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Tom FittonAmerican conservative activist and president of Judicial Watch
Date of Birth: 30.05.1968
Country:  USA |
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Tom Fitton: American Conservative Activist and President of Judicial Watch
Tom Fitton is a leading American conservative activist and the President of Judicial Watch. He is a long-standing senior fellow at the Council for National Policy (CNP), a right-wing umbrella organization for groups like Judicial Watch. Fitton is the current President of the CNP, having assumed the role in February 2022.
Early Life
Fitton was born in West Nyack, New York, in 1968. He graduated from Clarkstown South Senior High School in 1986. Fitton earned a bachelor's degree in English from George Washington University. His father was a supermarket manager, and his mother was a nurse.
Judicial Watch
Fitton has served as the President of Judicial Watch since August 1998. The group primarily seeks access to government records by filing lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public records laws, as well as engaging in other forms of civil litigation.
In 2006, Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch's former Chairman, attempted to regain control of Judicial Watch by suing Fitton, the organization, and its other officers and directors. The majority of Klayman's claims, including all of his claims against Fitton and the other Judicial Watch officers and directors, were dismissed in 2009.
Views
Zimmerman TrialIn July 2013, Fitton falsely claimed that the Obama administration's Justice Department had sent representatives to Sanford, Florida, after the death of Trayvon Martin "to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman."
Climate Change
Fitton rejects the scientific consensus on climate change (global warming). He has said, "Scandal after scandal about climate data has made us skeptical about government agencies that will not tell the people what they are up to... I am sure the scientists are worried that funding for dubious research will be cut off, but truth will win out in the end."
Breitbart News Support
Judicial Watch has placed advertisements on Breitbart News, a far-right website formerly led by Steve Bannon, for many years. Fitton has defended the site against calls for advertisers to drop it. Fitton said, "Liberal activists want to destroy Breitbart, but we will not be intimidated."
Voter Fraud
Fitton has said about voter fraud: "We have all heard about voter fraud and the attempts by the liberal media like the New York Times and Ivory Tower academics to dismiss this problem as nonexistent. But it is real, it is widespread, and it is substantial to the point that it can decide elections."[18] Fitton has claimed that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants voted in the 2018 midterm elections. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in either California or Texas.
On February 3, 2020, the day of the Iowa caucuses in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, Fitton suggested that voter fraud was taking place in Iowa, falsely claiming that "eight Iowa counties register more voters than citizens old enough to register." Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, debunked Fitton's claim, citing official voter registration data.
In a video posted in October 2020, in the lead-up to the 2020 election, Fitton urged fellow conservative activists at a conference to come up with ways to stop the mailing of ballots to voters.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2021, Fitton falsely stated that on the day of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, "President Trump had enough votes to win the presidency. Those vote totals were changed through an unprecedented and extraordinary post-election tabulation of votes."
Fitton has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Georgia indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants for attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The indictment describes him as writing a speech for Trump to deliver prior to the election, in which Trump falsely attributed his election defeat to rigged voting results.
Awards
Fitton received the Conservative Activist of the Year Award from the American Conservative Union at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2015.
