FOIA News: Biden objects to release of 2017 audio

Biden seeks to block DOJ release of 2017 audio, court filing says

Heritage Foundation FOIA request could produce transcripts and audio from Biden's 2017 book sessions by Tuesday

By Eric Mack, Fox News, May 10, 2026

President Joe Biden's lawyers are expected to object to the Justice Department's release of redacted written transcripts and audio recordings of Biden's 2017 interactions with his book ghostwriter, according to a new court filing.

"President Biden, through counsel, has advised the Department that he intends to seek to intervene to prevent any such disclosures," Assistant Attorney General Civil Division Brett Shumate wrote in a filing from a Freedom of Information Act request from the Heritage Foundation's Mike Howell. "The Department does not oppose intervention."

There is a Tuesday deadline for Biden's lawyers to respond to the DOJ's release for a response to Howell's FOIA request, which would come shortly after Tuesday if there was no objection.

Read more here.

FOIA News: More FY 2025 stats

On May 7, 2026, the Department of Justice announced that it had posted agency FOIA data from their annual FOIA reports for fiscal year 2025 (see FOIA Advisor’s earlier post). Below are some of the key metrics available on the DOJ-run website FOIA.gov.

Requests received: 1,707,197, up 13.7% from 1,501,432 in FY 2024

Top 5 recipients (same order as in FY 2024)

1. Dep’t of Homeland Sec.: 1,019,496

2. Dep’t of Justice: 159,743

3. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs: 124,435

4. Dep’t of Def.: 77,423

5. Dep’t of Health & Human Serv.: 55,006

Requests processed: 1,635,055, up 9% from 1,499,265 in FY 2024

Backlogged requests: 339,671, up 28.2% from 264,816 in FY 2024

Notable increases

• Office of Personnel Mgmt.: 698% (207 to 1652)

• Office of Mgmt. & Budget: 150.6% (909 to 2278)

• Dep’t of Veterans Affairs: 130.6% (1539 to 3549)

• Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau: 123.9% (142 to 318)

• U.S. Agency for Int’l Dev.: 88.7% (593 to 1119)

• Dep’t of Education: 85.9% (2458 to 4570)

Appeals received: 32,059, up from 20,115 in FY 2024

Appeals processed: 23,108, up from 18,575 in FY 2024

Backlogged appeals: Total not available

Total costs: $661,394,858, down 8.5% from 723,415,561 in FY 2024

• Processing costs: $610,670,216

• Litigation-related costs: $50,724,642

Total No. of Full Time FOIA Staff: 4823, down 14.3% from 5628

Total amount of fees collected: 2,511,193, up from 2,434,243 in FY 2024

FOIA News: Feds received 1.7 million requests in FY 2025, reports DOJ

Agency Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report Data Published on FOIA.gov

DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, May 7, 2026

The Office for Information Policy (OIP) is pleased to announce that all agencies subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have finalized their Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Annual FOIA Reports and that the Justice Department has published all of the data from these reports on FOIA.gov.

Since its initial launch in 2011, FOIA.gov has served as a dashboard of all agencies' Annual FOIA Report data.  Each year, federal departments and agencies are required by law to submit a report detailing various statistics regarding their agency’s FOIA activities, such as the numbers of requests processed and received, the time taken to process them, and much more.  The data from these Annual FOIA Reports is then published on FOIA.gov, allowing the public to easily view it and compare FOIA data by agency and over time.  Users can search for individual agency or component data, compare data from several agencies, and gather government-wide data.  The results can be viewed on the page or downloaded as a .csv file.

From the data published on FOIA.gov, we can see that demand for FOIA continued in FY25, surpassing 1.7 million requests received, which is a 13% increase compared to FY24.  The number of FOIA requests received has steadily increased every year since FY20. In the face of this demand, agencies processed a record high of 1.6 million requests, a 9% increase in the number processed compared to FY24.  OIP is compiling its Summary of Agency Annual FOIA Reports for FY25, which will provide a further breakdown of this data.  Agencies have been posting their Chief FOIA Officer Reports, which provide helpful context for the statistics reported in the Annual FOIA Reports and detail agencies’ work in key areas of FOIA administration.  OIP will also provide an assessment of agency FOIA management based on key metrics from both reports.

We encourage everyone to visit FOIA.gov to view each agency's data as well as government-wide FOIA statistics.

Read original post here.

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

A reminder that the FOIA Advisory Committee for the 2024-2026 term will be meeting virtually on May 7th at 10am. See the meeting materials and the livestream link here.

Court opinion issued May 1, 2026

Smigelski v. FBI (S.D. Ohio) -- dismissing pro se plaintiff's FOIA claims without prejudice for filing suit just days after receiving a no-records response without pursuing an administrative appeal; overruling plaintiff's argument that exhaustion should be excused as futile due to defendants' allegedly inadequate search and retaliatory conduct; and dismissing with prejudice plaintiff's FOIA claims against Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel as individuals, holding that FOIA applies only to agencies.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: Settlement reached in border policy FOIA dispute

Feds, Advocates Settle FOIA Suit Over Family Separation Info

By Tom Lotshaw, Law360, May 5, 2026

The American Immigration Council and the U.S. government told a D.C. federal judge they've struck a settlement to end a long-running Freedom of Information Act dispute over records related to family separation policies during the first Trump administration.

