Latest in Secrecy: FOIA
That’s the surprising lesson from this year’s FBI Climate Survey—though the counterintelligence division is, in some ways, a notable exception.
On Tuesday, the Chief Judge Beryll Howell of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia issued an order to unseal and for the government to publish warrants for searches against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen obtained in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The five warrants can be read below.
Warrant, July 18, 2017
Like last year, we’ve asked the FBI for the results of its internal climate survey. And once again, we’re going to court to get them.
Last year, one of us filed a “meta-FOIA” request with Benjamin Wittes seeking information on how former CIA officer and then-congressional candidate (now congresswoman) Abigail Spanberger’s unredacted SF-86 form was released in response to a right-wing advocacy group’s FOIA request. We petitioned both the National Archives and Records Administrations (NARA) and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), each of which had played a role in the release.
Casting sunlight on how law professors use federal transparency laws.
Inquiring minds want to know.
The most recent results from our FOIA project.
Inquiring minds want to know.
A response to our FOIA request revealed the National Archives and Records Administration sent Spanberger’s documents to the U.S. Postal Service for processing. USPS has not said what happened from there.
A federal employee’s background-check materials should not be released under FOIA. But the records of how such an abusive request was processed certainly should be.