FOIA News: FBI releases 475 pages on O.J. Simpson

FBI releases documents on O.J. Simpson

Michael Rothstein, ESPN, June 7, 2024

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released 475 pages of documents relating to O.J. Simpson, the NFL Hall of Fame running back who was acquitted of charges he killed his former wife and her friend.

The documents largely focus on the murder investigation into the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Simpson was a person of interest and ultimately charged, and his 1995 trial, often called one of the most famous trials of the past century, drew worldwide attention and spectacle.

Read more here.

FOIA News: DOJ posts summary of annual reports for FY 2023

Summary of Fiscal Year 2023 Annual FOIA Reports Published

DOJ/OIP, FOIA Post, June 7, 2024

The Office of Information Policy (OIP) has released its Summary of Annual FOIA Reports for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023.  This summary provides an overview of FOIA activities across the government during the previous fiscal year, looks at key statistics in FOIA administration, and identifies trends in FOIA processing.  Each summary serves as a resource for both agencies and the public to gain an understanding of overall FOIA administration.

As highlighted in this year's summary, the government received 1,199,699 requests during FY 2023 – the highest number of requests ever received and the first time over one million requests were received in a single year. 

Read more here.

FOIA News: Nominations sought for FOIA Advisory Commitee

The Office of Government Information Services is seeking nominees to serve on the federal FOIA Advisory Committee for the 2024-2026 term, per a notice published in the Federal Register on June 6, 2024. The deadline for applications is July 15, 2024, at 5:00 pm ET. See the aforementioned notice for more details. The final meeting of the Committe’s 2022-2024 term will take place on June 13, 2024.

Monthly roundup: May 2024

Below is our summary of FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a peek ahead to events in June.

Court decisions:

We posted 10 decisions in May, a slight uptick from the eight cases issued in April. The prize for top case of the month goes to the D.C. Circuit for its May 17th decision in Am. Oversight v. HHS, which addressed Exemption 5’s consultant corollary doctrine. In most relevant part, the panel held in a 2-1 vote that communications between agencies and Congress (or their staffs) did not qualify as “intra-agency” records because “each side had an independent stake in the potential healthcare reform legislation under discussion.” In the majority’s view, this crossed the consultant corollary’s parameters established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Department of Interior v. Klamath Water Users Protective Association, 532 U.S. 1 (2001). The dissent opined that the holding was “actually quite breathtaking” and would “chill communications between Congress and the Executive, stymie the working relationship between Congress and the Executive, and inhibit the President’s ability to perform effectively the core Article II duty of recommending legislation to the Congress.”

Top news:

In late May, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that a former NIH senior advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the agency’s Freedom of Information Act office to dodge records requests. See, e.g., Liz Jassin, Did NIH officials hide COVID-19 records?, The Hill, May 23, 2024. Additional records released by the Subcommittee indicated that Dr. Fauci’s former chief of staff misspelled names in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to keep the records from being found in keyword searches used to fulfill FOIA requests. See, e.g., Benjamin Mueller, Health Officials Tried to Evade Public Records Laws, Lawmakers Say, N.Y. Times, May 28, 2024.

Lookahead to June:

June 12, 2024: DOJ/OIP Exemption 4 and Exemption 5 Training

June 13, 2024: The last meeting of the FOIA Advisory Committee for the 2022-2024 term.

June 25, 2024: A panel discussion with government officials about GAO’s backlog report: Beat the Backlog: Decoding the GAO FOIA Report to Make a Difference in the Last Quarter of Your Program. Hosted by OPEXUS.

FOIA News: Audio of Biden interview exempt on privacy and other grounds, asserts DOJ in court filing

DOJ fears AI tampering with Biden-Hur audio

The department, in a court filing late Friday night, warned that releasing the audio could lead to it being “improperly altered.”

By Jordain Carney, Politico, June 1, 2024

The Justice Department is seizing on an increasingly common fear as it fights to prevent the release of the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur: It could spawn deepfakes.

The concern — raised as part of an overnight court filing late Friday — is the latest step in a multi-pronged legal battle aimed at forcing the Justice Department to release the audio, which Biden claimed executive privilege over last month.

“The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files. If the audio recording is released here, it is easy to foresee that it could be improperly altered, and that the altered file could be passed off as an authentic recording and widely distributed,” the department wrote in a 49-page filing.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued May 31, 2024

Biear v. DOJ (M.D. Pa.) -- denying plaintiff’s motion to reopen his FOIA case, which sought investigatory records about himself, because agency components complied with the court’s previous order regarding the re-processing of records.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

FOIA News: Illinois congressman re-introduces transparency bill

On June 3, 2024, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) re-introduced the Transparency in Government Act, H.R. 8597. Although the text of the bill is not yet available, his press release indicates that it contains a number of FOIA-related items. Specifically, the bill will reportedly do the following:

• Strengthen the Freedom of Information Act by requiring agencies to put all completed FOIA requests online in a searchable, sortable, and downloadable format.

• Strengthen agencies' FOIA officers' ability to access unclassified agency records.

• Institute new transparency measures to document FOIA requests and compliance. 

FOIA Advisor will provide updates on the progress of this legislation.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Weekly report 6/3/24

Federal positions closing in the next 10 days

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Navy/USMC, GS 11, Camp Pendleton, CA, closes 6/3/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 12, White City, OR, closes 6/5/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./CIS, GS 5-9, Lees Summit, MO, closes 6/7/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Interior, GS 12-13, location negotiable, closes 6/9/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Treasury/BEP, GS 12-13, Washington, D.C., closes 6/10/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Treasury/IRS, GS 14, multiple locations, closes 6/10/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Justice/OJP, GS 12-13, Washington, DC, closes 6/11/24.

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Office of Personnel Mgmt., GS 11, Washington, D.C. closes 6/13/24.

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Office of Personnel Mgmt., GS 11, Washington, D.C. closes 6/13/24 (non-public).

FOIA News: Panel discussion on GAO's FOIA backlog report

On June 25, 2024, the General Counsel of OPEXUS, a leader in government case management software, will host three agency officials to discuss the Government Accountability Office’s March 2024 report on FOIA backlogs. Entitled “Beat the Backlog: Decoding the GAO FOIA Report to Make a Difference in the Last Quarter of Your Program,” the discussion will include Jay McTigue, Director of Strategic Issues at GAO and author of the GAO’s 2024 FOIA report; Michael Sarich, FOIA Director at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; and Alina Semo, Director at the Office of Government Information Services at NARA. 

See here for more details about the event.

FOIA News: OGIS post on Advisory Committee's next meeting

Plan to Attend Final FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting of the Fifth Term

By Kimberlee N. Ried, FOIA Ombudsman, May 28, 2024

The last meeting of the 2022-2024 term of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee is on Thursday, June 13, 2024, beginning at 10 a.m. ET. The Committee expects to review and approve its final report which will include 16 previously passed recommendations from the three subcommittees, Implementation, Modernization and Resources. All meeting materials will be posted on the FOIA Advisory Committee website.

Read more here.