government regarding or mentioning Mr. Michael Caputo. 

Caputo, as he detailed in a March 28, 2019, op-ed, said he received death threats and drained his bank accounts after he became “ensnared by the congressional and special counsel investigations” into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.

“The evidence shows that the Biden FBI and Justice Department were spying on the Trump campaign. Caputo used his emails to help devise strategy for the Trump campaign, and the Biden gang was rooting through it all!” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The lawsuits show that the lawfare and spying against Trump was only paused. These records can’t be released soon enough.”

In June 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for records regarding Biden era Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) subpoenas, warrants, court orders and other authorizations obtained to surveil President Trump.

 Judicial Watch was instrumental in uncovering much of what the public knows about “Russiagate,” which involved a long list of Democratic political figures, lawyers, and staffers who shaped the narrative around the Trump-Russia hoax.

 In August 2018 the Justice Department admitted in a court filing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.

Judicial Watch in July 2018 released records about FISA warrants targeting Page, which appeared to confirm that the FBI and DOJ misled the FISA court by withholding material information showing that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the court to approve the FISA warrants targeting the Trump team.

In October 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered heavily redacted email communications among top-level State Department officials and a U.S. ambassador expressing skepticism about reports by Christopher Steele’s London-based private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. (Steele was the author of the Clinton-funded, anti-Trump dossier.) The emails show one assistant secretary of state saying some of Steele’s reports sound “extreme” and others “do not ring true,” while the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine called some of the Steele reports “flaky.”

In April 2020, Judicial Watch obtained emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, including an email dated January 10, 2017, in which Strzok said that the version of the dossier published by BuzzFeed was “identical” to the version given to the FBI by McCain and had “differences” from the dossier provided to the FBI by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and Mother Jones reporter David Corn. January 10, 2017, is the same day BuzzFeed published the anti-Trump dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele. The emails also show Strzok and other FBI agents mocking President Trump a few weeks before he was inaugurated. In addition, the emails revealed that Strzok communicated with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about the “leak investigation” tied to the Clinton Foundation (the very leak in which McCabe was later implicated).

In September 2019, Judicial Watch released State Department records revealing that Steele had an extensive and close working relationship dating back to May of 2014 with high-ranking Obama State Department officials including Jonathan Winer and Victoria Nuland.

In August 2019, Judicial Watch obtained “302” report material from 2016 FBI interviews of Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney Bruce Ohr, who was removed from his position in December 2017. A Form 302 is used by FBI agents to memorialize interviews they undertake during an investigation. In a November 22, 2016, interview, Ohr said that “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign, Jon Winer at the U.S. State Department and the FBI.” In late September 2016 interview, Ohr described a person (likely Christopher Steele) as “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.” “Ohr knew that [Fusion GPS’s] Glen Simpson and others talking to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department.” 

In July 2019, Judicial Watch obtained records revealing a September 2016 email exchange between Nuland and Winer, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.”

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