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Tag: Freedom of Information Act

  • Gypsy Rose Blanchard Assures BF Nick With Knowledge On State Laws & Court Case Studies In Newly Released Video – Fans Are Left Stunned! – Perez Hilton

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    [Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

    Gypsy Rose Blanchard made sure to share her knowledge with Nicholas Godejohn in a newly released video.

    We’re sure you’re all up-to-date on these WILD new videos. We’ve been covering how the Freedom of Information Act has let us see a bunch of clips that Gypsy allegedly sent her ex before they murdered her mother Dee Dee Blanchard. From disturbing descriptions of future family life with Nick, to inconsistent statements, it’s got everyone questioning everything! And THIS video has fans wondering if Gypsy really is as innocent as she says…

    In the clip, posted to the Into The Weeds podcast YouTube channel, Gypsy seems to be talking to Nick ahead of his court date after being arrested. Now, this was before Dee Dee’s murder — this was a completely separate incident where Nick was arrested for allegedly watching porn and masturbating in McDonald’s for NINE hours back in 2013. He was charged with disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon because he had a pocket knife on him.

    Related: Rob Reiner Said Nick Hadn’t Done Drugs In ‘Over 6 Years’ Just 3 Months Before Murders

    But what raised eyebrows was in this video, Gypsy seems to be very knowledgeable about the court system and cross-state laws. She says in the clip:

    “I want you to know that I don’t think that the judge will make you serve jail time for something as simple as carrying a pocket knife over here in redneck territory. That’s just normal. You don’t go to jail for that, but different state, different laws.”

    She also gave her then-boyfriend some advice ahead of his hearing in the video:

    “Remember to be respectable to the judge and remember your manners and do as they say, because … they’re a bit of a higher position than you are. And they have your fate in their hands.”

    In a second video, Gypsy reiterated herself — but also told him about how “blue” would help him show his innocence in court:

    “I want you to be respectful to the judge, like I was saying. I’d suggest wearing blue still, because it is a calming color. And you wanna show your innocence. And that’s really important.”

    You can see a compilation of the videos for yourself (below):

    Commenters once again had a lot to say — in fact, they were shocked with Gypsy’s intellect. In the past, she’s talked about how she was so sheltered she didn’t even really know how to work a smartphone when she left prison. Fans said:

    “‘Wear blue because it’s a calming color – innocent’ more proof of how calculated and conniving she is”

    “Listen to her talking about how to manipulate a judge by what colors to wear to purvey innocence.”

    “To think, this information was under the care of law enforcement this entire time & she walked after 8 years”

    “Yet she couldn’t call the police”

    “And also: the fact that she said she needed to hide the computer – here she is filming and on fb in the living room all the time…”

    “And she says she had no education….unbelievable…all you have to do is listen to her to realize there is nothing slow about her as far as her language, of course she’s nuts but it’s interesting how intelligent she is.”

    “Helping to manipulate the judge ‘for the very first time’”

    “what if she told him to do the McDonalds incident”

    “She knows more than me & she was isolated ???”

    “she didnt want him in jail bc them he couldn’t do the crime she wanted him to do”

    Wild stuff…

    In response to the videos, Gypsy has reminded folks about all the positive work she’s done on herself in the last few years after getting out of a toxic situation.

    Thoughts?

    [Image via Dr. Phil/YouTube]

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    Perez Hilton

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  • DHS Kept Chicago Police Records for Months in Violation of Domestic Espionage Rules

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    On November 21, 2023, field intelligence officers within the Department of Homeland Security quietly deleted a trove of Chicago Police Department records. It was not a routine purge.

    For seven months, the data—records that had been requested on roughly 900 Chicagoland residents—sat on a federal server in violation of a deletion order issued by an intelligence oversight body. A later inquiry found that nearly 800 files had been kept, which a subsequent report said breached rules designed to prevent domestic intelligence operations from targeting legal US residents. The records originated in a private exchange between DHS analysts and Chicago police, a test of how local intelligence might feed federal government watchlists. The idea was to see whether street-level data could surface undocumented gang members in airport queues and at border crossings. The experiment collapsed amid what government reports describe as a chain of mismanagement and oversight failures.

    Internal memos reviewed by WIRED reveal the dataset was first requested by a field officer in DHS’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) in the summer of 2021. By then, Chicago’s gang data was already notorious for being riddled with contradictions and error. City inspectors had warned that police couldn’t vouch for its accuracy. Entries created by police included people purportedly born before 1901 and others who appeared to be infants. Some were labeled by police as gang members but not linked to any particular group.

