Free Republic

It’s debatable whether the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, (Leo XIV), as the first American pope has displaced Donald Trump as the most important American. MAGA supporters probably don’t think so. Certainly, Donald Trump isn’t likely to agree either. However, there is one thing leftist pot-stirrers such as David French at the New York Times and MAGAmericans might both agree on -- that White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, is quickly becoming an important voice of the Trump Administration, a MAGA hero, and a Mainstream Media nemesis. But it’s not what Miller has just done in his White...

Brown University has opened an investigation into a student for sending emails to administrators asking them what they do in a day. The 20-year-old sophomore at the university, Alex Shieh, sent emails to all 3,805 administrators at Brown asking them to “Describe what tasks you performed in the past week.” Now the school is investigating him for inflicting “Emotional/Psychological Harm” on the staff, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. School officials accuse Shieh of obtaining confidential information and are requiring him to send proof he has deleted the content, essentially requiring the student to incriminate himself,...

Watchdog group to lend Hill Dems a hand on oversight A left-leaning watchdog group is working to gather materials that could feed Congressional investigations into the Trump administration. The nonprofit group American Oversight, which shared its plans first with POLITICO, is preparing for a scenario where Democrats reclaim the majority in either the House or Senate in the 2026 midterms, which will give the party the ability to issue subpoenas, schedule committee hearings and launch agency probes. Dubbed the “Parallel Investigations Initiative,” it will look similar to what American Oversight did during the first Trump administration, when Republicans also enjoyed...

Hunter Biden does not appear in the Justice Department’s pardon database and can only be accessed through the FOIA library, according to investigative reporter Paul Sperry.Per Paul Sperry: “Hunter Biden is missing from the Justice Dept’s pardon database in spite of the “full and unconditional pardon” his father the POTUS granted him last month. His clemency does not appear in the case files and can only be accessed thru the FOIA Library”

On Jan. 11, 2024 conservative US YouTuber Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison, where he was held for the crime of criticizing the war, and the US and Ukrainian governments. Now, a FOIA request by Judicial Watch sheds stark light on the Biden Regime’s complete failure to stand up for a US political prisoner in a Ukrainian prison. The e-mails reveal the US Embassy was aware of threats to Gonzalo Lira’s life, which it considered “no rush.”After Gonzalo Lira’s death, the Embassy was mostly concerned with spin control and how to “beef up press guidance” to address the question...

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a high-profile case brought by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT). The decision mandates the FDA to release the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) file for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine no later than June 30, 2025. The case stemmed from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the PHMPT, which sought comprehensive data related to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA initially claimed it would need up to 75 years to process and release the requested documents....

On September 24, the Michigan Bureau of Elections (BOE) issued a critical change in its FOIA disclosure policy. According to a communication sent to organizations receiving absentee voter (AV) data, the BOE will no longer provide certain key data fields essential for election monitoring and audits. The message from the Secretary of State’s BOE indicated that data related to absentee ballot applications sent and received, as well as ballots returned by voters, will no longer be available under FOIA requests (letter below). Organizations including CheckMyVote.org and MFE’s Soles to Rolls rely on the transparency of these figures for their election...

The FBI is withholding information on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records related to the attempted assassination of President Trump. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch in a FOIA request asked for all records of the FBI related to their coordination with the Secret Service for Trump’s July 13 Butler, Pennsylvania rally. The FBI denied Judicial Watch’s request citing exemption 7(A) which applies to information that “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement,” the watchdog said. Judicial Watch reported: Judicial Watch announced today that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) withheld information on a Freedom of Information...

ransomnote: I copied about 80% of the Justice.gov FOIA Library page (below). About 20% or less of the page is formatted in a way that I can't copy. Anything on the webpage which uses formatted graphics to look like a tab, menu or box did not copy. FOIA LibrarySubscribe for Email UpdatesOIP processes FOIA requests for records of the Office of the Attorney General, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, Office of the Associate Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, Office of Legislative Affairs, Office Public Affairs, and Office of Information Policy.OIP posts records from these Offices in this FOIA...

The Secret Service rejected FOIA requests for records related to the attempted assassination against President Trump. Would-be assassin Thomas Crooks, 20, managed to evade state, local and federal law enforcement officers, climb on a roof and take 8 shots at President Trump during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally on July 13. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed three FOIA requests seeking records related to the assassination attempt and the agency refused to produce and documents. Judicial Watch said it is preparing for litigation. Judicial Watch reported: [Judicial Watch announced today that the United States Secret Service completely denied multiple Judicial Watch...

