We obtained former Attorney General William Barr’s calendars for May 2019 through 2020. These records show Barr attended numerous White House meetings throughout President Trump’s first impeachment. americanoversight.org/document/attor…
On Dec. 2, 2019, House Republicans released their minority report on the impeachment inquiry. Barr’s calendars show he was at the White House the same day.
On Dec. 5, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the House Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment. The next day, Barr had a White House meeting.
On Dec. 9, lawyers argued their cases for and against impeachment during a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. That same day, Barr had a meeting at the White House.
Also on Dec. 9, Barr had a phone call with Jonathan Turley, a law professor who testified in opposition to impeachment just days prior to the call.
The Attorney General is the nation’s top law enforcement officer – not the president’s personal lawyer – despite Trump’s repeated attempts to misuse the Justice Department for personal or political ends.
Barr’s pattern of meetings and calls during the first Trump impeachment raises further questions about his independence, particularly as it related to investigations of Trump’s abuses of power.
We saw a similar pattern in Barr’s repeated meetings with prosecutor John Durham, who had been tapped to conduct a counter investigation after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation.
Although the Trump administration is over, the public deserves answers about its corrupt abuses of power. Learn more about our ongoing investigation into William Barr and the politicization of the DOJ here: americanoversight.org/investigation/…
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Records we obtained from Missouri show how state Sen. Mike Moon — a staunchly anti-abortion rights legislator — has sought to subvert the state’s measure related to abortion rights by trying to amend the ballot initiative process. americanoversight.org/document/recor…
Earlier this year, 380,000 Missourians signed a petition to put an abortion rights constitutional amendment on the ballot. In response, conservatives in the state pushed a bill that would have made it much harder to pass any constitutional amendment via a ballot initiative.
The documents show that Moon’s policy director directly tied Moon’s support for adding a concurrent majority measure to initiative petitions to his desire to defeat the measure. His chief of staff suggested collaborating with an anti-abortion rights group to defeat the amendment.
Floridians will vote in November on a ballot measure that would overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban.
Conservative lawmakers and interest groups have been working to make it harder for the measure and citizen initiatives like it to pass. americanoversight.org/investigation/…
Republican officials drafted a financial statement to accompany the measure. The statement argues that the measure’s passage would lead to fewer births, which would hurt the state’s growth and revenue over time. nbcmiami.com/news/local/fin…
The financial statement speculates that the measure’s passage would result in expensive litigation.
Abortion rights groups have filed lawsuits to prevent this language from appearing on the ballot.
LITIGATION UPDATE: We reached a settlement in our lawsuit against Ohio Sec. of State Frank LaRose for records related to the 2023 decision to withdraw Ohio from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonpartisan voter-roll maintenance tool. americanoversight.org/american-overs…
ERIC was a non-controversial nonprofit that quietly helped states clean up their voter rolls by securely comparing voter data. A cascade of misinformation coordinated by anti-democratic activists, eventually led several states to withdraw.
Our investigation and the documents obtained as part of it show how election officials defended ERIC behind the scenes while publicly caving to a pressure campaign led by some of the same people who sought to keep former President Trump in power in 2020. americanoversight.org/the-campaign-t…
NEW: Today, the Georgia State Election Board withdrew rules it approved in a recent illegal meeting, which was held without proper notice of a quorum. We’d sued the Board for violating the state’s Open Meetings Act. americanoversight.org/georgia-electi…
We’re pleased that our lawsuit, along with pressure from partner organizations on the ground in Georgia, has prompted the Board to withdraw the illegally approved rules from its sham July 12 meeting.
The board also announced plans to reconsider the rules at its Aug. 6 meeting. We remain deeply concerned by the Board’s decision to promptly revisit these problematic measures that serve to intimidate election workers and grant partisan advantage to preferred candidates.
NEW: We sued the Georgia State Election Board for violating the state’s Open Meetings Act after it held a meeting on July 12 — in which it pushed forward controversial new election rules — without legally required public notice or a quorum. americanoversight.org/american-overs…
Georgia’s Open Meetings Act and others like it are vital to a functioning democracy by helping ensure official actions are conducted in full view of the public. Attempts to maneuver around it to advance changes to Georgia’s election rules are a clear violation of this law.
Any proposals voted upon during this meeting are null and void, and we ask the court to prevent them from moving ahead with the proposed rules and to declare their actions at last week’s meeting invalid.
On Oct. 28, 2020 — less than a week before the election — Ginni Thomas sent more than a dozen links to a Google Group called “20024.” “[Redacted] asked me for links we have all been sharing about the coming insurrection, chaos, and violence,” she wrote.
“It is not random. It appears very organized if you have the eyes to see and read and hear,” she continued. Thomas asked recipients to add more links and to organize the articles.
An individual (name redacted) created a Google document that organized the various links.