Thread by @JasonLeopold

NEW/THREAD: A forthcoming analysis from @TRACReports says @BuzzFeedNews has filed more #FOIA lawsuits--58-- than any other media organization in the US during Trump's presidency.

Here's a look back at the secrets my colleagues & I pried loose in 2020

1/ buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

We started off 2020 publishing some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation: summaries of FBI interviews with key White House officials.
buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

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In February 2020, @BuzzFeedNews secured more than 1K pages of emails from NOAA related to Trump’s "doctored" map of Hurricane Dorian — dubbed #SharpieGate — and the panic, outrage, and internal revolt it triggered among top officials at those agencies.
buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrah…

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That month, we also filed a #FOIA lawsuit against DOJ for docs related to Barr's intervention in the Flynn & Stone cases. Emails we obtained brought to light the behind-the-scenes drama between the lead prosecutor in the Stone case & his supervisor
 buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
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The federal response to #FOIA requests, which was already shitty, got worse during last year’s coronavirus outbreak. Some agencies used the pandemic to justify cutting off responses altogether and to abruptly halt the processing of FOIA requests.

But we fought back. We sued.

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In June 2020, we obtained documents that show the FDA authorized two malaria drugs boosted by Trump to treat COVID-19 was based on threadbare evidence.
buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrah…
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We continued to chip away at the secrecy behind the government's response to #COVID19, and in May we received docs that reveal how deeply involved FEMA was in the govt's bungled response to the pandemic, despite the agency's denials.
buzzfeednews.com/article/briann…
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When the country erupted in protest after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, the federal govt scrambled to respond, dispatching federal agents in a sweeping effort to police the demonstrations. @BuzzFeedNews swiftly filed FOIA requests and then sued the govt

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Last August, DHS turned over hundreds of pages of documents to @BuzzFeedNews that show how federal agents monitored #BlackLivesMatter protesters’ social media for intelligence and then braced for battle.
buzzfeednews.com/article/albert…

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One of the Trump administration's most enduring controversies has been its immigration policies, which have resulted in dozens of deaths in detention facilities. To better understand what happened, BuzzFeed News sued DHS & ICE

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In Oct we published our findings, which included that a woman w/AIDS died after she was not given life-saving antiretroviral drugs & 3 detainees killed themselves even though they were supposed to have been under observation for mental health concerns
buzzfeednews.com/article/kendal…
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Also last year, we used documents obtained through #FOIA lawsuits against the Treasury and Justice Departments to inform our groundbreaking #FinCENFiles investigation, published in September.
buzzfeednews.com/fincen-files

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Our #FOIA litigation rankled HSBC. A secret report we sought about failures in HSBC’s anti–money laundering efforts led the bank to take the unusual step of intervening in our lawsuit. It asked DOJ not to release it to us
buzzfeednews.com/article/anthon…

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The Mueller report, Russia’s election interference, and Ukrainian dealings that led to impeachment dominated much of Trump’s term in office; they also were targets of @BuzzFeedNews legal efforts

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Our #FOIA work generated headlines in March when Judge Reggie Walton, who was handling our/@EPICprivacy's lawsuit to unredact Mueller's report, issued a scathing opinion that questioned whether Barr intended to “create a one-sided narrative” about it
buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

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In June, DOJ was forced to remove vast swaths of black ink from the Mueller report in response to #FOIA lawsuits by @BuzzFeedNews and @EPICprivacy

The new details were revelatory

buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

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September brought another historic victory in Judge Walton’s court. He ordered the government to release, on the day before Election Day, even more redacted passages from the Mueller report, ruling that DOJ violated federal law 

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When those sections of the Mueller report were disclosed, it showed Mueller investigated Assange, WikiLeaks, and Stone related to the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers as well as for possible campaign finance violations.

buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

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The last set of docs we obtained in 2020 arrived in Dec. We had been fighting for its release for a year. It included 1 of the key historical docs of Trump’s presidency: the criminal referral sent to FBI & DOJ accusing Trump himself of breaking the law
buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…
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Our battle against recalcitrant public officials required not only the work of our own lawyer, Chris Hickman (co author of our 2020 #FOIA wrap up) but also enlisting outside counsel, including attys @_LightLaw @mvtopic & @jloevy and @katie_rcfp & @Jen_A_Nelson

THANK YOU!

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And thank you to @ackocher and his team at @TRACReports for the data analysis!