The DOJ is hiding records about Biden’s order telling federal agencies to develop plans to interfere in state election administration.
On Thursday evening, the agency filed a motion for summary judgment with the Fort Myers Division of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida in an attempt to conceal communication records related to Executive Order 14019, which required all federal departments to “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” In law, “summary judgment” is a decision issued by a court based on statements and evidence for one party against another without going to a full trial.
The move to shield the records in question from the public comes after a federal judge mandated in July that the agency must turn over documents related to Biden’s order to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), which sued the DOJ back in April after its officials failed to respond to FGA’s July 2021 open records requests. While the DOJ ultimately turned over a few of the records to FGA last month, the documents were heavily redacted and did not include the DOJ’s 15-page “strategic plan” on how the agency intends to comply with Biden’s executive order.
In their Thursday legal filing arguing for a summary judgment, the DOJ claimed that its Civil Rights Division (CRT) “has submitted a reasonably specific declaration” describing the search that CRT “conducted for records responsive to FGA’s [Freedom of Information Act] request” and that documents withheld or redacted by the DOJ are protected under the “presidential communications privilege.”
“The presidential communications privilege applies to the Strategic Plan because it was ‘solicited and received by the President[’s] . . . immediate White House advisers with broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given the President’ regarding voting rights issues,” the DOJ filing reads. “The Strategic Plan therefore falls squarely within the scope of the presidential communications privilege.”
Most notable in the agency’s arguments, however, is the contention that the release of the information requested by FGA would cause “public confusion” and that “such public confusion would result from disclosure of the Strategic Plan because it contains many proposed actions that the public might construe as ‘future commitments, past actions, or provisions already in place.'”
“DOJ therefore properly withheld the Strategic Plan in its entirety,” the agency claimed.
In response to the DOJ’s continued coverup, FGA President and CEO Tarren Bragdon issued a statement blasting the agency’s behavior, saying that it’s “clear” that Biden’s administration “has weaponized DOJ to hide records and is using the legal process to run out the clock before the midterm elections.”
“DOJ offered flimsy excuses to justify concealing key information regarding their participation in government-funded ‘get out the vote’ efforts,” Bragdon said. “FGA will not stop fighting to uncover these records and expose the full scope of the Biden administration’s mass voter registration scheme. The law and the American people are...
