At the end of 2014, Congress was on the verge of passing a long overdue reform of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which would have updated the vital transparency law for the digital age. Mysteriously, the bill died at the very last minute, despite it having almost unanimous support. 

We received an anonymous tip that the Obama administration was aggressively opposing the bill in secret, despite it being based word-for-word on the administration's supposed internal FOIA policy. So we sued under FOIA to find out the truth. 

In response, we received a shocking six page memo that showed the so-called "Most Transparent Administration Ever" vehemently objecting to putting its own policies into law so they would not have to comply with them. 

After VICE wrote about our FOIA documents, the fight spilled out into the open, and the Obama administration was forced to vow in public that the president would sign the bill if Congress passed it. 

Congress then quickly passed a version of the bill that Obama then signed into law in July 2016. You can read the documents we received from our FOIA lawsuit here.