Tag: secrecy

Secret Epstein settlement with Prince Andrew accuser to be made public

A secret Jeffrey Epstein settlement that Prince Andrew believes should protect him against a sex-assault lawsuit is going to be made public, two judges ruled this week.

Late pedophile Epstein signed the deal in 2009 with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the longtime accuser who is now suing Andrew, 61, for allegedly having sex with her three times when she was 17.

The UK royal’s legal team has insisted the civil settlement — which has remained under seal — also shields him and others “from any and all liability” that stem from Giuffre’s accusations.

On Tuesday, Manhattan federal Judges Loretta Preska and Lewis Kaplan signed a joint order outlining plans to make public the document that Andrew’s team submitted in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“Mr. Epstein, as is well known, is deceased. The Document is well known to Ms. Giuffre,” the judges wrote, noting it has also “been available to all parties in this case for some time.”

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US National Archives Releases Additional 1,491 Documents on John F. Kennedy Assassination

The US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said on Wednesday it released an additional 1,491 declassified records related to the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy.

The US government over the next year will continue to review 14,000 previously withheld records to determine if any additional records should be made available to the public, however, certain records will be withheld if there is a strong reason to do so, according to the release.

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Delaware Supreme Court Demands Answers on Biden’s Hidden Senate Documents – 1850 Boxes of Records!

Judicial Watch this week announced that the Delaware Supreme Court ruled the University of Delaware must provide more answers on Joe Biden’s hidden Senate documents.

The University of Delaware refuses to release Biden’s records and said that the papers will not be released until two years after Biden retires.

“The collection of former Vice President Biden’s senatorial papers is still being processed, with many items yet to be cataloged,” an email from a school spokeswoman said. “The entire collection will remain closed to the public until two years after Mr. Biden retires from public life.”

Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation initially filed a FOIA lawsuit in 2020 for all of Biden’s senate records – 1,850 boxes of records.

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Here’s Why The Government is Not Letting You See the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial

The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite who stands accused of procuring young girls for the sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, began last week.

Though the mainstream media has not focused as heavily on this case as other high-profile trials in recent months, the proceedings have certainly not been forgotten by the general public. But much to the chagrin of that public, the trial will not be filmed.

Some have even painted this fact in a conspiratorial light, a tint that has surrounded much of the story around Epstein, his death, and now Maxwell’s trial.

More specifically, many believe high-ranking officials across multiple governments and celebrities were caught up in the sex ring Epstein allegedly ran, and that the powers that be within our government are invested in preventing these details from coming to light.

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Minnesota Public School District Tried To Charge Concerned Parents More Than $900,000 For Records

A public school district in Minnesota told a law firm representing concerned parents that it could cost upwards of $901,121.15 to complete a government records request, according to communications obtained by the Daily Caller.

An attorney at Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson in Minneapolis sent a Government Data Practices Act Request to the interim superintendent at Rochester Public School District in Minnesota on Sept. 20. The request was made on behalf of “Equality in Education,” a concerned parents association.

The request asked the Rochester Public School District to release information on the development of curriculum, conferences, or seminars for teachers and students related to “equity and social justice topics often referred to as Critical Race Theory.”

The request called for records dating back to Jan. 2020 in elementary, middle, and high school, according to the Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson letter. Specific words that the group was concerned about included “equity, social justice, cultural competency, race, intersectionality, or CRT.” Many of these concepts are linked to the core tenets of Critical Race Theory.

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FDA Asks Court for 55 Years to Fully Release Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Data

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked a federal judge on Nov. 15 to give it until the year 2076 to fully release the documents in its possession tied to the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA’s request was made in a filing as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by a medical transparency group. The government told the court it has 329,000 pages of documents responsive to the FOIA request and proposed releasing 500 pages per month to allow for redactions of exempt material. At that rate, the FDA would fully release the records in question in just under 55 years.

The plaintiff, Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), is a group of doctors and scientists, including Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

The group filed the lawsuit (pdf) after the FDA denied their request to expedite the release of the records. The plaintiff and the defendant, unable to reach an agreement on a disclosure schedule, are seeking a hearing to argue their cases before the judge, who may eventually make a decision in that regard.

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Stop Protecting Presidents from History

The media continues to treat former President Barack Obama as a champion of transparency, but his presidential library is looking like a huge bait-and-switch. Obama raised hundreds of millions for a grandiose library in south Chicago – except that it was revealed two years ago that it wouldn’t actually be a library. At the end of the Obama administration, 30 million pages of documents from his presidency were shipped to a former retail store near Chicago. Come to find out, the Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit organization, will control the official records of his time in office, rather than the National Archives and Records Administration, which administers all other presidential libraries. Rather than opening the files to the public and researchers, the Obama Foundation will eventually digitize the records. This could result in even worse delays than George W. Bush sought to finagle. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow warned, “The absence of a true Obama presidential library will have the effect of discouraging serious and potentially critical research into the Obama presidency.”

There are plenty of reasons to expect excessive secrecy from both Trump and from Biden, who kept his Senate records locked up during his presidential run. In 2011, Biden was treated like a civic saint when he donated 1,875 boxes of documents from his U.S. Senate career to the University of Delaware. The National Endowment for Humanities gave a grant to help curate the collection, and the deal between Biden and the library was that the documents would remain sealed until “two years after Biden retires from public office.” Biden retired as Vice President in January 2017. Instead of releasing the information to the public, the library announced just before Biden launched his presidential campaign that secrecy would continue until two years after Biden “retires from public life.” Biden in 2019 justified keeping all his Senate records locked up during the campaign because “the idea that they would all be made public in the fact while I was running for public office, they could be really taken out of context.” It is unknown whether Biden’s Senate records contained any bombshells as explosive as his son Hunter’s laptop (which the media raced to defuse before Election Day).

Prerogatives for perpetual presidential secrecy are more akin to royalty than to a republic. Presidential libraries, which cost taxpayers $100 million a year, become lavish taxpayer-funded mausoleums where public records are mostly buried in perpetuity. As New York University history professor Jonathan Zimmerman wrote in 2015, “Why should each president get his own library? Multiple libraries are wasteful… And they’re undemocratic, because they allow our presidents – not the people who elected them – to define their legacies.” Zimmerman recommended putting all presidential records in a single library.

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