#FOIAFriday SCOOP: DOJ released a doc to me in response to a 5 year old #FOIA request. It's a doc I didn't specifically ask for. It's a transcript of an off the record discussion Obama had with reporters about Trump, et al, 3 days before he left office
Obama told reporters he was not too worried abt 4 yrs of Trump
“Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be okay. 8 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”
Obama told reporters during this January 17, 2017 discussion that they should pay particularly close attn to DOJ
Obama said in these previously unpublished remarks that he didn’t believe Trump was particularly interested in starting any wars other than “bombing the heck out of terrorists."
This is what Obama thought about Trump's view of foreign policy
Obama said at the time that the Republican Party "is ideologically completely incoherent.”
“You don’t know what they stand for,” he said.
He went on
For all of Trump’s harsh criticisms about Obama, the 44th president said Trump’s public persona was radically different than in his private interactions.
This is what he said.
This was a nearly 90 minute off the record discussion Obama had with reporters. He touched on a wide range of topics, including his communtation of @xychelsea's prison sentence and @Snowden's leaks.
But it was Obama’s comments about the GOP and Trump that seem almost prescient
Obama said his No. 1 concern about the then incoming Trump administration was the potential politicization of law enforcement
There are a bunch of other revealing tidbits in this transcript such as Obama expressing his frustration with "the Greenwalds of the world" and his comments about Coney and the FBI
Obama had some advice for reporters covering Trump right before he left office
that should read *Comey*
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SCOOP: In Feb, federal agencies "lost" many #FOIA requests but you probably had no idea. It turns out that the FOIAs disappeared due to an "insider threat attack" by 2 employees at a software company who were previously convicted of hacking into the State Dept
Opexus, which is owned by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo and provides software services for processing US government records, was compromised in February by two employees who'd previously been convicted of hacking into the US State Department.
The findings were detailed in separate reports by Opexus and an independent cybersecurity firm. I reviewed copies of both reports. The investigations found that the employees, twin brothers Muneeb and Suhaib Akhter, improperly accessed sensitive docs and compromised or deleted dozens of databases, including those that contained data from the IRS and GSA. The brothers have since been terminated.
SCOOP: The Trump administration is “decommissioning” a Department of Justice office that been at the center of dismantling transnational organized crime networks, drug cartels and human trafficking rings
Leaders of the unit, called the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, or OCDETF, were told they had until Sept. 30 to shut down operations.
An email sent last Monday by a DOJ budget analyst to a counterpart at OCDETF said that the unit’s fiscal year 2026 budget would be “zeroed out” and the independent office dissolved, according to records I obtained in response to a #FOIA request people familiar with the matter.
USAID told me it can’t release documents via #FOIA due to “recent developments”
Meanwhile, a memo I obtained sent to DHS FOIA officers this week directs them to “maximize transparency” when processing FOIA requests bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
Just a month into Trump’s second presidency, the FOIA has made its way into the swirling, political chaos. The administration’s mass firings of federal employees has impacted FOIA operations at some agencies, jeopardizing the public’s ability to access records.
A few weeks ago, USAID was targeted for closure by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Nearly all of USAID’s employees were fired or placed on administrative leave.
A FOIA Files SCOOP: Elon Musk’s DOGE Targets #FOIA Requests at Agency Under its Purview
DOGE also wants to be notified when there’s any attempt at oversight from Congress, inspectors general, even the Government Accountability Office.
Earlier this week, I reported on DOGE’s takeover of the CFPB. One of the standout documents I reviewed was an “Assignment Agreement,” or a memorandum of understanding between DOGE and CFPB that bears the seal of the Executive Office of the President.
It explained that authority for the CFPB operation emanated from a Jan. 20 executive order and would center on “software modernization.” It also said DOGE "will discuss projects and the overall engagement with CFPB on an as needed basis."
NEW: The last edition of FOIA Files this year! This week, we’re going out on a lighter note & highlighting the Deep Cuts—the redacted, obscure & overlooked docs buried in stacks of newsworthy releases that are so good they could have been hit singles! bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and helped make my weekly newsletter a success. It’s been an amazing 1st year, despite the fact that govt agencies have tried to wear me down by throwing roadblocks in my way. But I’m well aware that obtaining documents via FOIA is a battle so I was prepared.
Since I launched FOIA Files nine months ago, I’ve liberated more than 6,000 pages of documents on a wide-range of issues and shared them with the public. (If you missed any of the previous 35 editions you can find them here.) bloomberg.com/authors/AV1xN7…
🧵 If you can spare a couple of hours, please read this groundbreaking, yearlong global investigation by my @business colleagues into the money, opportunity & exploitation into the booming fertility industry. I guarantee once you start reading you won't be able to stop
To tell its story, my colleagues follow a teenage girl in India, lured into selling her eggs; a model in Argentina whose genetic makeup is prized; a mother in Greece, told by police that her eggs were stolen; and two “egg girls” from Taiwan who have put themselves at risk to earn money in the US.
This project began when Kanoko Matsuyama, a health-care reporter in Bloomberg’s Tokyo bureau, noticed that private equity firms were snapping up in vitro fertilization clinics around the world