It appears that the White House is no longer going to move forward with the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group. 

Fox News reports, "The Biden administration has agreed to wind down a controversial intelligence "experts" group, as it faced a lawsuit from a conservative legal nonprofit arguing that it was in violation of federal law."

In case you are not familiar with any of this, we'll take a moment to get you up to speed.

We'll start with the so-called experts group.

Background

Back in September 2023, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced the creation of the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group.

The department, at the time, explained, "The group is comprised of private sector experts who will provide their unique perspectives on the federal government’s intelligence enterprise to DHS’s [Intelligence and Analysis] and the Office of the Counterterrorism Coordinator."

The group was made up of "intelligence officials, journalists, and prominent human rights and civil liberties advocates" - a little less than 20 individuals in total.

Mayorkas, himself, claimed that this group was necessary for the security of America and Americans.

"The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners," he said.

But it's illegal

The nonprofit group America First Legal responded with a lawsuit, claiming that the group violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act's requirement that such groups be non-partisan.

"The lawsuit alleged that the alleged bias violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, citing alleged lack of balance, a lack of public notice and inappropriate influence by the Biden administration," Fox reports.

American Legal found that 98% of the political contributions from members of the experts group went to Democrats, while on 1% went to Republicans. American Legal also highlighted the fact that the group contained the likes of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, individuals who tried to claim that the Hunter Biden laptop discovery was "Russian misinformation."

Now, in response to this lawsuit, it appears that the White House has ended the experts group - even though it is claiming that it did not violate the FACA.

The DHS has agreed that:

The Experts Group shall be wound down within thirty (30) days of the entry of the Order, it will not hold any future meetings, and the Department will not reconstitute the Experts Group inconsistent with the FACA or the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Department will also provide the Experts Group meeting agendas and meeting minutes with participant identifying information redacted within fifteen (15) days of the entry of the Order.