    Police baked their own contempt into the data, listing people’s occupations as “SCUM BAG,” “TURD,” or simply “BLACK.” Neither arrest nor conviction was necessary to make the list.

    Prosecutors and police relied on the designations of alleged gang members in their filings and investigations. They shadowed defendants through bail hearings and into sentencing. For immigrants, it carried extra weight. Chicago’s sanctuary rules barred most data sharing with immigration officers, but a carve-out at the time for “known gang members” left open a back door. Over the course of a decade, immigration officers tapped into the database more than 32,000 times, records show.

    The I&A memos—first obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU through a public records request—show that what began inside DHS as a limited data-sharing experiment seems to have soon unraveled into a cascade of procedural lapses. The request for the Chicagoland data moved through layers of review with no clear owner, its legal safeguards overlooked or ignored. By the time the data landed on I&A’s server around April 2022, the field officer who had initiated the transfer had left their post. The experiment ultimately collapsed under its own paperwork. Signatures went missing, audits were never filed, and the deletion deadline slipped by unnoticed. The guardrails meant to keep intelligence work pointed outward—toward foreign threats, not Americans—simply failed.

    Faced with the lapse, I&A ultimately killed the project in November 2023, wiping the dataset and memorializing the breach in a formal report.

    Spencer Reynolds, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center, says the episode illustrates how federal intelligence officers can sidestep local sanctuary laws. “This intelligence office is a workaround to so-called sanctuary protections that limit cities like Chicago from direct cooperation with ICE,” he says. “Federal intelligence officers can access the data, package it up, and then hand it off to immigration enforcement, evading important policies to protect residents.”

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    Dell Cameron

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  • FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves

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    Criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states, warns a law enforcement bulletin issued last month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The bureau urges agencies to ensure officers clearly identify themselves and to cooperate when civilians ask to verify an officer’s identity—including by allowing calls to a local police precinct. “Ensure law enforcement personnel adequality [sic] identify themselves during operations and cooperate with individuals who request further verification,” it says.

    First reported by WIRED, the bulletin cites five 2025 incidents involving fake immigration officers and says criminals are using Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s heightened profile to target vulnerable communities, making it harder for Americans to distinguish between lawful officers and imposters while eroding trust in law enforcement. A review of public reporting confirms four of the five cases described in the bulletin. One appears to have gone unreported, suggesting the FBI drew in part on internal law enforcement information. The document was first obtained by the transparency nonprofit Property of the People.

    On August 7, according to the FBI, three men in black vests entered a New York restaurant claiming to be ICE agents. Inside, they tied a worker’s hands and pulled a garbage bag over the person’s head. Another, believing the burglars’ story, surrendered themselves, only to be kicked to the ground and tied up as the intruders robbed an ATM.

    The bureau’s advisory urges agencies at every level of government to coordinate to “verify legitimate versus non-legitimate operations” attributed to ICE—a call that frames the wave of impersonations as a national law-enforcement concern.

    The FBI declined to comment. Its national press office said that it could only respond to media inquiries involving national security, violations of federal law, or essential public safety functions during the government shutdown.

    Cases cited by its advisory span kidnappings, street crime, and sexual violence: In Bay County, Florida, the advisory says, a woman “unzipped [her] jacket and revealed a shirt that said ICE” and told her ex-boyfriend’s wife she was there to “pick her up,” before driving her to an apartment complex. The woman later escaped. In Brooklyn, it alleges, a man told a woman he was an immigration officer and “directed [her] to a nearby stairwell,” where he punched her, tried to rape her, and stole her phone before police caught him. In Raleigh, North Carolina, it claims, a man “entered [a] motel room and threatened to deport the woman if she did not have sex with him,” telling her he was a sworn officer. He showed her a business card with a badge, police said.

    The FBI describes a few signs of impersonation: forged or mismatched credentials, outdated protective gear, and cloned vehicle markings. It’s urging agencies to launch outreach programs aimed at identifying fake ICE agents, a step the FBI argues could counteract the mistrust caused by impersonators and strengthen law enforcement’s image.

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    Dell Cameron, Caroline Haskins

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  • A DHS Data Hub Exposed Sensitive Intel to Thousands of Unauthorized Users

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    The Department of Homeland Security’s mandate to carry out domestic surveillance has been a concern for privacy advocates since the organization was first created in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Now a data leak affecting the DHS’s intelligence arm has shed light not just on how the department gathers and stores that sensitive information—including about its surveillance of Americans—but on how it once left that data exposed to thousands of government and private sector workers and even foreign nationals who were never authorized to see it.