In a court filing Tuesday, the American Immigration Council and the government said they reached the formal agreement after informing the court of a settlement in principle in March, and that the matter could be dismissed.

The council filed the suit in June 2018, seeking to compel the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to respond to requests for information about policies enacted to prosecute immigrants and separate families who arrived at the southern border.

Read more here.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: On cloud nine

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Def./Sec’y, GS 14, Alexandria, VA, closes 5/8/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Navy, GS 12, Wash., DC, closes 5/8/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 11-12, Palo Alto, CA, closes 5/11/26 (non-public).

Gen. Att’y, Dep’t of Health & Human Serv./OIG, GS 13-15, Wash., DC, closes 5/11/26 (public).

Sup. Gen. Att’y, Dep’t of Labor/SOL, GS 15, Wash., DC, closes 5/19/26 (public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Court Serv. & Offender Supervision Agency for DC, GS 14, Wash., DC, closes 5/19/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Court Serv. & Offender Supervision Agency for DC, GS 14, Wash., DC, closes 5/19/26 (public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Transp./FAA, FG 12-13, nationwide location, closes 5/22/26 (internal agency).

Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./HQ, GS 13-15, Wash., DC, closes 5/26/26 (public).

FOIA News: Another request letter service

MyFOIA.ai is a newly launched online service focused on supporting public records requests.

The platform provides tools for drafting FOIA request letters, organizing submissions, and tracking responses from government agencies. It includes agency-specific templates, options for follow-ups and appeals, and a system for managing correspondence related to requests.

MyFOIA.ai offers a tiered pricing model ranging from a free plan to $149.99/month, with paid tiers offering “AI Managed Mode” that claims to handle FOIA requests end-to-end, including drafting, certified USPS mailing, follow-ups, and appeals with postage costs bundled into the subscription..

Claims about the platform’s capabilities, including automation of FOIA workflows and agency-specific intelligence, have not been independently verified by FOIA Advisor.

Additional details are available here.

FOIA News: Critics target Trump's records policies

Inside Trump's assault on public records

By Josephine Walker, Axios, May 5, 2026

The Trump administration's moves to limit public access to government records are prompting warnings from watchdogs and historians.

The big picture: As the Justice Department challenges the constitutionality of the Presidential Records Act and slow-walks some Freedom of Information Act requests, worries persist about weakened oversight and the government being enabled to spin a curated narrative of American history.

• The Presidential Records Act and FOIA exist to preserve presidential documents as public property and to ensure access to government records, respectively.

• "By erasing and deleting the information to which we are entitled, they are depriving the public of information ... to know whether their government has been serving them as they promised to," Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, tells Axios.

Read more here.

Monthly Roundup: April 2026

Below is a summary of the notable FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a look ahead to FOIA events in May.

Court opinions

We identified and summarized 11 opinions in April, a sharp decreased from March (47 opinions). Of note, in Animal Legal Def. Fund v. U.S. Dep't. of Agric. (N.D. Cal.) the court clarified that FOIA’s "reading room" provision only covers existing records, not documents yet to be created. With a nod to A Christmas Carol, the court explained that the statute does not reach "mere possibilities in the future, like the shadows swirling around Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come." While acknowledging that transparency is FOIA’s ultimate goal, the court emphasized it was “bound by the plain meaning of the statute” rather than what might simply “further the statute’s primary objective.”

Also of interest was Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights v. DHS (S.D.N.Y.), where the court ruled that a partial government shutdown did not excuse DHS from its court-ordered FOIA production obligations. The court dismissed the government’s attempt to use the "political question doctrine" to pause the litigation, calling the argument "risible, if not sanctionable" and stating the agency could not unilaterally stay its own deadlines without court relief.

Top news

• On April 16, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted David Morens, a longtime National Institutes of Health advisor and confidant of Anthony Fauci, on charges tied to an alleged scheme to evade FOIA requests related to COVID‑19 research grants. Charges include conspiracy, destruction or concealment of federal records, and aiding and abetting. The case follows a 2024 House select committee memo detailing similar allegations and has drawn extensive coverage across major outlets (e.g., NYT, WSJ, Politico, WaPo, Axios).

• The Department of Justice released its long-delayed FY 2025 FOIA Annual Report, revealing a 20 percent increase in requests from FY 2024. At the same time, the number of requests processed declined, pushing the DOJ’s request backlog up by roughly a third to more than 29,000 requests.

• On April 2, 2026, the FOIA Advisory Committee approved two recommendations, one concerning agency FOIA logs and the other to formally establish the committee as a statutory advisory committee.

May events

May 6: DOJ/OIP Procedural Requirement, and Fee and Fee Waivers Training

May 7: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

May 11-14: NextGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Showcase

May 13: DOJ/OIP Litigation Training

May 20: DOJ/OIP Administrative Appeals, FOIA Compliance & Customer Service Training