Jason Leopold Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020 7 tweets 6 min read Read on X
💣NEW from our #FinCENFiles: Remember when HSBC paid a $1.9B fine for violating sanctions & allowing drug kingpins to launder $$$ through the bank & then promised to clean up it's act?

Those promises were hollow. Here's the untold backstory w/receipts
buzzfeednews.com/article/anthon…
This was a massive, yearlong investigation into HSBC. We found that after the bank entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with DOJ & while it was under the watch of an independent monitor, HSBC continued to facilitate & profit from transactions it suspected were dirty
Our #FinCENFiles shows that Vida Panamá, owned by Panama’s powerful Waked family, used HSBC to exchange $292M in suspicious transactions before Treasury declared it a money laundering organization that washed funds for narco kingpins. (Reps for Waked said the business is legit)
Our investigation uncovered this explosive detail: when HSBC's DPA was nearing its end in 2017, the independent monitor's team wrote to DOJ saying HSBC continued to provide financial services to suspicious people or companies, which could allow alleged criminals to fund terror
When our #FinCENFiles investigation uncovered that HSBC's independent monitor documented in a 1K page report that the bank still a long way to go to stop the flow of dirty money through the bank @BuzzFeedNews & I filed a #FOIA lawsuit against DOJ for the report.
After @BuzzFeedNews and I filed this #FOIA lawsuit for the HSBC monitor's report, DOJ reached out to HSBC about it and then HSBC wrote to DOJ asking the agency not to turn it over to us & mischaracterized a 2nd Circuit decision over a previous attempt to unseal the report
Some EXCLUSIVE news here: Last month, in response to my/@BuzzFeedNews #FOIA lawsuit for the HSBC monitor's report, the govt submitted a declaration revealing that it was withholding the report because its release would interfere with an ongoing law enforcement case out of EDNY

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More from @JasonLeopold

Aug 23
NEW FOIA Files newsletter:

I obtained damning internal reports that show USAID probed allegations of bribery, child labor & child sexual abuse at humanitarian orgs it funds, Twitter threats posted from its own employee & the outing of a CIA officer
🧵
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…

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In February, I filed a #FOIA request with the agency’s internal watchdog – the Office of Inspector General – for all of its final reports on closed investigations in 2023 and 2024. That’s generally a pretty good way to find out if there's been any accountability for wrongdoing related to an agency's work.
A couple months after I filed my request, the inspector general’s FOIA office did something uncommon, compared with other federal agencies: it released documents to me every two weeks – nearly 400 pages.
Read 21 tweets
Aug 2
FOIA Files EXCLUSIVE: It took 11 yrs & 3 separate #FOIA requests but I finally obtained docs from DOJ about the agency's legal analysis of the trillion-dollar platinum coin, which #MintTheCoin advocates view as a way to circumvent the cycle of debt crises
🧵
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…Image
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The docs show that a “large denomination platinum coin” was indeed discussed at the highest levels of govt. But there’s a huge caveat. The records are pretty heavily redacted. Still, there's useful details to glean, many of which will be of interest to all you trillion dollar coin aficionados.Image
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As far as I’m aware, this is the first time since discussions about the platinum coin began more than a decade ago that the DOJ has released any portion of its analysis related to it.
Read 10 tweets
Jul 17
NEW FOIA Files SPECIAL EDITION: 2 yrs ago, I filed a #FOIA request w/Secret Service for records of threats to Trump & security breaches at MAL between 2017& 2024. Last Wed, Secret Service finally turned over the documents. They're wild.

🧵

bloomberg.com/news/newslette…



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Long before the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday, I spent years using the #FOIA to look into the way the Secret Service responded to threats against all of its protectees & political violence in general.
The 159 pages of records I received from Secret Service last Wednesday provide a behind the scenes look at how the agency responds to potential threats against presidential protectees.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 13
BIG SCOOP: I obtained the 266-page transcript of the intv Special Counsel Robert Hur's team conducted with Biden's ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, during their probe into Biden's handling of classified records

A FOIA Files special edition (please subscribe)
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
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Portions of Zwonitzer’s testimony were briefly mentioned in Hur’s final report, but the transcript fleshes out the narrative of how he ended up entangled in the high-profile investigation and reveals what he told Hur's team Image
Zwonitzer was fiercely protective of Biden. He noted more than once that Biden’s memory was sound – in stark contrast to Hur’s own conclusions –and that much of what ended up in his book came from the president’s diaries and recollections.
Read 12 tweets
May 31
NEW in this week's FOIA Files newsletter: I just obtained docs from NARA and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s about the discovery of ... wait for it... a stolen document that’s been missing for two decades! Plus, another internal report I obtained shows how NARA’s internal watchdog investigated a series of disturbing threats sent to former President Barack Obama at his presidential library
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
I’ve never made it a habit of requesting documents that pertain to the inner workings of NARA itself, which is how I wield the FOIA when I’m looking to open up a government agency. But my approach changed after news broke about the agency’s yearlong effort to recover boxes of presidential records that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago. Since then, I’ve filed dozens of requests and have liberated some really interesting records about what took place behind the scenes.
A few weeks ago, the agency’s inspector general sent me another batch of documents: reports of various internal investigations that haven’t been previously disclosed.

One in particular is fascinating and it’s a twist on the suddenly relevant theme of missing documents. It’s related to the work of a special unit called the Archival Recovery Team that’s tasked with tracking down missing records and artifacts that were lost or stolen from NARA facilities.
Read 10 tweets
May 26
From my #FOIA archives

A couple of years ago, I obtained a transcript of an off the record discussion Obama had with progressive journalists about Trump as he was leaving office.

This is what he told them. 21 page transcript linked in the story.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
“I think that four years is okay,” Obama said. “Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be okay. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.”
“I think his basic view -- his formative view of foreign policy is shaped by his interactions with Malaysian developers and Saudi princes, and I think his view is, ‘I’m going to go around the world making deals and maybe suing people,’” Obama said. “But it’s not, ‘let me launch big wars that tie me up.’ And that’s not what his base is looking from him anyway.”
Read 7 tweets

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