FOIA News: Feds ask for 27-month extension to process emails of Clinton aides

State Department seeks 2-year-plus delay in suit for Clinton aides’ emails

By Josh Gerstein, Politico, June 30, 2016

Citing the agency's own errors in the handling of a request for emails of four former aides to Hillary Clinton, the State Department is asking a federal judge to extend the deadline to complete processing of the records by more than two years.

Justice Department lawyers notified U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras on Wednesday that State will be unable to meet the court-ordered deadline of July 21 in the lawsuit the conservative group Citizens United brought earlier this year seeking emails ex-State Department officials Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Melanne Verveer and Michael Fuchs exchanged with individuals at the Clinton Foundation or a firm with ties to the Clintons, Teneo Consulting.

The government lawyers asked Contreras to give State an additional 27 months— until October 2018—to finish work on the request, processing documents at a rate of about 500 pages a month.

Read more here. 
 

Court opinions issued July 27 & 28, 2016

June 28, 2016

Bayala v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Sec. (D.C. Cir.) -- reversing district court's decision that plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, because the agency decision that plaintiff did not administratively appeal before filing suit was abandoned in part and modified in part by the agency in litigation. 

Wilson v. U.S. Dep't of Justice (D.D.C.) -- finding that the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys properly relied upon Exemption 7(C) to protect third-party information in plaintiff's criminal case file, but declining to grant summary judgment because EOUSA's declaration failed to establish that a reasonable search had been performed.

June 27, 2016

Reedom v. Soc. Sec. Admin. (D.D.C.) -- dismissing suit against three agencies because plaintiff failed to submit proper authorization forms, failed to pay fees, failed to reasonably describe records sought, failed to submit administrative appeals, or failed to wait 20 days for appeal response before filing suit.   

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.  

FOIA News: State Department's FOIA backlog getting worse

Amid Clinton email mess, State Department FOIA backlog surges

By Josh Gerstein, Politico, June 29, 2016

The State Department's backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests has surged to an all-time high in the wake of the disclosure of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, according to newly disclosed figures.

About 29,000 FOIA requests are currently pending at State, up from a little under 22,000 last September, State FOIA official Eric Stein said in a court filing this week.

The number of FOIA lawsuits against State also continues to climb, and stood at 106 as of Monday, Stein said. That's up from 73 a little over a year ago — a time when State was already complaining that it was struggling under "a crushing workload."

State provided the numbers to U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg on Monday as the diplomatic agency resisted a bid by the Republican National Committee to speed up the disclosure of emails that 14 top State Department officials during Clinton's tenure sent to or received from accounts at a dozen web domains associated with the former secretary, former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

Read more here.
 

FOIA News: The ABA Journal on the FOIA's 50th anniversary

50 years later, Freedom of Information Act still chipping away at government's secretive culture

By David L. Hudson, ABA Journal, July 1, 2016 ed.  

On Independence Day 50 years ago, President Lyndon Baines Johnson reluctantly signed into law the Freedom of Information Act. President Johnson thought it was terrible legislation and considered a veto after it was passed by Congress. He signed the bill into law on his Texas ranch instead of at a celebratory event at the White House.

Johnson’s comments at the low-key signing ceremony at the ranch illustrated his mixed feelings about the new law. “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society,” he said. “I have always believed that freedom of information is so vital that only the national security, not the desire of public officials or private citizens, should determine when it must be restricted. At the same time, the welfare of the nation or the rights of individuals may require that some documents not be made available. As long as threats to peace exist, for example, there must be military secrets.”

Johnson’s comments still describe the ongoing tension between the commitment to disclosure of government information to members of the press and public measured against the governmental inclination to withhold information, most often on grounds of national security.

Read more here. 

Q&A: appealing the G-man

Q.  With an FBI appeal response of " Only partial records will be disclosed . . . further disclosure might jeopardize operational procedures," I was directed to contact the OGIS division of the National Archives, and failing that, litigate in U.S. District Court.  Is there any other way I might expedite this process?

A.  If you have exhausted the administrative appeals process, you are entitled to file a lawsuit immediately; you are not required to mediate your dispute via OGIS.  Alternatively, you can submit a request for reconsideration of your appeal.  Although requesters are not entitled by law to seek reconsideration, in my experience the Department of Justice will adjudicate them.    

FOIA News: Judicial Watch obtains more Clinton emails

More Clinton emails released, including some she deleted

By Michael Biesecker  & Stephen Braun, AP, Jun. 27, 2016

An additional 165 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton's time at the State Department surfaced Monday, including nearly three dozen that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee failed to hand over last year that were sent through her private server.

The latest emails were released under court order by the State Department to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. The batch includes 34 new emails Clinton exchanged through her private account with her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. The aide, who also had a private email account on Clinton's home server, later gave her copies to the government.

The emails were not among the 55,000 pages of work-related messages that Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. They include a March 2009 message where the then-secretary of state discusses how her official records would be kept.

"I have just realized I have no idea how my papers are treated at State," Clinton wrote to Abedin and a second aide. "Who manages both my personal and official files? ... I think we need to get on this asap to be sure we know and design the system we want."

Read more here.

Court opinion issued June 24, 2016

Elec. Privacy Info. Ctr. v. U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (D.D.C.) -- granting in part and denying in part government's summary judgment motion in case involving the Hemisphere Project, a mass telephone surveillance program.  The court found that the DEA: (1) conducted a reasonable search for documents addressing the privacy impact of the program; (2) properly withheld a draft legal memorandum under the deliberative process privilege, rejecting plaintiff's "meritless argument" that the memo represented the agency's final policy; (3) properly withheld a preliminary assessment of the program under the attorney work-product privilege; (4) failed to submit sufficient evidence to establish that Exemption 7(D) protects that identities of private companies that assist in the operation of the program; and (5) failed to show that Exemption (7)(E) protects (a) the names of private companies that assist with the program's operation, (b) documents that reveal how the DEA secures cooperation of entities instrumental to program's operation, or (c) the names of other law enforcement agencies with access to the program data.

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.  

FOIA News: Sunlight Foundation on 7 ways to improve FOIA

7 ideas to make the Freedom of Information Act better

By Alex Howard, Sunlight Foundation, June 24, 2016

1. Ask requestors for feedback
2. Post contact information
3. Pick up the phone
4. Increase funding for FOIA staff
5. Make better FOIA software
6. Train FOIA officers
7. Open the data, proactively disclose it

Read the entire post here.

FOIA News: MuckRock serves up more CIA cafeteria complaints

CIA Cafeteria Complaints II: Stale Bread Harder

“It actually looked like melted chocolate, or something else I won’t bother mention.”

By JPat Brown, MuckRock, June 24, 2016

After the tremendous response to our 2014 piece on the CIA’s cafeteria complaints, Michael Morisy immediately filed a follow-up FOIA for the most current copy. Two years and a switch to a far inferior food service contractor later, it’s finally arrived.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued June 21, 2016

Platsky v. Food & Drug Admin. (2nd Cir.) (summary order) -- affirming district court's ruling that the FDA conducted an adequate search for requested records.  

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.