Tag: foia

Pelosi Congress Claims Sovereign Immunity in Federal Court to Keep Secret January 6 Videos and Emails

“The Pelosi Congress (and its police department) is telling a federal court it is immune from all transparency under law and is trying to hide every second of its January 6 videos and countless emails,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The hypocrisy is rich, as this is the same Congress that is trying to jail witnesses who, citing privileges, object to providing documents to the Pelosi rump January 6 committee.”

In November 2021, Judicial Watch revealed multiple audio, visual and photo records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building.  The records include a cell phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police interview of the shooter, Lt. Michael Byrd. In October, Judicial Watch released records, showing that multiple officers claimed they didn’t see a weapon in Babbitt’s hand before Byrd shot her, and that Byrd was visibly distraught afterward. One officer attested that he didn’t hear any verbal commands before Byrd shot Babbitt.

Also in November, Judicial Watch filed a response in opposition to the Department of Justice’s effort to block Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit asking for records of communication between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and several financial institutions about the reported transfer of financial transaction records of people in DC, Maryland and Virginia on January 5 and January 6, 2021. Judicial Watch argues that Justice Department should not be allowed to shield “improper activity.”

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The Foilies 2022

Each year during Sunshine Week (March 13-19), The Foilies serve up tongue-in-cheek “awards” for government agencies and assorted institutions that stand in the way of access to information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock combine forces to collect horror stories about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state-level public records requests from journalists and transparency advocates across the United States and beyond. Our goal is to identify the most surreal document redactions, the most aggravating copy fees, the most outrageous retaliation attempts, and all the other ridicule-worthy attacks on the public’s right to know.

And every year since 2015, as we’re about to crown these dubious winners, something new comes to light that makes us consider stopping the presses.

As we were writing up this year’s faux awards, news broke that officials from the National Archives and Records Administration had to lug away boxes upon boxes of Trump administration records from Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private resort. At best, it was an inappropriate move; at worst, a potential violation of laws governing the retention of presidential records and the handling of classified materials. And while Politico had reported that when Trump was still in the White House, he liked to tear up documents, we also just learned from journalist Maggie Haberman’s new book that staff claimed to find toilets clogged up with paper scraps, which were potentially torn-up government records. Trump has dismissed the allegations, of course. 

This was all too deliciously ironic considering how much Trump had raged about his opponent (and 2016 Foilies winner) Hillary Clinton’s practice of storing State Department communications on a private server. Is storing potentially classified correspondence on a personal email system any worse than hoarding top secret documents at a golf club? Is “acid washing” records, as Trump accused Clinton, any less farcical than flushing them down the john? 

Ultimately, we decided not to give Trump his seventh Foilie. Technically, he isn’t eligible: his presidential records won’t be subject to FOIA until he’s been out of office for five years (releasing classified records could take years, or decades, if ever).

Instead, we’re sticking with our original 16 winners, from federal agencies to small-town police departments to a couple of corporations, who are all shameworthy in their own rights and, at least metaphorically, have no problem tossing government transparency in the crapper.

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FBI’s Operation to Infiltrate Right-Wing Extremist Groups Lies at Center of Transparency Lawsuit

An FBI right-wing infiltration operation tangled in allegations of witness tampering, evidence suppression, and connections to the Oklahoma City bombing has been exposed through one man’s unprecedented Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. government.

And the case isn’t over yet.

Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue’s 2006 FOIA lawsuit against the FBI and CIA for Oklahoma City bombing records is indeed still an open matter, having been sealed and litigated behind closed doors since 2015 over witness tampering allegations.

Trentadue’s case is unprecedented, according to Judicial Watch. It’s rare for a FOIA case to go to trial and even rarer for one to entail allegations as serious as witness tampering, according to Judicial Watch senior investigator Sean Dunagan.

“We’re one of the largest FOIA litigants in this country, and we’ve never been involved in anything that involves that degree of alleged misconduct by the [FBI],” Dunagan said. “It’s astounding.”

Trentadue declined to comment on the sealed aspects of the case, including when the litigation might conclude. However, he did agree to an interview about the events leading up to 2015. He also provided The Epoch Times with access to a trove of court documents, transcripts, and other records that show details about the federal government’s domestic counterterrorism operations.

