Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Department of Justice records relating to the investigation or prosecutions of former President Donald Trump on Thursday.
Read More
Michigan authorities suspected there was a possible voter registration fraud scheme occurring across multiple states during the 2020 election and were concerned enough to bring in the FBI, according to police memos reviewed by Just the News. But what happened since remains mostly a mystery.
Read More
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) after the department failed to respond to his previously-filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to uncover the communication between the White House, DOJ, and Special Counsel Jack Smith about the indictment in the classified documents case of former President Donald Trump.
Read More
The Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) district, which has faced widespread backlash and scrutiny over its handling of a two-time rapist, is now dealing with over 500 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by county parents, Breitbart reports.
The sheer amount of new requests represents an increase of more than five times the previous yearly average; from 2012 to 2018, the average amount of FOIA requests for LCPS was about 90. Roughly 40 percent of the new requests have been filed on behalf of the group Fight for Schools, a nonprofit watchdog group that has been fighting for transparency from the school board.
As the process of fulfilling a FOIA request under Virginia state law, much like the federal equivalent, is a time-consuming process, LCPS “has begun billing VFOIA requesters because it cannot handle the current volume free of charge,” according to LCPS Public Information Officer Wayne Byard. In addition, the district has had to hire twice as many staffers to focus solely on processing such requests.
Read More
On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that the courts allow the agency to wait until the year 2076 to release all of the relevant documents regarding the approval of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The FDA made its request after a lawsuit was filed against the agency by the group Public Health Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT). The PHMPT had previously made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on September 9th asking for the release of the vaccine approval documents; after the FDA denied the request, the group filed its lawsuit on September 16th.
The FDA concluded that there were roughly 329,000 pages in total that would qualify under this FOIA request. In its appeal to the courts, the agency said that, at most, employees would be able to “process and produce the non-exempt portions of responsive records at a rate of 500 pages per month.” Under this process, the FDA said that it would hand over prioritized documents to the plaintiff, and release non-exempt documents on a “rolling basis.”
Read More
Training materials for the Springfield, Mo., school district told teachers they could be engaging in white supremacy simply by insisting the English language be used or calling police on a black suspect, according to records released under a freedom of information request.
The materials, provided to Just the News, include a 40-plus slide training deck that proclaimed its goal was to train teachers on how to address “systemic racism and xenophobia” in the school district and to understand the difference between oppressors and the oppressed. Critics say the slide deck is part of a larger Critical Race Theory curriculum that parents are increasingly rejecting.
It included an “oppression matrix” that identified privileged social groups capable of oppression as including “white people,” “male assigned at birth,” “gender conforming CIS men and women,” “heterosexuals,” “rich, upper-class people” and “Protestants.”
Read More
The Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL), a voter advocacy group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, donated $7.4 million last year to Detroit to, among other things, “dramatically expand strategic voter education and outreach” in a blue city key to Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, according to memos obtained by Just the News under an open records request.
Detroit received three grants in 2020 from CTCL for $200,000, $3,512,000, and $3,724,450, according to the records released under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Read More
Virginia Democrats filed suit against the Richmond General Registrar on Monday for not providing records of voters with invalid absentee ballots due to errors or omissions, preventing the party from notifying and assisting voters in curing their ballots before next Friday’s noon deadline.
A complaint was filed by attorneys for Susan Swecker, Chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia (DPV), in Richmond Circuit Court, seeking injunctive relief and to petition for a Writ of Mandamus to make J. Kirk Showalter, Richmond’s registrar, comply with the records request.
Read More
Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) faces a lawsuit for falsely denying the existence of records documenting the $83,000 removal of the Capitol’s Confederate monuments.
The plaintiff in the case, David Webster II, requested documents under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from Filler-Corn upon learning she’d removed the Confederate statues and busts. In her response, Filler-Corn states repeatedly “The requested records do not exist.” However, Webster II discovered many of the documents in question.
Read More