🚨NEW: For 2 years, I have been working on a massive, global financial investigation w/my @BuzzFeedNews colleagues based on secret US govt docs we shared w/@ICIJ, internal bank records & intvs w/100s of sources.
NEW: Massive new investigation into Deutsche Bank's mirror trades led by my colleague @TomBWarren based, in part on never before released internal US govt documents we obtained.
NEW from the #FinCENfiles: Twenty-two thousand pages of never-before-released government documents. Hundreds of thousands of transactions. More than $2 trillion. A close accounting of @BuzzFeedNews’ unprecedented trove and how we did it
And a special solo tweet for the final member of the #FinCENfiles team: my extraordinary UK colleague @alexcampbell
And finally, before she became our science editor, @azeen was one of the first members of our #FinCENfiles and her work on this project has been vital.
She's also the host of our new podcast on this project: Suspicious Activity. Here's Episode 1
NEW from our #FinCEN files investigation: Follow the money. This stunning interactive map shows $35 billion in transactions — reported as suspicious by banks and other financial institutions — making their way through the global financial system. buzzfeednews.com/article/icij/f…
BuzzFeed shared these suspicious activity reports, or SARs, with the @ICIJorg and more than 400 journalists from 110 news organizations in 88 countries. #FinCENFiles
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A little backstory on this week's FOIA Files newsletter 🧵
Not long after Russia launched airstrikes in Ukraine in 2022, I started seeing tweets that said some of Russia’s targets were labs where Ukraine had secretly been developing bio weapons w/the help of the US govt 1/
The allegations seemed to be an obvious attempt to justify the invasion. They garnered thousands of retweets. Soon Fox News was amplifying the claims.
2/
The stories had a huge impact. One poll in late March of that year found that more than a quarter of Americans believed the US-Ukraine bioweapons theory.
3/
NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out with a SCOOP based on 2500 pages of docunents about how a Defense Dept office struggled to fend off a "Russian lie" related to biolabs in Ukraine after the February 2022 invasion
The documents provide a rare behind-the-scenes look into an escalating disinformation war during a critical two-month period after the Ukraine invasion
It took me more than a year to liberate these records from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the division that was targeted by Russia's disinformation campaign
2/
One name that stands out prominently in the cache is Robert Pope, the director of DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Pope said he’d suspected that his agency would eventually wind up in Russia’s crosshairs.
SCOOP: 2nd edition of my weekly newsletter, FOIA Files, is out (SUBSCRIBE!), based on FBI docs related to the classified docs Trump took to MAL & how the Aug 2022 search roiled some of FBI's rank & file
The FBI employee sent that email to the FBI ombudsman shortly after the MAL search. “If he took documents, give him a call and ask for them back. Like ...Seriously? My own agency .... A bunch of democrat political hacks up top…I've lost just about all faith in our leadership”
2/
Another FBI employee was even harsher, characterizing the bureau as a “Banana Republic” and an “embarrassment,” and demanding answers to a series of questions.
Fighting for records continues to be painstaking, difficult work but my @business colleagues & I still managed to overcome the culture of secrecy & pry loose 1000s of pages of docs from state & federal agencies this year
The greatest hits
1/
The ultimate META FOIA: I FOIA'd Trump's FOIA to the IRS & then in Jan @laurapdavison & I landed this scoop: Trump used the FOIA to try and hinder IRS release of his tax returns
@laurapdavison Also in Jan, a FOIA lawsuit @business & I filed against NARA resulted in the first release docs related to the retrieval of 15 boxes of presidential records Trump stored at Mar-a-Lago.
🧵 For the past decade, DOD has been ignoring a handful of my #FOIA requests, the ones I didn't sue over
This week, I have received 9 letters from the agency asking me if I am still interested in receiving docs in response to requests I filed in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018 & 2020
1/
These requests related to documents I sought about Guantanamo, Afghanistan, drone strikes and pressing policy issues. DOD just blatantly violated the law and didn't process a single one.
2/
These "still interested" letters are often sent out at the end of the fiscal year when agencies pad their FOIA stats and try to show their complying with the law. It's deceptive.
3/