Vice President JD Vance, right, speaks during a news conference after meeting with representatives from Pakistan and Iran as Jared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy for Peace Missions listen, on Sunday, April 12, 2026, in Islamabad, Pakistan (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool).
A new federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., asks a judge to force the Trump administration to "shed light on federal agencies' involvement" with President Donald Trump's Board of Peace.
Democracy Forward, a left-leaning nonprofit organization that aims to "challenge abuses of power that undermine good government" and "expose overlooked threats to democracy," sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Commerce Department, and the State Department on Tuesday under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The complaint began by noting Trump first announced the Board of Peace last September, its executive members including Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, to name a few.
In January, while in Davos, Switzerland, Trump hailed the formal ratification of the board's charter as its chairman, "establishing it as an official international organization" with member countries "committed" to ending the Israel-Hamas war and "building a secure and prosperous future for Gaza that delivers lasting peace, stability, and opportunity for its people."
The complaint, citing USPTO records and public reporting, said the Board of Peace's trademark applications were filed in December and January, and that USPTO Director John Squires "personally completed the applications, prompting congressional inquiry into the USPTO's role."
When questioning Squires in March, House Judiciary Democrats alleged the $1 billion-per-country fee for permanent membership on the board and a trademark approval would tend to "conceal the existence of legal and financial structures designed to funnel money to the President for his unilateral use" in an "unsupervised international slush fund."
On a related funding point from that same month, the lawsuit said, Semafor reported that the State Department transferred $1.25 billion in disaster relief and "peacekeeping" funds "from other departmental programs to the Board of Peace," but eight FOIA requests — including for records "reflecting any final legal advice and analysis […] regarding the transferring of $1.25 billion of department funds to the Board of Peace" — have not been fulfilled.
As a result, the plaintiff is suing multiple agencies and asking a judge to order the government to search for "any and all responsive" electronic messages sent by various named officials that included the key terms "Board of Peace," "Kushner," and "POTUS."
In addition, the complaint asks the court to set a deadline for the DOJ to justify its withholding of the records sought.
By late July, the administration credited the Board of Peace with reaching a "HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza," a claimed "monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY" in the form of a 15-point plan — which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected days ago unless it's shown that Hamas "genuinely" is disarmed first.
Read the complaint in full here.