#FOIA
Director at
@WashingtonPost
. Lawyer. Fellow at
@NSArchive
. Author of Revealing Records column. Wrote book on 1983 Able Archer Nuclear War Scare.
📷Revealing records: A
@washingtonpost
FOIA request uncovered these photos of President Barack Obama laughing at a meme of himself the day after Osama bin Laden was killed.
.
@washingtonpost
has just sued the Secret Service and State in a
#FOIA
lawsuit for failing to produce Secret Service spending data at Trump properties in response to
@Fahrenthold
and
@partlowj
FOIAs .
A city outsources all its public records operations to an outside law firm. You ask for the contract with that outside law firm. The outside law firm writes back claiming the contract can't be found and closes the request. 🫠
PRETTY EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE: That I have been hired as the
#FOIA
Director for the
@washingtonpost
. I'll be based in the Investigative Unit and helping the entire newsroom pry loose our public information with FOIAs. Should be fun.
D.C. passed a law to make police officers’ disciplinary records public. The Post requested the records of an officer accused of misconduct under D.C. FOIA. The police fought against release, lost in court, and paid a high price.
LOTS of info about where your tax dollars went via PPP in this HUGE
#FOIA
win. Gov did not want you to know how $$$ was spent, fought kicking and screaming to keep these numbers secret. But
@WashPost
and 10 other news orgs won. 😎
Dox obtained by
#FOIA
show that more than 500 retired US military personnel—including scores of generals and admirals—have taken lucrative jobs working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses by
@CraigMWhitlock
and me.
NEW: The Secret Service paid
@realdonaldtrump
’s DC hotel $33,000 to rent one room for 137 straight days in 2017.
The reason? Treasury Sec. Mnuchin lived in his boss’s hotel for months, and the Secret Service needed to be near him.
These photos — like all internal government records — are powerful because they help reveal what actually happened, not just the view that officials present.
Read the back story in the first installment of my new column, Revealing Records: (No paywall!)
NEW: The
@statedept
says it has 450 pages of records showing government payments to
@realdonaldtrump
's businesses.
But it's only going to release 2 pages before the election.
HOW WE DID IT: 🧵on how
@CraigMWhitlock
, our team at The Post, and I won our two-year
#FOIA
battle for the release of documents showing that more than 500 retired military personnel were hired by foreign countries including Saudi Arabia, Libya,+ the UAE.
More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation.
SBA loses again in effort to hide PPP loan data. Judge rules must release all PPP loan data by Dec. 1 in response to
@washingtonpost
and other news orgs
#FOIA
lawsuit.
This is quick and dirty, but here is a video of all of the 900+ White House photos of the day bin Laden died that the
@washingtonpost
won via a
#FOIA
.
Congratulations, Nate Jones, J.D.!
For four years, he did law school part time while working full time. Today he graduated. Couldn't be prouder.
@FOIANate
@UDCLaw
As the person who wrote this article, I'm glad to see
@kenklippenstein
and
@bethbourdon
suing to end the improper constructive denial of public records about surveillance of George Floyd protests! And thanks for reading and sharing!
It took a two-year FOIA lawsuit by The Post to tell this "Foreign Servants" story of generals attempting to cash in their US military experience to profit in Azerbaijan in retirement. Below are the documents the story is based upon. w/
@CraigMWhitlock
.
A
#FOIA
I filed to the Obama Presidential Library the first day it started taking requests led to the release of a trove of previously unreleased photos taken the day bin Laden was killed.
"The purpose of FOIA is to open up federal agencies to public scrutiny. But officials determined to thwart the spirit of the law can drag out requests for years, hoping requesters will eventually give up."
Looks likely some new Trump/Ukraine dox are going to come out thanks to NYT
#FOIA
lawsuit (unless DOJ appeals). Gov must update the court on April 12 and it looks like the court will set a production schedule then.
New: Ginni Thomas didn't email just two Arizona lawmakers, urging them to "choose" presidential electors to help overturn Trump's defeat. She emailed 29 of them, records show.
What do you want us to uncover next? Have a question about FOIA?
Let me know in the replies, in the comments or in an email: revealingrecords
@washpost
.com 📷
And sign up to +Follow me here so you are the first to know:
Just came across this (again) in FOIA files...White House staffers drank $1,000 worth of liquor at Mar-a-Lago,
@realdonaldtrump
’s club.