His records describe an FBI program known as Patriot Conspiracy (PATCON)—a secret operation to infiltrate right-wing and domestic extremist groups.

PATCON has been in the public record for years, described in detail by historian Wendy Painting’s 2016 doctoral thesis-turned-book “Aberration in the Heartland of the Real.” But PATCON has received little media attention outside of the late journalist Will Grigg. Other journalists have attempted to cover PATCON, only to run into censorship issues.

The reasons for the alleged attempts to suppress PATCON are clear, according to Trentadue.

“The FBI’s real objective in PATCON had been to infiltrate and to incite these fringe groups to violence,” he said.

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The Epstein Files: US Bureau of Prisons bent facts to support suicide narrative

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws by RT investigative unit The Detail include startling records revealing how the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) moved to shut down any and all public debate about the cause of Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Along the way, evidence was distorted, material facts ignored, and key anomalies unexplored and unpublicized.

After being found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10, 2019, the records show that the Bureau issued statements to journalists and Epstein’s family categorically stating he’d committed suicide.  The result was international news outlets universally and unquestioningly reporting that Epstein had taken his own life from the word go, despite Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson having reached no conclusion at that time, and making clear in a statement the next day that the investigation was open and ongoing. 

It was not until August 16 that Sampson publicly declared Epstein’s death had been a suicide. The ruling was contested by leading forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who’d been hired by the billionaire’s brother to monitor the autopsy process. Speaking to the Miami Herald two months later, he charged that “the autopsy did not support suicide,’’ and that the pathologist who conducted it had recorded this.

“Then Dr. Sampson changed it a week later, manner of death to suicide. The brother has been trying to find out why that changed,” Baden fulminated. “What was the evidence?”

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The mysterious death of Democratic National Committee worker Seth Rich and the FBI’s battle to keep documents about it secret

A lingering Freedom of Information (FOI) battle involving the FBI continues in the case of Seth Rich.

Rich was a Democratic National Committee (DNC) worker who was attacked and killed on July 10, 2016 by an unknown person or people.

Police implied Rich was the victim in a botched robbery attempt. However, with no suspects in custody or even named, others suggested his death as linked to a leak of controversial DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The emails were considered harmful to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Some theorized that Rich could have been the source of the leak, and then was murdered in retaliation.

One reason the case received a lot of publicity is that US intelligence officials blamed Russia for hacking into the DNC and giving the documents to WikiLeaks. If the document leak were an inside job, instead, it would mean Russia did not play the role intelligence officials claimed, at the same time some top officials were also fabricating links between Russia and Donald Trump, and at the same time an FBI attorney was doctoring documents to improperly obtain a wiretap against a Trump campaign associate as a “Russian spy.”

Speculation about Rich’s death led to lawsuits filed by the Rich family, who called the theories “right-wing conspiracy theories” that compounded their grief. They received some apologies and settlements regarding the claims, which they said they believed to be false.

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Court Orders FDA To Comply With FOIA and Release Information On Pfizer Vaccine – First Batch of Documents Shows Over 1,200 Vaccine Deaths WITHIN FIRST 90 DAYS

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released the first batch of documents related to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine after a federal judge ordered that they must comply with a massive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was filed by a government accountability group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.

The esteemed group of more than 30 professors and scientists asked the federal government to share any and all data that factored into the agency’s hasty decision to grant Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccine an emergency use authorization (EUA) – which amounts to a trove of over 329,000 documents.

In a shameless effort to bury the information, the FDA challenged the FOIA request in court. After the agency was told that it must turn over the documents, Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA asked a federal judge to allow them an unthinkable 55 years to process the request, saying that they would be able to release just 500 pages a month.

In other words, Elon will make it to Mars way before the documents would be fully released – in the year 2076.

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FOIA Release: Fauci Funded Construction Of ‘Chimeric Coronaviruses’ In Wuhan

When Dr. Anthony Fauci confidently screamed at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in July – calling him a liar for accusing him of funding so-called “Gain-of-Function” (GoF) research in Wuhan, China to make coronaviruses more transmissible to humans, the argument ultimately faded due to Fauci’s unsupported claim that the research didn’t technically fit the definition of GoF.

