Judicial Watch Sues for Documents on Obama/UN Effort to Undermine Elected Government in Guatemala

Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department for communications among U.S. and Guatemalan officials regarding the of International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG, its acronym in Spanish).

Judicial Watch filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the State Department failed to comply with May and August 2018 FOIA requests for records of communications and meetings between the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and CICIG’s Commissioner Iván Velásquez Gómez; any representative of CICIG; as well as other Guatemalan officials. Judicial Watch also seeks records of communications of State Department officials, including Ambassador Todd Robinson, with Velásquez and others related to CICIG (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of State (No.1:19-cv-00968)).

The U.N.’s CICIG was formed in December 2006 and given the mission of strengthening the rule of law in Guatemala but has been embroiled in controversy and was reportedly politicizing the judiciary:

CICIG says it is in Guatemala merely to “support” the attorney general in her work “identifying and dismantling” criminal networks and is not involved in politics. But an academic analysis of CICIG by Jonatán Lemus, a Francisco Marroquín University political science professor, suggests otherwise. Mr. Lemus observes that “CICIG has also been criticized for the very same reasons others have praised it: becoming a player in judicial appointments, proposing some controversial reforms to the Guatemalan constitution, and the use of televised conferences to shift the public in its favor. From this perspective, instead of strengthening Guatemalan institutions, the Commission is making national institutions dependent on its assistance.”

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