The Heritage Foundation is pressing the FBI on the tactics it allegedly deploys to shut down public records requests, the Daily Caller has learned.
Heritage’s Oversight Project wrote a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray outlining the group’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and explaining how the FBI prevents information from being released to the public. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Heritage Foundation Presses DOJ To Investigate Joe Biden’s Aliases As Part Of Classified Docs Case)
READ THE LETTER:
“Part of our efforts involve sending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests under our legal rights to obtain information that should be made available to the public,” As a matter of course, your agency violates all timeframes for productions, over-redacts information, and wastes significant taxpayer resources to force litigation on disclosure requests that should be handled in a routine, administrative manner.”
FOIA requests allow members of the public to request records from government agencies. Nine exemptions to FOIA exist to protect privacy and national security for material such as confidential trade secrets, certain information compiled for law enforcement proceedings and classified documents.
The Heritage Oversight Project described the FBI’s maneuvers as part of an ongoing “pattern of practice” lawsuit challenging the FBI’s alleged delaying strategies. A complaint filed by Heritage in February includes multiple claims for relief in connection with the FBI’s handling of FOIA requests.
READ THE COMPLAINT:
One technique used by the FBI to slow-walk FOIA requests is splitting them into multiple requests in order to create a greater administrative on the plaintiffs, the Heritage Oversight Project said in an August court filing. (RELATED: Top Hunter Biden Prosecutor David Weiss, FBI ‘Constricted’ Internal Communications, Testimony Shows)
The FBI has allegedly failed to produce information related to Heritage’s FOIA requests dating back to Sept. 2022, prompting Heritage to file numerous lawsuits to obtain the records in question. Heritage is seeking records tied to the Durham report, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, left-wing ideology inside the FBI, the FBI’s targeting of Catholics and other matters.
“The FBI can’t even comply with the most basic transparency requirements that exist now,” Heritage Oversight Project Director Mike Howell said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “The idea that a new regime of accountability and transparency measures can get them under control as it pertains to their tremendous abuse of 702 FISA searches is far-fetched. The agency has basically adopted a ‘we don’t recognize the law, sue us if you disagree, and we will charge taxpayers for the legal defense’ attitude.”
“The FBI, and intelligence community broadly, are deeply weaponized and unfortunately occupy the position of leverage over Congress right now,” Howell added. “We need to focus on the users of the tools, and until we fix the ideological and political rot within these agencies, we’re going to be in the same mess.”
Congress appears to be poised to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2024. Republicans in the House and Senate have voiced concerns over the power that Section 702 of FISA gives the FBI to conduct surveillance on Americans without needing to obtain a search warrant.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 12: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a House Judiciary Committee about oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Capitol Hill July 12, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The FBI retracted a memo in February labeling “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as extremists and recommended the cultivation of sources within their communities, according to a report released on Dec. 4 by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization. In April 2023, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Wray after the FBI failed to comply with an initial subpoena.
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee’s oversight shows that the FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists. The Committee and Select Subcommittee discovered that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment and the FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership,” the report reads.
A separate report by the Judiciary Committee appears to show the FBI was among the government agencies with third-party organizations to pressure social media companies into censoring speech ahead of the 2020 election. (RELATED: FBI Headquarters Stonewalled Investigative Activity On Hunter Biden Ties To Ukraine, Former Prosecutor Testifies)
FBI Agent Elvis Chan, a conduit between the bureau and social media platforms, said in a leaked Oct. 2020 email that it was his “mandate” to police domestic speech. He was featured heavily in the “Twitter Files” documents showing how government agencies and non-profits allegedly pressured the social media platform into censoring and suppressing speech.
In late October, Wray testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and admitted the FBI’s relationship with social media platforms has changed because of the ongoing Missouri v. Biden First Amendment lawsuit over whether the federal government can coordinate with social media companies to censor speech.
The FBI declined to comment.