Thread by @weareoversight

In 2022, we used public records requests and litigation to investigate abuses of power and threats to our democracy. Here are some of American Oversight’s biggest stories this year. #FoiaFriday
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

Threats to Democracy: The fake electoral certificates, which we first obtained in 2021, drew renewed attention in January 2022, and the Jan. 6 committee later issued subpoenas to 14 of the false electors.
americanoversight.org/investigation/…

Records we obtained show that several of the false electors remained involved in partisan and discredited investigations of the 2020 election.
americanoversight.org/fake-electors-…

The Jan. 6 committee released its final report of findings on Dec. 22. In June, we published a comprehensive, minute-by-minute timeline of the events of that day, combining records we obtained with public reporting and evidence released by the committee.
americanoversight.org/timeline-jan6

This year, we continued to receive public records related to the Arizona Senate’s sham “audit” of votes in Maricopa County.

In May, we published an updated report detailing how the “audit” was an anti-democratic tactic to undermine faith in the 2020 election.
americanoversight.org/arizonas-sham-…

After multiple court rulings, we also obtained public records previously held by “audit” contractor Cyber Ninjas, which provided further evidence of the firm’s connections to election deniers and conspiracy theorists.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

In October, we published a report of findings from our investigation into the Wisconsin Assembly’s partisan election review, which — as a judge in one of our public records lawsuits put it — had found “absolutely no evidence” of voter fraud.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

In January, we filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Pa., seeking multiple categories of records related to its late 2020 election “audit” that were missing from sets of documents previously released by the county in response to our requests.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

This year, we also published stories about local and state actors who have been working to undermine trust in democracy.
americanoversight.org/investigation/…

The Public’s Right to Know: We discovered through litigation that the Department of Defense and the Army had wiped the phones of top officials at the end of the Trump administration — including texts from Jan. 6.
cnn.com/2022/08/02/pol…

Those revelations in August came shortly after the Secret Service came under fire for also having deleted text messages from Jan. 6.
cnn.com/2022/07/22/pol…

Within days, the Pentagon publicly announced a new policy regarding the preservation of text messages and other information stored on mobile devices.

The Department of Homeland Security also announced it would stop wiping the phones of high-level officials without backing them up, and would launch a review of its record retainment practices.
cnn.com/2022/08/04/pol…

Our #FOIA litigation also uncovered troubling information about records retention practices at ICE. In 2017, ICE instructed senior Trump officials to wipe their phones upon departure.

A judge ordered the agency to preserve the mobile devices of seven former officials.
americanoversight.org/judge-orders-i…

In June, we sued the offices of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to compel the release of records including communications with the gun lobby, emails sent by Paxton around the Jan. 6 insurrection, and more.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

In September, we sued the Office of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and the state’s Department of Labor and Regulation for failing to release public records about expenses related to Noem’s activities while in office.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

State Leaders and Civil Rights: After Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched a school tip line to report the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts” in January, American Oversight filed public records requests seeking submissions and related communications.

We sued Youngkin’s office in August for failing to release select records, and in November we obtained a supplemental response that stated the governor’s office had received 381,166 emails to the tip line as of Sept. 27.

Records we obtained show state officials fielding complaints from right-wing activists and the confusion brought by the order’s ill-defined mandate.
americanoversight.org/in-the-documen…

Earlier in the year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through a new congressional map that aggressively favored his own party and significantly reduced the voting power of the state’s Black residents.

Records obtained by American Oversight and reporting by ProPublica revealed the governor’s office had worked with consultants connected to the national Republican Party — a potential violation of the state’s constitution.
americanoversight.org/records-indica…

In November, we filed an amicus brief in Lambda Legal and the ACLU’s lawsuit over the state Dept. of Family and Protective Services’ implementation of Abbott’s directive calling for the provision of gender-affirming care to be investigated as child abuse.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

In the brief, we asked the court to consider documents we obtained through public records requests that reveal how DFPS officials and employees responded to Abbott’s directive.
americanoversight.org/texas-child-we…

Influence and Access: We obtained emails from Ginni Thomas suggesting that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may have been in regular contact with the Gov. DeSantis.
americanoversight.org/email-suggests…

We obtained records that show the level of access that the Republican Attorneys General Association’s top corporate donors have had with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who became RAGA’s national chair in May 2021.
americanoversight.org/s-c-attorney-g…

The Intercept reported on emails we obtained showing how in 2017 one of the biggest fertilizer producers in the United States lobbied the Trump administration to impose tariffs on fertilizer imports — tariffs that went into effect in 2021.
theintercept.com/2022/08/03/fer…

Border & Immigration: After conservative governors in Florida, Texas, & Arizona made headlines sending asylum-seekers and other undocumented immigrants to cities hundreds of miles away, we filed records requests about the migrant transportation programs.
americanoversight.org/investigation/…

Records we obtained included contract documents for Gov. DeSantis’ Sept. 14 flights carrying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, as well as text messages suggesting that the governor’s office was in contact with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office about the flights.

In August, we sued HHS, CDC, and the State Dept. for the release of public records related to the Trump-era invocation of Title 42, an immigration restriction disguised as a public health measure.
americanoversight.org/american-overs…

In March, we obtained emails showing that former White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller spearheaded the policy.
americanoversight.org/emails-show-st…

We updated our extensive timeline of records related to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, the measure that formalized the separation of migrant children from their families.
americanoversight.org/a-timeline-of-…

We also obtained records providing additional evidence of the administration’s failure to adequately plan for the reunification of children with family members.
americanoversight.org/in-the-documen…

There’s more. We obtained documents that showed San Francisco immigration court officials celebrating a system that fast-tracked the cases of immigrants who missed court appointments and resulted in an increase in deportation orders.
americanoversight.org/san-francisco-…

Read more about our biggest stories from 2022 here:
americanoversight.org/american-overs…