Court opinion issued October 30, 2017

Emanuel v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- finding that the Federal Bureau of Prisons properly relied on Exemption 7(C) to redact third party names from incident report.

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here. 

FOIA News: George Papadopoulos Waives FOIA Rights

Special Counsel’s Office Suggests Guilty Plea In The Russia Investigation Is Just The Beginning

By Chris Geidner, BuzzFeed, Oct. 30, 2017

"Your Honor, the criminal justice interest being vindicated here is there's a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part," Aaron Zelinsky — a lawyer working for Mueller's investigation — said at an Oct. 5 hearing detailing George Papadopoulos's guilty plea to one count of making false statements.

The question arose when US District Judge Randolph Moss asked Zelinsky to explain what interests would justify the court allowing Papadopoulos to waive his rights to seek information about the government's case against him under the Freedom of Information Act.
...
Robert Stanley, Papadopoulos's lawyer, said that Papadopoulos "at this time has no intention of issuing FOIA requests," and the parties eventually agreed to a provision that would limit Papadopoulos from filing any FOIA request during the pendency of Mueller's investigation.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Watchdogs petition for "Release to One" rulemaking

Transparency Groups: Finalize “Release to One, Release to All” FOIA Policy

Cause of Action Institute press release, Oct. 31, 2017

Cause of Action Institute and Sunlight Foundation file petition to advance rule that would promote broad disclosure of agency records

Washington, DC – Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) today joined the Sunlight Foundation in filing a petition for rulemaking demanding the Trump administration move forward with a rule to promote government transparency and broad public disclosure of agency records. The “Release to One, Release to All” rule, first proposed by the Obama administration, mandates that agencies make records produced in response to Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests also publicly available on the agencies’ websites, with certain limited exceptions. CoA Institute also led a broad coalition of government transparency organizations in sending a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) and Department of Justice Office of Information Policy urging action to finalize the rule.

Read more here.

FOIA News: State Department asked to focus on Clinton emails and FOIA backlog

Trump wants State Department to release remaining Clinton emails

By Gloria Borger, Evan Perez & Marshall Cohen, CNN, Oct. 27, 2017

President Donald Trump has made it clear to the State Department that he wants to accelerate the release of any remaining Hillary Clinton emails in its possession as soon as possible, according to three sources familiar with the President's thinking.

This latest move for disclosure from the State Department comes at the same time the President called upon the Justice Department to lift a gag order on a key FBI informant in an investigation into Russian efforts to gain influence in the US uranium industry during the Obama administration.

The sources described the President's interest in the release of the emails -- and the testimony of the FBI informant -- as rooted in a commitment to "transparency," with one source adding that "the law requires cooperation with Congress and the courts."

Read more here.

Court opinions issued Oct. 24, 2017

Ctr. for the Study of Servs. v. HHS (D.C. Cir.) -- reversing district court's order requiring agency to prospectively release health insurance plans, because: (1) agency had not withheld records pursuant to improper practice or policy, (2) agency had not withheld records solely for purposes of delay, and (3) agency was not likely to continue to withhold disputed records in future.

Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dep't of State (D.D.C.) -- granting agency's motion for reconsideration after concluding that information contained within two Hillary Clinton emails pertaining to Benghazi attack were properly protected under Exemption 1.

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here. 

FOIA News: Federal Reserve finalizes changes to FOIA regulations

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System published a rule finalizing proposed changes to the agency's FOIA regulations in today's issue of the Federal Register.  The Board published an interim final rule on December 27, 2016 and accepted public comments through February 27, 2017.  The agency received two comments, including one from the Office of Government Information Services.  In response to OGIS's comment, the Board is adopting a minor change to inform FOIA appellants of the availability of dispute resolution services.  The final rule is effective November 24, 2017.

FOIA News: Media groups, U.S. Senator file amicus briefs at 11th Circuit in FOIA case

News groups ask appeals court to protect Americans' Freedom of Information Act rights

Dan Christensen, Fla. Bulldog, Oct. 24, 2017

Accusing the FBI of years of dishonesty in handling Freedom of Information Act requests, a legion of news organizations and support groups asked a federal appeals court Monday to protect Americans’ rights under the law.

The media’s vigorous arguments were made in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in Florida Bulldog’s recent appeal of a Miami judge’s June 29 ruling that would allow the FBI to keep secret thousands of pages of records about an apparent Saudi support network for the 9/11 hijackers in Sarasota and other information about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

[. . .]

Also filing a brief yesterday was former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee served as co-chair Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11. Graham’s brief asked the appeals judges to reverse Miami U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga’s ruling, citing “pervasive” FBI over-classification of records that “is inappropriate and contrary to consistent findings that over-classification contributed to the U.S.’s inability to detect or disrupt the 9/11 attacks.”

Read more here.

FOIA News: NSA Sought to Use Espionage Act to Prosecute Journalist

NSA wanted to use the Espionage Act to prosecute a journalist for using FOIA

Emma Best, MuckRock, Oct. 24, 2017

Declassified documents in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) archives show that while the CIA was looking to include the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) in its war on leaks, the National Security Agency (NSA) was seriously considering using the Espionage Act to target target Puzzle Palace author James Bamford for using FOIA.

While Bamford has briefly discussed this on a handful of occasions, the declassified memos and briefings from NSA confirm that this was more than just an intimidation tactic or a passing thought - the NSA had truly wanted to jail a journalist for his use of public records. When the Agency determined that this was unlikely to happen, they moved on to exploring other legal avenues which could be used to punish Bamford for his FOIA work.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Government Accountability Project files FOIA lawsuit over "au pair" records

GAP Files FOIA Lawsuit Against US State Department

Zack Kopplin, Gov't Accountability Project, Oct. 24, 2017

On Friday, October 20, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State. The Department has withheld records related to its au pair guest worker program, in some cases, for over a year.

GAP is suing over five distinct requests sent between September 2016 and July 2017. Specifically, GAP requested documents containing the number of abuse complaints reported by au pairs to their sponsor companies and the State Department, hundreds of thousands of pages of data from an Inspector General’s investigation into the program, and documents from Dina Powell, the Trump Administration’s Deputy National Security Advisor, who ran the program as the Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs in the Bush Administration.

These documents could potentially expose a systemic cover-up of abuse including food deprivation, overwork, and harassment, which in specific cases could reach the level of labor trafficking

Read more here.

FOIA News: Court protects two Clinton-Benghazi emails as classified

Judge upholds Trump administration bid to keep Clinton Benghazi documents secret

By Josh Gerstein, Politico, Oct. 24, 2017

A federal judge has upheld the Trump administration's right to withhold two emails from Hillary Clinton's private account that the government contends contain classified information about the U.S. response to the Benghazi attack.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson had previously ordered the two emails to be released to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch concluding that the records did not qualify for the deliberative process protection the government had claimed for them.

The messages from Sept.13, 2012 — two days after the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi — both have the subject line: "Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt."

However, the State Department said it made a mistake by not flagging classified information in the two messages and asked the judge to reverse her prior order. On Tuesday, she agreed.

Read more here.