Chaos reigns on the vice president’s staff. And Harris tried to hide it by claiming that her office is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “People really, really do not want to work for Kamala Harris,” wrote former staffer Dan McLaughlin, January 2022. ... Under Kamala Harris, the Office of the Vice President has been called a “revolving door,” a “staff exodus” of key aides “heading for the exits.” That’s not hyperbole from the national media. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks quantified an extraordinarily high 91.5-percent staff turnover rate. We used U.S. Senate disclosures to conduct our investigation...

People will see…. it might take a little more time than I would prefer, but the truth will come out and people will see. A judge in Florida is starting to take apart the secrecy operation that Ron DeSantis and his DC Bush clan constructed during their block Trump operation. DeSantis moved from Congress to the Florida Governor position in 2018; the intent was always to run for President in 2024 and take apart the Trump constructs returning the Republican apparatus to traditional corporate controls. Part of their lengthy approach was to import some of the Washington DC silo/secrecy functions...

Lawmakers are considering sealing the governor’s travel records. Republicans say it’s about the governor’s safety and security while Democrats say it’s about the safety of the governor’s political ambitions. Lawmakers readied the bill Monday for a final vote on Tuesday. The bill would make all travel logs of the governor, the state’s cabinet members, legislative leaders, and the Chief Justice exempt from public record requests. Also, the bill is retroactive, meaning if signed into law any records regarding protection, travel, and potential threats in the past, present and future would be sealed. “That’s what the bill is about, safety and...

Demanding the immediate release of documents pertaining to “credible allegations” of “improper collusion by the Biden White House and Department of Justice (DOJ) in the sham political show trial of President Trump conducted by Alvin Bragg, the New York County District Attorney’s Office, and Judge Juan Merchan,” America First Legal is suing the Department of Justice. The principal target of the allegations of cooperation between the Biden Administration and Bragg’s office is Matthew Colangelo, a senior Biden DOJ official who joined Bragg’s team as a prosecutor after leaving the department. Before accepting a low-level position as a prosecutor in Bragg’s...

The cover-up continues to unravel at an astonishing rate. On May 22nd, Dr. David Morens appeared before a congressional subcommittee to testify on the coronavirus “pandemic,” and what was presented was nothing short of explosive; Morens was (he’s now on administrative leave) a “senior scientific advisor” for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the direction of Anthony Fauci. Greg Piper of Just the News reported on the hearing, noting perhaps the most shocking detail of all—Morens’s emails revealed a certain professional practice at Fauci’s NIAID, and that was the implementation of typos, a deliberate misspelling of...

The senior scientific advisor to then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci bragged about helping Fauci evade the Freedom of Information Act by using Fauci's private email address or just handing him documents in person, according to newly disclosed emails. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published the evidence ahead of a hearing with that advisor, David Morens, related to his own communications in which Morens admits to intentionally evading FOIA by using a personal Gmail address. Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, accused Morens of obstructing the panel's investigation in a subpoena earlier this month. Originally scheduled...

FIRST ON FOX: A Republican state attorney general is probing the Biden Justice Department for documents related to any communications with prosecutors connected to the indictments of former President Donald Trump. In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed Thursday, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the DOJ to hand over "activity and/or communications between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith or Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis related to the investigation or prosecution" of the former president. "The investigations and subsequent prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump appear...

There’s no way in hell they shouldn’t tell all’.. The FBI is closing the book on the agency’s “corrupt” handling of James “Whitey” Bulger — forever. The feds are refusing to make any further installments of Bulger’s case file public, saying the records are “investigative” and no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. “The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. Therefore, your request is being administratively closed,”...

Michigan’s Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is being sued for working with local officials to stonewall a citizen’s efforts to access public election records from the Nov. 8, 2022 general and the May 2, 2023 primary elections.Ms. Benson has a record of resisting transparency dating back to the 2020 presidential contest, after which she ordered local clerks to delete all electronic poll book (EPB) data from that election. In Nov. 2022, just days after the midterms, she ordered local clerks to deny public information requests to examine certain election data stored on their EPBs.EPB files are an original public...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 88 pages of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed personnel to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.Judicial Watch forced the release of the records through a June 5, 2023, lawsuit that was filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to an August 10, 2023, FOIA request for records and communications regarding shots being fired inside the U.S. Capitol, as well as requests for Bureau of Alcohol,...