Reader, the taxpayers paid!
#FOIA
REMINDER: When requesting dox via FOIA always say "mention" not "pertain to" or similar. Some agencies try really hard to not have to search for records. :( h/t
@_rshapiro
@_LightLaw
Great story: Rep. Lauren Boebert's campaign reimbursed her $22K for mileage, which means she drove 38,712 miles despite having no publicly advertised events in March, April or July, and only one in May. via
@denverpost
BREAKING: D.C. Circuit has reversed the D.C. District Court decision in
@rcfp
&
@jasonleopold
’s lawsuit to increase public access to electronic surveillance court records. The case will be sent back to lower court for further consideration.
Full opinion:
Remember when DOJ OIP derisively called
@JasonLeopold
a "
#FOIA
Terrorist" and tried to find ways to stop replying to his FOIAs by fighting his "news media status?"
@FOIAPost
BOOM: Capitol Police is not subject to
#FOIA
so
@BuzzFeedNews
& I are using another tool to lift the veil of secrecy & gain access to a wide range of docs about the inner workings of the police force: the common law right of access. NEW lawsuit just filed
We asked. We FOIAed. We sued. We spent 8 months trying to get
@StateDept
to release records on its payments to Trump properties.
They wouldn’t.
Here’s how we got them anyway.
With
@thedeadhandbook
, Declassified NSA document reports Soviet air force “preparations for the immediate use of nuclear weapons" during Able Archer 83.
Here's an example of why it's important to file
#FOIA
requests for the same document with several different agencies
On the right is a redacted document related to Jan 6 I received from FBI last month. On the left is the same document I received yesterday from DC govt
Wow.
@a_marshall_plan
just flagged for me that
@ewarren
has introduced a bill that would create a robust public interest balancing test for
#FOIA
. So she now pretty much has my vote.
#1issuevoter
Just in time for
#Sunshineweek
.... the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (
@PFFAOfficial
) has responded to my
#FOIA
for the FOUO report about the chicken that snuck onto Pentagon grounds. Shoutout
@AWLAArlington
.
State Department downgrades
#FOIA
Reading Room. State changed its platform so that search results are now inexplicably "unsortable." What is the point of uploading so much metadata only to stop allowing your users from using it?!
@FOIA_Ombuds
@HistoryAtState
#twitterstorians
And here is the Post's motion, filed today, pointing out that State's head of
#FOIA
Eric Stein told the court that State "aspire[d] to process" 300 pages by October 15. It produced just two.
Holy crap! This is on Air Force online
#FOIA
portal! It looks like AF is trying to get requesters to tic a box so they either give up their appeal rights(!) and/or so AF can pad stats by calling denials "releases"! Is this OK
@FOIA_Ombuds
?!
And even better, I will become a fellow at the
@NSArchive
, where I have spent the ten best years of my life. In what free time I'll have (heh!) I'll continue waiting for my FOIAs to trickle in (YES STILL INTERESTED! DONT ASK!) and researching and writing on the 1983 War Scare.
SCOOP: Trump filed
#FOIA
requests w/IRS on June 14 & 28, 2019 seeking a wide-range of docs about IRS's behind-the-scenes deliberations over releasing his taxes to Congress
He said he was willing to pay up to $30K
I FOIA'd Trump's FOIAs
w/
@laurapdavison
After filed a complaint with the Texas AG, the law firm representing the city of Uvalde was miraculously able to find this "engagement letter." Looks like the city paid a PR firm $80 gs for least ten weeks of work (at least).
#FOIA
#ALWAYSAPPEAL
A city outsources all its public records operations to an outside law firm. You ask for the contract with that outside law firm. The outside law firm writes back claiming the contract can't be found and closes the request. 🫠
In 2019 Ambassador William Taylor Jr. told congress he wrote "a memo for the record dated June 30 that summarized our conversation with President Zelenskyy." I
#FOIA
ed. Two years later State said it had no records. I appealed. Now it says the record is denied as B5 deliberative.
I'm glad NOAA has released 9 tranches of emails about "sharpiegate" -when Trump wrongly claimed hurricane was headed for Alabama and a map was altered w a sharpie- But the public would have been much better served if these dox had been released within 20 days, as required by law.