Tag: foia

Former Dem ‘super mayor’ pleads the Fifth after failing to produce public records in court

A Chicago suburb’s former Democratic “super mayor” is facing yet another legal hurdle after failing to produce public records from her time in office after being held in contempt of court earlier this month.  

In a hearing on Friday, Tiffany Henyard’s attorney Beau Bridley pleaded the Fifth on his client’s behalf after she was ordered to hand over public records from her time in office.

“The smear campaign against Tiffany Henyard, which began while she was in office, continues even now that she is out of office,” Bridley said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Bridley conceded that the former mayor does not have the requested document, with an Illinois judge allowing Henyard’s legal team to submit an affidavit in its place. 

“The mayor has no document that the plaintiff seeks,” Bridley said. “This matter is going to be resolved with a simple affidavit. The whole hearing was much ado about nothing.”

The hearing stems from a lawsuit filed by the Edgar County Watchdogs Inc., after the organization sued Henyard and the Village of Dolton for failing to produce financial records after the documents were requested under the Freedom of Information Act. 

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US outpost not given proper air defenses before deadly attack

For three years the United States has been giving Ukraine everything it needs by way of offensive and defensive weapons in its war with Russia. Critically, this has included air defense systems, much of it taken from our own national stockpiles.

Now it turns out that our own troops may have been denied access to anti-drone air defense systems and more sophisticated radar detection months before a lethal attack on a small American outpost in Jordan on Jan. 18, 2024. The drone assault, reportedly launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia group, resulted in the deaths of three American Army soldiers.

According to the Washington Post, which obtained access to the massive Army internal investigation of the incident through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the small outpost was ill-prepared for the attack on a number of levels. But this is key:

The investigation’s findings appear to have some contradictions. For instance, investigators faulted Tower 22’s leaders for failing to “visualize risk” and not appreciating the likelihood of an attack.

Yet commanders above them also failed to envision the base’s vulnerability. Four months before the attack, Army Central, which oversees operations throughout the Middle East, denied a request for an air defense system capable of shooting down drones because, investigators found, only one such system was available and troops in the United States needed it to prepare for deployments. A request for a radar system that could better detect drones also was denied, the report said.

The only counter-drone defenses at Tower 22 were electronic warfare systems designed to disable the aircraft or disrupt their path to a target, according to the investigation and previous reporting by The Post.

A spokesperson for Army Central did not respond to repeated requests for additional information, including regarding who at Army Central denied Tower 22’s appeal for an air defense system.

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“Complete Corruption”: Michigan’s Far-Left Atty General Dana Nessel Accused of Illegal Prosecution Against her 2022 GOP Opponent Matt DePerno, Criminal Violations of FOIA

The Democrat who ran for re-election as Michigan’s Attorney General in 2022, far-left Dana Nessel, has been prosecuting her Republican opponent, Matt DePerno, because he tried to investigate voter fraud by getting access to a Dominion Voting machine.

“This is what lawfare looks like: an unconstitutional appointment of a political ally to persecute a political opponent. Illegal funding. All to attack your former opponent,” said Matt DePerno

Michigan’s far-left Attorney General Dana Nessel is currently still prosecuting the 2020 Trump electors, as well as also engaged in, critics say, another outrageous abuse of power to punish her former GOP opponent, Matt DePerno, through what many believe is a blatantly unlawful prosecution.

DePerno, who challenged Nessel in the 2022 election, is currently facing charges stemming from his involvement in the investigation of election equipment in the aftermath of the 2020 election. His investigation was authorized pursuant to a court order in the case of Bailey v Antrim County and Jocelyn Benson. But in legal filings DePerno’s legal team is asking the court to dismiss the charges outright—arguing that Nessel and her office have violated multiple statutes, constitutional provisions, and budgetary laws in orchestrating a political vendetta.

DePerno is specifically charged with “unauthorized access to voting machines.” This stems from the Bailey case where DePerno successfully proved vulnerabilities and susceptibility to election results and equipment being administered remotely and anonymously through an open VPN.

At the core of DePerno’s motion is Nessel’s unprecedented maneuver to hand-pick Muskegon County Prosecutor Dale “DJ” Hilson—a political ally and rumored successor—as “Special Prosecutor” to go after DePerno.

Hilson is the Prosecutor who has repeatedly refused to bring charges against GBI Strategies and the notorious Muskegon Voter Registration Fraud run by the far-left company. Nessel ‘took over’ the investigation from the City of Muskegon, only to quietly terminate and cancel the investigation, lying to the public when she said it had been handed off to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. DJ Hilson, who was also on the 2020 ballot to serve as Muskegon County Prosecutor which he won apparently did not want results of the election reviewed and therefore put the GBI fraud investigation on ice.

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Judicial Watch Files Suit Against DHS For Records On Trump Assassination Attempt In Butler, Pa.

Judicial Watch has announced a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records related to security provided during President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt. 

On Tuesday, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the DHS for records related to security provided for the July 13th, 2024, rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which there was an assassination attempt on Trump.

They stated that they have previously obtained records related to the event, including the Butler County District Attorney’s Office’s records on preparations for the rally and body-camera footage from the Butler Township police department. 

However, the group said that its efforts to obtain records and data from the federal government have gone unanswered.

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FOIA Requests Target Biden Administration’s Financial Surveillance

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has proceeded with filing a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Treasury Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The goal is to receive relevant information regarding the Biden administration’s alleged weaponization of government and censorship.

This is yet another attempt to shed light on how third-party groups and organizations were used to circumvent a number of constitutional prohibitions.

ADF’s focus this time is on the previous administration’s policy of using the issue of domestic extremism to, in fact, negatively affect its political opponents – in the cases brought up in these FOIA requests, via access to financial records of US conservatives.

