I’ve written before on deceptive, demanding mailings and more of the same from Judicial Watch, an anti-immigrant organization. But they were mild compared to a truly evil one I received yesterday, painting Donald Trump as the innocent victim of the “deep state.” Evil isn’t news, but I’d like to use it to get some insight into just how it operates. To fight the enemies of American liberties, you have to know how they think.

The creator of the mailing, it says, is Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch. The central claim is that a list of prominent people, including three past presidents, “all knew that President Trump was innocent, but they smeared and spied on him anyway. It was worse than Watergate … far worse. President Trump was and is a Deep State crime victim, and all the perpetrators of this crime must be held accountable!” (Ellipses and emphasis in these quotations are from the original, unless otherwise indicated.)

The obvious question is, what is Trump innocent of? He has been accused of many things, often with strong evidence, sometimes with very little. However, the letter doesn’t name any charge against him. It gives some clues: “And as far as James Comey is concerned, the evidence is overwhelming that he violated the law, debased his high office and further corrupted the Federal Bureau of Investigation by deploying resources and personnel to pursue the leftist agenda of the ‘permanent government’ in Washington, DC.”

This refers to the 2017 FBI investigation of alleged Russian influence in the 2016 election. Comey was the head of the FBI at the time, before being fired by Trump later that year. He testified to Congress in 2020 about the investigation and was indicted in 2025 on claims of lying and obstruction. He testified that he didn’t authorize public disclosure of related information, although information had been leaked without his approval. The investigation concluded in 2019 and reported that while Russian operatives tried to support Trump’s campaign, it could not say that the Trump campaign knowingly helped the effort. It noted that a sitting president couldn’t be indicted anyway.

It’s possible Comey authorized the leak and then denied it, but the investigation didn’t make any accusations against Trump. The charges against Comey were dismissed.

Let’s look at how Judicial Watch covered this. A key technique was vagueness; it counted on readers not to remember these events in detail. (I had to do a lot of searches to get all that information.) It didn’t say what Comey was indicted for, nor that the charges were dismissed. Very likely it was counting on public confusion over the more recent and even more absurd indictment of Comey for taking a picture of seashells. It aims to make the reader think that Comey used the investigation to bring baseless accusations against Trump.

But the target of the mailing isn’t just Comey. It asks the recipients to “sign the enclosed citizen petition to the U.S. Attorney General demanding immediate investigations into all government officials implicated in the attempted ‘coup’ against President Donald Trump and our constitutional republic.” The names mentioned include Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok. It claims that “I’m sure their names ring a bell with you.” They don’t with me, that’s for sure. Back to the research… Strzok got a $1.2 million settlement and Page $800,000 from the DoJ for violating their privacy rights. McCabe also received a settlement for being improperly fired as FBI deputy director.

Why would Judicial Watch hope the readers would remember that the Trump administration had to pay out for what it did? It’s counting on people feeling embarrassed that they don’t remember. That’s really the mailing’s basic technique: saying next to nothing and pushing the reader to invent details out of fear of feeling ignorant.

The mailing calls for investigation of “Deep State officials” for “baseless smear campaigns.” If these alleged campaigns are legally actionable, they must consist of intentionally false statements. No specific falsehoods, alleged or real, are cited. In fact, no specific accusations against Trump are cited!

It’s mentioned that government “departments and offices … even raided his [Trump’s] Mar-a-Logo home!” What isn’t mentioned is that he was illegally holding highly sensitive classified government documents after leaving office and was accused of concealing them to frustrate the investigation. Again, it’s counting on readers not to remember the details.

To be sure, sloppiness about details is endemic in journalism today. But when it’s this systematic and is part of an emotion-laden call to investigate alleged “crimes” by those who have crossed Trump, it’s hard to call it anything but deliberate deception. When you add in Judicial Watch’s record of dishonesty, it has no claim to the benefit of the doubt.

Most people don’t have the time to look up information. Vagueness avoids the risk of being caught in a straight-out lie. But occasional Freudian slips come through. “It was worse than Watergate … far worse. President Trump was and is a Deep State crime victim.” In the Watergate scandal, President Nixon was caught participating in a criminal scheme and forced to resign, so Judicial Watch seems to be saying that Trump is a greater victim than Nixon. Maybe it’s counting on readers to be vague about Watergate too, or maybe it really is painting Nixon as a victim.

This all leads up to the petition, which is custom-printed with the recipient’s name and address. It calls for “investigations into all past and current government politicians, appointed officials and bureaucrats who are credibly implicated in the well-documented corruption and abuse of power to prevent President Donald Trump from being elected and re-elected President of the United States.” That casts a huge net but maintains deniability with the phrase “credibly implicated.” The only person specifically named is Comey, and there’s a new accusation here; he’s called “a key player in the effort to rig a presidential election and undermine a duly elected president.” Election rigging is a serious accusation, but there’s no other mention of it in the mailing.

Now we come to the mailing’s real purpose. A third of the petition page is a request for an “urgent contribution.” The checkboxes run from $35 to $10,000. The mailing is all about panicking the reader into sending Judicial Watch money. Perhaps the petition is no more significant than the “census” JW has used in the past; it may be just a way to scare recipients into making contributions. It’s also possible that Judicial Watch gets favors from Trump in exchange for supporting his attacks on political enemies.

It isn’t just Judicial Watch or pro-Trump groups that does these things, of course. You can see such things daily on social media from both the left and the right. Any time you get a message with vague claims and emotional language, you need to be careful. If it’s asking for money, be triply cautious.