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Former President Barack Obama lied to the American people about the infamous prisoner swap that was part of the Iran deal in 2016, and released fugitives who were considered major national security threats, according to an investigative report by Politico. “Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal,” Politico’s Josh Meyer reports. The seven men released on that day as a “humanitarian” gesture were deeply tied to Iran’s nuclear arms efforts, and one was connected with...

President Donald Trump's White House won't be publishing visitor logs, officials announced on Friday afternoon. The decision makes use of an anti-transparency ruling sought by the Obama administration and written in 2013 by Judge Merrick Garland, a federal appeals court judge later nominated unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama. Transparency advocates say Garland bent over backwards to overturn a lower-court ruling on visitor log access and expressed concern at the time about how the finding would be used by future administrations.

JW Testifies to House Oversight Committee, Visits WH New Clinton Emails Reveal More Mishandling of Classified Information, Favors for Donors Protecting Election Integrity in North Carolina Supreme Court Battle JW Testifies to House Oversight Committee, Visits WH It was my privilege to testify last week on behalf of Judicial Watch before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was meeting to hear testimony on several bills that would improve government transparency. The complete hearing is available here . You can read all of my prepared remarks here . But let me share with you a few key...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California prosecutors on Tuesday charged two anti-abortion activists who made undercover videos of themselves trying to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood with 15 felonies, saying they invaded the privacy of medical providers by filming without consent. The charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress come eight months after similar charges were dropped in Texas. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat who took over the investigation in January, said in a statement that the state "will not tolerate the criminal recording of conversations."

An Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data finds the Obama administration in its final year spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act. The Obama administration also set a record -- for a second consecutive year -- for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn't find a single page of files that were requested.

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, a bipartisan group of some 70 state House members announced that they would support a package of bills to reform Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. That could mean more transparency for taxpayers and voters. That is good news. But there is more to be done, and lawmakers should start by opening up the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to more sunshine. The MEDC is the state’s department of corporate welfare. It takes hundreds of millions of hard-earned dollars from millions of Michigan taxpayers each year and bestows favors on a few select companies. It also spends tens...

Since 2009, press access to the White House has been notably restricted, whistleblower prosecutions have spiked, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the federal government have reached an all-time high. In 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalists published a scathing report, written by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr., on the Obama administration's obsession with controlling media coverage and burnishing its image.... The most immediate change was a sudden clampdown on unauthorized comments and interviews. The Obama administration made sure the word got out: The only people who talk to journalists are public affairs officers. In 2014,...

President Obama has issued 145 “midnight” regulations with a cost of more than $21 billion since the election of Donald Trump, the most by a lame-duck president in a generation, a study has found. The conservative American Action Forum said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s rules, issued from Nov. 8 through Dec. 31 of last year, include 31 “economically significant” regulations with a cost of at least $100 million each.

Scandal, what scandal? President Obama has been squeaky clean, according to his closest adviser, Valerie Jarrett. “The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself,” Jarrett said in an interview broadcast on CNN Sunday.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest expressed annoyance that President Obama doesn't get enough credit for being the "most transparent" president in history. . . . Earnest added that there is really "no constituency in American politics for transparency in government beyond journalists."

Incoming Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran cut his teeth on the Florida house appropriations committee, but he's got bigger aspirations than merely appropriations as he assumes his leadership position: he wants to make the Florida legislature the most transparent in the country, and he’s willing to take on his own party to do it.Legislators around the country could learn from Corcoran’s ambitious agenda.While Florida has a reputation for a hard-partying coastal vacation destination, its state capitol’s politics may take more cues from the notorious “good ol’ boys’ network” that other more traditionally Southern states have. Reformers have targeted Tallahassee, claiming...

When President Obama took office, he gave journalists great hope by promising unprecedented transparency. The reality has proven to be eight years of slippage in nearly every facet of openness. As the president prepares to leave office, the Society of Professional Journalists have noted the disappointing shortfalls. Forty journalism and open-government groups sent a letter to White House press secretary Josh Earnest* in September after he called for journalists to give the president credit for improvements in government transparency. The Society of Professional Journalists and other groups have “repeatedly outlined to the administration various ways in which transparency has gotten...

President Obama delivers his final military speech to members of the military and public Tuesday afternoon in Tampa, Florida. "Let my final words to you as your Commander-in-Chief be a reminder of what it is that you’re fighting for, what it is that we are fighting for," he said. ................. PRESIDENT OBAMA: " Number five, transparency and accountability serve our national security not just in times of peace, but, more importantly, in times of conflict. .......... And yesterday, I directed our government for the first time to release a full description of the legal and policy frameworks that guide our...

President Barack Obama will deliver a major address Tuesday in Florida to explain the policies his administration established over the past eight years on suspected terrorists, while making a push for the transparency his critics have said for years does not exist. Obama will explain in his speech, being delivered at the military's Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, also the home of Special Operations Command, the legal and policy rationale used by the administration to decide whether terrorists should be killed, interrogated, or detained, reports The Los Angeles Times, which notes the president will be...

Have you had enough of them, yet? I have Nothing happened today. I know, because I read the news. That is, nothing they SAID happened…happened. Oh, according to the “media,” Trump had gone to a private family dinner the night before—without the media—and so the media screamed he was perpetrating a new, brutal, unmatched-in-human-history, repressive Dark Age of non-transparency.

Headline of the Day Poll Should Trump keep ditching the press? No, transparency in an administration is too important Yes. Everybody should shun the press.

HAHAHAHAHAHA Brace yourselves. You’re in for a bit of a shock. Last night, President-elect Donald Trump went out to dinner. ...And he didn’t notify the press. I know, I know. You’re furious. I’ll give you a moment to recover.

The Clinton Foundation reported Thursday that it has received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from major corporations, universities, foreign sources and other groups. The disclosure came as the foundation faced questions over whether it fully complied with a 2008 ethics agreement to reveal its donors and whether any of its funding sources present conflicts of interest for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins her presidential campaign.

Earlier today we wrote about a new Project Veritas undercover video that uncovered several democratic operatives openly discussing, in explicit detail, how to commit massive voter fraud. One of the operatives was a person by the name of Robert Creamer who is a co-founder of a democratic consulting firm called Democracy Partners. Within the video, an undercover journalist details a plan to register Hispanic voters illegally by having them work as contractors, to which Creamer can be heard offering support saying that “there are a couple of organizations that that’s their big trick" (see: "Rigging Elections For 50 Years" -...

According to a report by the inspector general of the General Services Administration, Obama administration political operatives continuously slow walked open records requests and punished the legal group Judicial Watch for their activism. Judicial Watch has several FOIA lawsuits against the administration and in every case, the administration sought to delay complying with the requests, even going so far as to overcharge the group for fees related to the searches.