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American Oversight

@weareoversight

Mar 18

It’s #SunshineWeek, a week that celebrates and promotes access to information and open government nationwide.

This #FOIAFriday, we’re highlighting the power of #FOIA with a thread about its past, present, and future.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed FOIA into law on July 4, 1966. Records show LBJ personally removed strong language supporting open government from the press statement. He only agreed to sign it after DOJ suggested he include a signing statement.
nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/…

In his signing statement, LBJ praised the importance of openness to democracy and said the legislation affirmed American principles. But he also wrote that he felt some documents shouldn’t be available to the public.
nsarchive2.gwu.edu//nsa/foia/FOIA…

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American Oversight

@weareoversight

Mar 17

This week marks American Oversight’s five-year anniversary.

For five years, we’ve fought to restore integrity, promote transparency, defend democracy, and fight for a government accountable to us.

Here’s what we’ve investigated and uncovered in the last half-decade.

1. Corruption and Abuse of Power: The Trump administration brought unprecedented corruption, misconduct, and abuse of office to all levels of the federal government — from the Ukraine scandal to family separation to its response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Through public records requests and litigation, we worked to uncover the facts.

In early 2017, we obtained records proving that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied about his Russian contacts on his security clearance application.
americanoversight.org/after-american…

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American Oversight

@weareoversight

Mar 16

We’ve been investigating the Wisconsin Assembly’s partisan election review.

Last week, there were major developments in our litigation and we uncovered more than 700 pages of records. Here’s what you should know. THREAD.

Our lawsuit forced the release of more than 700 pages of public records from the Wisconsin election investigation — revealing that the probe has done little actual investigating, despite the extensive efforts of the Wisconsin Assembly to shield those documents from the public. 2/

As the judge put it when ordering the records to be released, they amount to “much to-do about nothing.” Our review of the documents found that they do not support the conclusions put forward by attorney Michael Gableman in the problematic report he recently released. 3/

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American Oversight

@weareoversight

Mar 15

This week marks American Oversight’s fifth anniversary.

Since opening, we’ve used public records requests and litigation to uncover and publish over a million pages of records.

For our fifth anniversary, here are five times our work led to greater accountability.

1. Exposing the Trump Administration’s Response to Racial Justice Protests

As Americans took to the streets in June 2020 to protest the police killings of Black people, the federal law enforcement response in many cities took a sharply authoritarian turn.

In Washington, DC, the protest response included deploying low-flying helicopters and armored vehicles.

We submitted scores of public records requests to learn more about the federal government’s response to the protests.

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American Oversight

@weareoversight

Mar 15

https://twitter.com/AJBayatpour/status/1502397274646851586

We uncovered records that showed Michael Gableman, the attorney leading Wisconsin’s election review, billed taxpayers for his trips to the Arizona “audit” and Mike Lindell’s “cyber symposium.”

Now, the assembly says it will subtract money from future payments to Gableman.

https://twitter.com/AJBayatpour/status/1502397274646851586

Gableman traveled to the Arizona “audit” and to election conspiracy promoter Mike Lindell's "cyber symposium" last summer.

Records we obtained show taxpayers paid for the trips, even though Speaker Vos said they wouldn’t.
jsonline.com/story/news/pol…

Records we uncovered in November show that taxpayers also footed the bill for Gableman’s hotels during his August trip to South Dakota to attend a “cyber symposium” hosted by My Pillow CEO and prominent election denier Mike Lindell.
americanoversight.org/expense-record…

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American Oversight

@weareoversight

Mar 14

Today is the first day of #SunshineWeek, a week that celebrates and promotes access to information and open government nationwide.

To kick things off, we want to explain exactly what the Freedom of Information Act is and why it is such a powerful transparency tool. #FOIA

The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. FOIA is a law that gives anyone the right to request records from agencies in the executive branch.

Yes, anyone can file a FOIA request! Many journalists, scholars, watchdog organizations, and more use FOIA requests to research what goes on behind the scenes in government. You can request records such as emails, text messages, paper documents, videos, and more.