Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to “The Classifieds.” Read on to learn about the fallout from our major Freedom of Information Act win, why the flying bribe from Qatar should prompt Congress to close presidential foundation loopholes, and more of this week’s top secrecy news stories.

Major FOIA release to FPF followed by firings at spy agency, removal of information from FOIA website

Last week a document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to FPF through a FOIA request made headlines for undermining the Trump administration’s justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan nationals to a Salvadoran prison.

A week after releasing the document, DNI Tulsi Gabbard fired the top intelligence officials at the agency that authored the document. The timing is certainly eyebrow-raising and begs questions about whether or not the FOIA release played a role in their termination. (The New York Times reports that Laura Loomer’s criticism of the officials may have also been at issue.)

ODNI also took its entire website offline earlier this week. When it came back online, its FOIA page was visibly slimmed down.

It is now missing a robust library of previously released FOIA documents, investigative reports, case processing notes, inspector general reports, and more. The agency’s FOIA regulations, which provide instructions for filing requests and appeals, information on fees, and more, have also disappeared.

This is no small matter. All agencies have been legally required to maintain FOIA libraries containing frequently requested records, policy manuals, FOIA regulations, and much more, for decades. This means the spy chief’s office is now in clear violation of the FOIA.

State Department must declassify Rümeysa Öztürk deportation rationale

The ODNI declassification makes it incumbent on the administration to declassify information in response to another FPF FOIA request, this one concerning the arrest and detainment of Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, whose only offense appears to have been co-authoring an op-ed critical of Israel.

The government must declassify the State Department memo that was leaked to The Washington Post and that found no evidence that Öztürk supported terrorism — despite the administration’s public claims that she did.

Öztürk and her lawyers deserve to have access to information that could aid in her legal case. And the public and the media have a right to know if the administration is arresting people off the street simply for writing things the Trump administration doesn’t like.

Read more on our website.

No, the plane isn’t going to Trump’s library

To state what is hopefully obvious, the $400 million Qatari plane the Trump administration is on the verge of accepting wouldn’t go to a hypothetical Trump presidential library, as has been reported. It would be gifted to a private presidential foundation — around which there are negligible rules for disclosing financial contributions, allowing President Donald Trump to solicit almost unlimited funds from anybody.

Other presidential foundations have long used money from sources that might be eager to avoid normal campaign disclosure requirements to build vast presidential complexes, and foreign entities are historically big donors to these foundations. For example, a 1997 report shows that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia each contributed $1 million to the Bush Library, and China paid somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. These facilities sometimes share space with government-run libraries, adding to confusion about where the private foundation work ends and the government’s work begins.

Qatar’s plane is an escalation of a preexisting problem, and the foundation’s donation loopholes have long needed closing. It's time to unwind government-run libraries from private foundations and reform donation rules to presidential foundations.

Read more about the issue on our website.

What I’m reading

Farmers sued over deleted climate data. So the government will put it back. (The New York Times). A lawsuit brought jointly by environmental organizations and a farming association has successfully challenged the government’s capricious removal of climate change information from the Agriculture Department’s website. The government complied with the plaintiff’s request to restore the information, saying it “expects to substantially complete the restoration process in approximately two weeks.”

Trump envoy relied on Kremlin interpreter in meetings with Putin to end war in Ukraine (NBC News). Not only is this extremely risky, it could also violate federal and presidential record-keeping laws that mandate the creation and preservation of records with foreign leaders. Having a State Department interpreter present also means the notes of the meeting become federal records subject to preservation and disclosure requirements.

Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

Transparently yours,

Lauren Harper

Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation