Politics

Former Organizing for America staffer interfered with FOIA requests at Department of Homeland Security

Mike Riggs Contributor
Font Size:

New emails and testimony from Department of Homeland Security FOIA officer Catherine Papoi reveal that a former Obama campaign staffer repeatedly asked Papoi and her team to redact portions of “politically sensitive” documents, as well as portions of documents that were already publicly available.

Papoi, who came under fire at DHS for complaining that “sensitive” FOIA requests were being vetted by political employees, testified on March 3 that Willard “Clint” Carte, a DHS attorney with the title of “confidential assistant,” attempted to block a FOIA request for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s calendar in which Napolitano’s secretary had referred to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “Senator Clinton.” According to Papoi’s testimony, Carte asked that Clinton’s title be changed on the calendar in order to spare the department “embarrassment.”

“The front office wanted that changed before the response went out the door and we were pushing back saying that once you cast your net and retrieve a record, you can’t alter a record because of mere embarrassment,” Papoi said in her testimony.

According to Papoi, FOIA officers are told they can only “cast their net” one time. “Once you have retrieved the records, they lose…the living nature where they are evolving, and the statute requires that you retrieve the records and then process them,” she testified. “DOJ has also opined that you don’t cast your net twice, you cast once. You retrieve the records and you process them. So [the front office, where Carte worked] also suggested making the changes and then recasting our net, and it was explained that also was unacceptable.”

When asked why she refused, Papoi said, “Ultimately that is my job, and I have to be able to sleep at night knowing that I am doing the right thing.”

In a statement to Politico, a DHS spokesperson denied charges of meddling, saying, “In no case did this process inhibit documents from release under FOIA and only attorneys and other FOIA professionals determined the substance of redactions.”

But Carte, a graduate of West Virginia University Law School, isn’t just an attorney. According to a campaign database maintained by George Washington University, Carte served as the new media director for Obama For America, Obama’s general election campaign group in West Virginia. Carte also appears as an administrator of several groups hosted on Organizing for America’s website, including “West Virginians for Obama,” “Marshall University Students for Barack Obama,” “In Support of Change,” and others.

Papoi’s testimony and emails revealed a second conflict with Carte.

According to emails obtained by The Daily Caller, Carte wanted to redact information from a FOIA request filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch. “Here are the proposed redactions to this response…the additional redactions are all under b5,” Carte wrote. “Obviously the response letter would need a change to include a b5 portion, and the b5 would have to go over/with the b2 and b6 redactions. Am happy to discuss.”

The b5 exemption is the most commonly abused exemption, and the Supreme Court ruled against its use in a Washington State case earlier this month. The exemption is intended to cover “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency,” but is often used in broad swaths to redact information that cannot be redacted under any other exemption.

Carte planned to use b5 to redact a section concerning visa waivers, to which Papoi responded that “DHS has already made public the fact that several countries are participating in the visa waiver program.” (Carte also suggested several other redactions, but TheDC did not have access to those specific suggestions.)

In an email to Carte dated May 27, Papois wrote that Carte’s proposed redactions were consistent “with the way the former administration would have redacted this document. Not a good thing in my opinion…”

When asked by the Oversight Committee investigators why Carte wanted to redact portions of the Judicial Watch request that were already publicly available, and thus not suited to redaction under b5, Papoi said, “This was an instance where either they weren’t aware it was made public or they simply did not want to release the information. Which one, I am not sure.”

Papoi claims that she was demoted within DHS for raising concerns about the FOIA process.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel