NEW: I just obtained via #FOIA the secret 2020 DOJ report based on an investigation ordered up by Bill Barr to determine whether Obama officials improperly unmasked Michael Flynn & others prior to & after the 2016 election
It took me more than a year to pry this report out of DOJ. The reason this report -- known as the Bash Report -- took so long for DOJ to process is because it also had to be reviewed by CIA, NSA, ODNI and FBI.
“It’s A Money Game”: How Mastercard And Visa Tolerate Scams That Hurt Consumers On A Massive Scale. A BuzzFeed News investigation. buzzfeednews.com/article/rosali…
The global credit card rivals maintain a strikingly permissive relationship with companies that have been accused of fraud. For one of Mastercard’s top executives, that relationship went even further.
NEW/🧵: Yesterday, DOJ OIG released a 1 page summary about a watchdog staffer who was suspected of leaking a draft report of the Trump admin's family separation policy to the media & then resigned during a probe
The 52-page report shows DOJ IG had scrutinized one of its staffers contacts with reporters for The New York Times, NBC News and The Guardian
2/
🚨DOJ OIG while conducting it's leak probe issued an administrative subpoena to a telecom company for subscriber info "to confirm one specific telephone number belonged to The Guardian"
🧵NEW: A yearlong investigation by @KendallTTaggart@jtemplon@a_cormier_ & me into private equity giant KKR & its takeover of BrightSpring Health Services, a company that serves ppl w/intellectual & development disabilities turned up some damning findings buzzfeednews.com/article/kendal…
KKR focused on expanding the biz even as a crisis mounted in its group home division, where conditions grew so dire that nurses/caretakers quit in droves, a state prohibited the company from accepting new residents & some of the most vulnerable people in its care suffered & died
We combed through hundreds of state inspection reports, internal company records, filed dozens of FOIAs & a lawsuit and conducted more than 170 interviews. Again and again, they found residents consigned to live in squalor, denied basic medical care, or all but abandoned.
The money, sent through the high-secrecy jurisdictions of the British Virgin Islands & Cyprus, was difficult to trace. But with the help of confidential banking records, investigators at State Street stumbled upon the identity of the mystery investor: Roman Abramovich
NEW: AG Garland issued a new memo on #FOIA guidelines for federal agencies. It's the first such memo to be issued since former AG Eric Holder's 2009 FOIA memo, which was supposed to usher in a new era of transparency and open govt but failed
One important point in this memo, which I have complained about loudly since the passage of the 2016 FOIA amendments, is that agencies fail to consider the foreseeable harm standard when withholding docs/info. Garland's memo aims to rectify that
Garland reminds agencies they cannot withhold docs " based merely on speculative or abstract fears or fears of embarrassment."
Agencies still do this this often. Let's see what happens.
NEW: What @a_cormier_@jtemplon@scottpham & I reported in 2 stories over the past week related to the ways Russian oligarchs have gamed the system of financial regulations to hide their wealth FinCEN has just issued a warning about