An iteration of the Big Government-Big Tech collusion, which has been investigated by Congress, this one is about Big Governments and Big Banks suspected of having worked together to achieve political goals. But not always by collaborating directly – and this is one of the aspects ADF wants to understand better.

Namely – the involvement of private organizations and businesses hired (“outsourced”) in one way or another, to help banks identify what were designated to be purveyors of misinformation, and domestic extremism.

The FOIAs also aim to reveal the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) role in flagging what are said to be “conservative-coded” transactions (the keywords here are reported to be, “Trump,” “MAGA”, etc.)

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‘Maximally transparent’ DOGE now tells federal court its records are ‘not subject to FOIA’ requests 

While standing next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office earlier this month, billionaire Elon Musk, the de facto head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claimed that his team had been “maximally transparent” as the Trump administration seeks to gut the federal workforce. But in recent court filings, the government said it will not provide DOGE records to the public under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, claiming that the organization is exempt from the law.

Justice Department attorneys on Thursday filed court documents in connection with a FOIA lawsuit in Washington, D.C., wherein they state that Trump’s executive order redesignated the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service, removing the organization from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make it a “free-standing component of the Executive Office of the President.”

As such, the government claimed that DOGE is “not subject to FOIA.”

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FOIA-Released Emails Mention Alleged Triangular UAP Photo; Former UAP Task Force Director Speaks Out

Newly released documents obtained by The Black Vault through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) under case 21-F-0299 reveal email exchanges within the Department of Defense (DoD) discussing a photograph reportedly showing a triangular Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) emerging from the ocean. The FOIA request was originally filed in December 2020. Along with these documents, John “Jay” Stratton, former Director of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), has now spoken exclusively to The Black Vault about this claim, offering brand-new clarification that no such photograph depicting a triangular craft emerging from the ocean was ever received by the UAPTF.

The long-rumored photograph in question gained significant attention following a December 2020 article by The Debrief, which described an “extremely clear” image of a large triangular object with rounded edges and white spherical lights in each corner. According to the article, the photograph was allegedly taken in 2019 by an F/A-18 fighter pilot after the object emerged from the ocean and ascended vertically. The story quickly became one of the most talked-about pieces of evidence that the DoD was allegedly withholding, with references by public figures such as Luis Elizondo which fueled widespread discussion across social media.

The FOIA-released emails, dated December 3 and 4, 2020, show internal communication within the DoD discussing The Debrief article. In one email addressed to Susan Gough (her name is redacted in the “to:” line but not in the body of the email), someone (name redacted) from the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (DCNO) office states, “Jay [Stratton] tells me the photo is part of the active investigation, so it would probably be withheld from release for that reason.”

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FDA Misled The Judiciary About Pfizer’s Vaccine Documents

On December 6, 2024, a federal judge ordered the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release documents related to the emergency use authorisation of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. These documents had been hidden from public view.

The legal battle traces back to September 2021, when attorney Aaron Siri filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on behalf of the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency. The plaintiffs sought access to the vast trove of documents the FDA relied on to approve Pfizer’s vaccine.

Initially, the FDA proposed a slow release schedule. In November 2021, the agency stated it would release just 500 pages per month—a pace that would have stretched the full disclosure process to 75 years. 

However, in January 2022, District Judge Mark Pittman of Texas rejected the FDA’s proposal, ordering the agency to expedite its release to 55,000 pages per month, aiming to complete the disclosure of all 450,000 pages by August 2022.

As the documents trickled out, researchers began uncovering glaring gaps that prevented a systematic review of the data. These gaps fueled suspicions about what else the FDA might be withholding. 

It became evident that the FDA had withheld records directly tied to its emergency use authorisation of Pfizer’s vaccine, estimated to be over one million pages. 

These documents, which the FDA had full knowledge of, were excluded from earlier disclosures, effectively misleading the judiciary and undermining public trust.

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Indiana Police Refuse FOIA Request for Video Evidence in Shooting of January 6th Patriot by Sheriff’s Deputy

As reported earlier, a J6 political prisoner pardoned by Trump was killed by an Indiana police officer over the weekend.

FOX 32 Chicago reported at 4:15 p.m. local time Sunday that 42-year-old Matthew W. Huttle of Hobart, Indiana, was stopped by a Jasper County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop near the Pulaski County line.  Police say the deputy attempted to arrest Huttle after stopping him, but the civilian resisted.

The officer responded by firing his weapon and killing Huttle following a supposed fight.

Investigative journalist Yehuda Miller and The Gateway Pundit reached out to Jasper County Sheriff Williamson following the news of the deadly shooting. We FOIAed video of the incident from the police cameras.

Sheriff Williamson told us that because this was an open investigation, he would not release the footage!

The video will only be released when the investigation is completed.

“This is an open investigation by the Indiana State Police. In the near future when this investigation has been completed, we will provide video footage via our Jasper County Sheriff Website for you to view,” Sheriff Williamson told Miller.

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FAA Emails Shed Light on UAP Tracking Amid Chinese Balloon Scare

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in May 2023 by The Black Vault, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released 129 pages of documents concerning emails sent to and from Michael Freie, a technical advisor in the FAA’s Air Traffic Surveillance Services Office.

The request, FOIA case 2024-04951, sought communications containing keywords such as “Unidentified Aerial,” “Unidentified Flying,” “UAP,” “UFO,” and related terms.

The FOIA request stemmed from Mr. Freie’s involvement as a speaker at NASA’s Public UAP Meeting held on May 31, 2023. Known for his expertise in air traffic surveillance, Freie has served as a critical figure within the FAA, providing insights into the systems monitoring U.S. airspace and their limitations. During the meeting, he delivered a detailed explanation of how the FAA monitors civilian airspace and the ongoing challenges in identifying and tracking objects that deviate from typical flight behaviors.

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