Now, thanks to materials (here and here) released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health (which were unredacted enough to toss Fauci under the bus), we now know that Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak, was absolutely engaged in gain-of-function research to make chimeric SARS-based coronaviruses, which they confirmed could infect human cells.

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FOIA Release Proves US Funded Research of “Bat Coronaviruses Likely to Infect Humans” in Wuhan

When Dr. Anthony Fauci confidently screamed at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in July – calling him a liar for accusing him of funding so-called “Gain-of-Function” (GoF) research in Wuhan, China to make coronaviruses more transmissible to humans, the argument ultimately faded due to Fauci’s unsupported claim that the research didn’t technically fit the definition of GoF.

Now, thanks to materials (here and here) released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health (which were unredacted enough to toss Fauci under the bus), we now know that Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak, was absolutely engaged in gain-of-function research to make chimeric SARS-based coronaviruses, which they confirmed could infect human cells.

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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “Behavioral Modification” Collection

The below archive is connected with YEARS worth or research in connection with the MKULTRA CIA Collection.  After years of having a 4 CD-ROM set archived, one researcher by the name of Oscar Diggs, went through and painstakingly put together a list of “missing” documents that were said to be on the CD’s, but were not.

I was given this list by Mr. Diggs in 2016. That began a near 3 year struggle with the CIA just to prove that list was accurate, let alone, getting a copy of the missing pages. Through the course of months that stretched to years, it ultimately took a 97 page fax to the CIA, with an index of every single file on the CD’s, to prove what I was asking for. The CIA had claimed they would give me the documents for FREE, since I already paid for the MKULTRA/Mind Control collection, and was told those documents were on the CD’s.

After proving it — the CIA’s story changed. They then said they were not clear, and the documents I asked for were NOT on the CD’s, and I had to pay for them. When I asked why, they said they were not on “mind control” or “MKULTRA”, but rather, were about “Behavioral Modification.”  I was denied a fee waiver, and was told that I would need to purchase 4,358 pages of documents, which comprised what I had asked for of the “missing” document numbers.

Through the graciousness of the internet, I was able to secure the money, and I wrote the check. After two months of waiting, my check was returned, and the CIA said by letter that the 4,358 was actually 2,316. With this letter, was 800 pages of MKULTRA material that I was never given on the CD’s. Therefore, it appeared, that I was actually correct pushing for records, but for more than two years, the CIA would not believe me.

My check was returned, and the CIA said if I was still interested in the 2,316 remaining pages, that I had to cut a new, lesser amount, check, as if I would lose interest somehow. Of course, I cut the new check, but what happened to the page count? How did so many pages disappear and vanish?  This all means that at least 1,245 pages of MKULTRA / Mind Control / Behavioral Modification documents just vanished from their original quote to me. What I can’t deduce from the CIA’s letter is if these 797 pages released were a part of that original quote, so the number of missing pages could be closer to 2,000!

Regardless of what the answer is, I finally got the remaining documents. As I know they are all digitized CIA, and I requested they be given electronically, the CIA ignored that request and printed out the thousands of pages that you will find linked below. So, I had to sit down, remove the staples and alligator clips, and begin scanning. Once completed, I went through each document and offered a date (if readable/available) file size, and a brief description. This is not meant to be a “complete” index, as the documents many times go into greater detail than my brief description. But, I do hope it offers a starting point.

Additional Note: The CIA claimed the remaining 2,316 pages were NOT related to MKULTRA, which is why I had to pay for them. However, document C00017440, was 821 pages entirely on MKULTRA. That consists of more than $80 of the fees I had to pay! Although possibly an oversight, this was the absolute icing on the frustration cake that has endured for years. 

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Judicial Watch files open records request asking USPS to disclose social media monitoring documents

Judicial Watch Announced Monday that it filed an open records request against the United States Postal Service, asking the organization to produce documents on its alleged tracking of social media posts regarding protests.

The conservative judicial watchdog group originally filed the suit on April 28 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The group asked for all documents related to the tracking and collecting of Americans’ social media posts through its Internet Covert Operations Program, according to The Epoch Times.

The FOIA is specifically looking for communication records between the USPS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Department of Homeland Security from Jan.1, 2020. 

“Did the Biden administration weaponize the United States Postal Service to improperly spy on Americans?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton asked in a statement Monday.

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