Bernhardt’s Interior Already Implementing Political Review of Public Records Responses

By Jayson O’Neill, Western Values Project, March 7, 2019

Just one day before a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators sent a letter to Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt requesting that the department reconsider and scrap a proposed rule that would limit public records requests, Western Values Project (WVP) received a notice from Interior that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request would be delayed to allow a political appointee to review the response.

The email, which has been redacted by WVP to protect personal information, indicates that WVP’s request has been completed but was ‘forwarded to our Solicitor’s Office for next level review.’ This is the first indication known to WVP that Interior has created a new political review process for all of the department’s public records since Interior’s leadership installed political appointee and former Koch-employee Daniel Jorjani to oversee the department’s FOIA program in November 2018.

Read more here.