Read the full story: The Blaze
Cause of Action Director Dan Epstein also blasted the IRS on Monday for failing to run basic searches on Lerner’s Blackberry for the lost emails.
“The IRS knew Lerner’s hard drive was not recoverable while the blackberry was operating,” he said. “This should have triggered a search and preservation of the blackberry contents – but the IRS failed to do that.”
Read the full story: Kansas City Star
In 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor ruled that the business model, as represented by Rhea Lana’s, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was a decision that has put the future of sales across the country in question.
Most sales are still operating because Rhea Lana’s, represented by the advocacy group Cause of Action, filed a lawsuit against the ruling in January.
Rhea Lana Riner, the founder and CEO of Rhea Lana’s, says she believes the sales operate within the law because there is a clear economic benefit for all of the participants in the sale. The suit is awaiting review by a judge.
Cause of Action is continuing to investigate improper White House review of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by asking agencies to produce their communications with the White House. We recently sued 12 agencies that have failed to provide a final response to our FOIA Requests. We submitted a FOIA request to The Department of Commerce (Commerce) asking for its communications with the White House on November 26, 2013. After eight months of waiting, Commerce responded on June 25, 2014 saying that there were no responsive documents.
Cause of Action received a supplemental response from Commerce 25 minutes later informing us to disregard the previous email and provided a new final response. The new response: “The responsive documents located in response to your FOIA request are being withheld in their entirety.” Commerce withheld 30 pages of documents in full, citing FOIA exemptions 5 and 6. By contrast, every other agency that has responded to our request provided documents with only some redactions and nothing withheld in full.
In less than 30 minutes, “no responsive documents” becomes 30 pages of documents “withheld in their entirety.” This is transparency in the “most transparent administration in history.”
Read the full story: Washington Times
“The White House is demanding access to records and otherwise influencing agencies’ FOIA obligations to produce responsive documents in a manner that is not countenanced by the law,” CoA argued in its lawsuit. “Indeed, the ‘most transparent administration in history’ has injected itself into a process (FOIA) presumably to self-regulate what agency records are produced to the public.”
The suit references a June 30 story in The Washington Times that reported on the impact of the “White House equities” memo and quoted FOIA officers at federal agencies as saying the new review process had been used to keep information embarrassing to the Obama administration from being released.
Read the full story: Washington Free Beacon
A government watchdog group announced Monday that it is suing a dozen federal agencies for improperly delaying Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for White House review.
Cause of Action is suing 10 cabinet agencies, as well as the Internal Revenue Service and White House Office of Management and Budget, for failing to release documents regarding how the White House reviews agency FOIA requests.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 18, 2014
Cause of Action Sues A Dozen Federal Agencies for Allowing the White House to Obstruct Transparency
WASHINGTON – Cause of Action (CoA), a government accountability organization, sued 10 cabinet agencies, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Internal Revenue Service today for refusing to disclose communications concerning documents the agencies shared with the White House. The records would reveal whether and how the White House politicizes records requests sent to federal agencies.
“Accountable and transparent government does not involve instructing agencies to send politically sensitive records to the White House for review. The bureaucracy has violated the law by stonewalling the public’s access to documents for political reasons. Cause of Action’s own investigation reveals that the White House is actually demanding access from agencies to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and Congressional document requests, as well as the documents subject to those requests, in a manner that may obstruct congressional oversight and violate the spirit of FOIA,” stated Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s executive director.
After sending 22 FOIA requests between 2013 and 2014 to various agencies regarding the review of agency records by the Office of White House Counsel and releasing a report in April of this year about “White House equities,” a broad term the White House uses to review and advise agencies on what should or shouldn’t be released to FOIA requesters and Congress, 10 of the agencies have responded to Cause of Action.
Cause of Action’s White House equities investigation previously uncovered internal emails from the Environmental Protection Agency showing that the White House improperly withheld documents related to a request from Congress, leading to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee. Cause of Action also obtained documents revealing that a public records appeal filed by Americans for Limited Government with the Department of Labor (DOL) concerning former Secretary Hilda Solis’ calendars was held up for years before DOL released the information, showing that agencies are hiding responsive documents, or delaying the production of responsive documents, because of what they are sharing with the White House.
In addition to the Internal Revenue Service and Office of Management and Budget, the remaining cabinet level agencies that have gone an average of eight months without producing documents are:
The lawsuit, along with our exhibits, can be found here and here.
You can find more information on White House equities here.
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