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 this week’s top secrecy news.
Trump library tells the Post it has no Trump DMs, tells FPF it does
On February 17, the Trump Presidential Library — which is run by the National Archives and Records Administration — told The Washington Post in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that it had “no records” of President Donald Trump’s first-term Twitter direct messages.
This response was, at best, a bureaucratic failure.
On that exact same day it told the Post it had no documents, the library sent me a contradictory response confirming that it does hold those records.
Not only did they acknowledge records existed, but when I followed up with library staff to check the status of my request, archivists told me it was 36th in line, with an estimated completion date of November. (As a reminder, the Trump library is the official NARA website for processing FOIA requests, not to be confused with whatever Trump eventually builds in Miami.)
The differing responses are alarming for a few reasons.
First, we already know these DMs exist. As Nate Jones notes for the Post, court filings from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol revealed that Twitter disclosed that Trump’s account sent or received at least 32 DMs between October 20, 2020, and January 21, 2021.
Second, under the Presidential Records Act, Trump’s digital communications concerning government business, explicitly including social media direct messages, are public property that must be preserved and transferred to the National Archives. NARA’s own official guidance leaves zero room for ambiguity on this requirement.
It is possible that minor semantic discrepancies between our requests — the Post asked for records “related to” the DMs, while I requested DMs “sent to or from” the account — prompted overly cautious agency personnel to play word games and deny the Post’s request.
But that feels like a generous excuse considering Trump’s attempts to claw back his records from public scrutiny. FPF will continue to track the library’s response to our requests to find out what DMs it really has, and continue to hold the line for presidential records transparency.
Weaponization of declassification will continue under Pulte
Trump has tapped Bill Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte has no experience in intelligence or national security, but he does have a track record of using his authority to target Trump’s political foes. During his time at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte sidestepped the agency’s inspector general to launch dubious criminal referrals against Trump adversaries, including Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
This willingness to weaponize government is particularly dangerous in the intelligence community. One immediate concern is that he will accelerate Tulsi Gabbard’s efforts to use declassification as a partisan tool — only releasing records that score the administration political points, while silencing dissenting views (including firing officials who authorized intelligence Trump didn’t like, and transparency officials who released the records).
This threat is magnified by the administration’s efforts to force every federal employee to sign a sweeping nondisclosure agreement. Pulte at the helm of the ODNI all but ensures that secrets will only be declassified when it serves the administration’s narrative.
What I'm reading
Judge sanctioned private prison giant for destroying evidence in ICE death suit
In what may be a first, a judge has sanctioned private prison giant CoreCivic for destroying video evidence in a wrongful death lawsuit involving a man in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. While the sanction is a step in the right direction, it underscores the need to extend FOIA to ICE’s for-profit detention network.
Federal oversight faces ‘structural conflict’ as political appointees enter IG offices
A new report from the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service reveals that high-level political appointees are replacing nonpartisan career officials at an alarming rate. Perhaps the most concerning trend is the placement of partisan officials within inspector general offices, which are supposed to be independent.
We sued ICE to get its spyware contract. The agency is redacting essentially everything
ICE is trying to hide as much information as it can about a contract with spyware company Paragon for a remote hacking tool called Graphite. The extensive redactions appear overbroad, particularly given the high degree of public interest and the agency’s assertion that the contract was terminated in January.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
