In October 2016, The New York Times wrote: "Judicial Watch's strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits."

[4] The organization received considerable financial support from prominent Clinton critics, including US$7.74 million from conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

"[7] As reported by The Wall Street Journal the court filing claims the oil-field-services concern overstated revenue by a total of $445 million from 1999 through the end of 2001.

[8][9] In July 2003 Judicial Watch joined the environmental organization Sierra Club in suing the George W. Bush administration for access to minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force.

[16] In the months prior to the 2020 election, Judicial Watch filed or threatened lawsuits against several states related to alleged inaccuracy of their voter rolls, demanding that nearly two million names be purged.

[17] In October 2020, the group sued the state of California, claiming a law requiring corporations doing business in the state to have directors from sexual or racial minorities is unconstitutional, asserting "The legislation's requirement that certain corporations appoint a specific number of directors based upon race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and transgender status is immediately suspect and presumptively invalid and triggers strict scrutiny review by the court.

In May 1995, following a search in response to Judicial Watch's FOIA requests, DOC produced approximately 28,000 pages of nonexempt information and withheld about 1,000 documents as exempt.

In December 1998, following discovery, the District Court granted partial summary judgment to Judicial Watch and ordered DOC to perform a new search.

[25][22] August 10, 2009 Judicial Watch sent a FOIA request to the US Secret Service asking that official White House visitor logs be made public.

[26] The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia partially affirmed the decision, holding that the Secret Service did not have to produce records of visitors to the president's office.

[28] Osama bin Laden, leader of the terror group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, in a joint operation by the United States Navy SEALs and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

[29] On May 2, 2011, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the Department of Defense and the CIA for photographs and videos of bin Laden taken during or after the operation.

One email had the subject line OPSEC Guidance / Neptune Spear and is proof that days after the original FOIA request U.S. Special Operations Commander, Admiral William McRaven ordered his subordinates to immediately destroy any Osama bin Laden photos they may have had.

NARA had declined to deem the tapes to be "presidential records", and the federal judge dismissed the lawsuit stating that "the relief that plaintiff seeks – that the Archivist assume 'custody and control' of the audiotapes – is not available under the PRA.

[37] A federal judge ruled on February 23, 2016, that top aides to Hillary Clinton could be questioned under oath by Judicial Watch about her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

[12] In May 2016 U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted "discovery" to Judicial Watch into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email system.

[38] In a separate case, on March 29, 2016, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth granted Judicial Watch limited discovery, citing potential bad faith by the government in responding to requests for documents related to talking points provided to Susan Rice in response to the Benghazi attack.

[42][43][44][25][45] In 2013, Judicial Watch collaborated with Steve Bannon, executive chairman of the alt-right website Breitbart News, on the film "District of Corruption", which critiqued the Obama administration.

[49] In August 2017, Judicial Watch falsely alleged that 11 California counties had more registered voters than their estimated populations of citizens eligible to vote; the claims were picked up by outlets such as Breitbart News and Russian propaganda network RT (Russia Today).

[53][54] Iowa's Secretary of State, Paul Pate, a member of the Republican Party, debunked Fitton's claim by linking to official voter registration data.

[58] Judicial Watch has filed lawsuits seeking to force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to release the correspondence of climate scientists who published a 2015 study in the journal Science.

[59] The study had debunked one of the common claims made by those who reject the scientific consensus on climate change, namely that there existed global warming "hiatus" between 1998 and 2012.

The Judicial Watch lawsuit was inspired by Rep. Lamar Smith, a climate change denier[60] who had accused the authors of the study of "alter[ing] data" to "get the politically correct results they want.

"[61] In 2017, Judicial Watch helped to stoke Republican attacks against Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

[63] Fitton furthermore called for shutting down the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) based on the claim that the Obama administration had turned it into a "KGB-type operation.

[66] In October 2018, Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch stirred controversy when he appeared on Lou Dobbs' Fox Business show and used what many described as an anti-Semitic trope to suggest that the State Department was "Soros-occupied" territory.