    An internal DHS memo obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and shared with WIRED reveals that from March to May of 2023, a DHS online platform used by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) to share sensitive but unclassified intelligence information and investigative leads among the DHS, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, local law enforcement, and intelligence fusion centers across the US was misconfigured, accidentally exposing restricted intelligence information to all users of the platform.

    Access to the data, according to a DHS inquiry described in the memo, was meant to be limited to users of the Homeland Security Information Network’s intelligence section, known as HSIN-Intel. Instead it was set to grant access to “everyone,” exposing the information to HSIN’s tens of thousands of users. The unauthorized users who had access included US government workers focused on fields unrelated to intelligence or law enforcement such as disaster response, as well as private sector contractors and foreign government staff with access to HSIN.

    “DHS advertises HSIN as secure and says the information it holds is sensitive, critical national security information,” says Spencer Reynolds, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice who obtained the memo via FOIA and shared it with WIRED. “But this incident raises questions about how seriously they take information security. Thousands and thousands of users gained access to information they were never supposed to have.”

    HSIN-Intel’s data includes everything from law enforcement leads and tips to reports on foreign hacking and disinformation campaigns, to analysis of domestic protest movements. The memo about the HSIN-Intel breach specifically mentions, for instance, a report discussing “protests relating to a police training facility in Atlanta”—likely the Stop Cop City protests opposing the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—noting that it focused on “media praising actions like throwing stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police.”

    In total, according to the memo about the DHS internal inquiry, 439 I&A “products” on the HSIN-Intel portion of the platform were improperly accessed 1,525 times. Of those unauthorized access instances, the report found that 518 were private sector users and another 46 were non-US citizens. The instances of foreign user accesses were “almost entirely” focused on cybersecurity information, the report notes, and 39 percent of all the improperly accessed intelligence products involved cybersecurity, such as foreign state-sponsored hacker groups and foreign targeting of government IT systems. The memo also noted that some of the unauthorized US users who viewed the information would have been eligible to have accessed the restricted information if they’d asked to be considered for authorization.

    “When this coding error was discovered, I&A immediately fixed the problem and investigated any potential harm,” a DHS spokesperson told WIRED in a statement. “Following an extensive review, multiple oversight bodies determined there was no impactful or serious security breach. DHS takes all security and privacy measures seriously and is committed to ensuring its intelligence is shared with federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners to protect our homeland from the numerous adversarial threats we face.”

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    Andy Greenberg

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  • SSA Whistleblower’s Resignation Email Mysteriously Disappeared From Inboxes

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    On Friday, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, Chuck Borges, sent an email to agency staff claiming that he had been forcibly removed from his position after filing a whistleblower complaint this week accusing the agency of mishandling sensitive agency data. Minutes after the email went out, it disappeared from employee inboxes, two SSA sources tell WIRED.

    “I am regretfully and involuntarily leaving my position at the Social Security Administration (SSA),” Borges wrote in the resignation letter to staff obtained by WIRED. “This involuntary resignation is the result of SSA’s actions against me, which make my duties impossible to perform legally and ethically, have caused me serious attendant mental, physical, and emotional distress, and constitute a constructive discharge.”

    Less than 30 minutes after staffers received the email, it mysteriously disappeared from employee inboxes, the SSA sources tell WIRED. It is not clear whether the email had been restored after it was made unavailable, nor was the reason for the email’s disappearance immediately clear. One SSA staffer speculates that it was removed because it was critical of the agency.

    “It certainly didn’t paint CIO leadership in a favorable light,” one SSA source says, referring to the SSA’s chief information officer.

    Under the Federal Records Act of 1950, US agencies are typically required by law to maintain internal records, including emails.

    Independent journalist Marisa Kabas was first to report on Borges’ resignation and his email’s disappearance in posts on Bluesky.

    Neither Borges nor SSA immediately responded to requests for comment.

    The “involuntary resignation” comes days after Borges filed a formal whistleblower complaint to the US Office of Special Counsel accusing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) of wrongfully uploading SSA data, which included highly sensitive information on millions of people with Social Security numbers, to an unsecure cloud server. Borges alleges that uploading “live” SSA data to a cloud server outside of agency protocols is illegal and could put the data at risk of being hacked or leaked.

    “Recently, I have been made aware of several projects and incidents which may constitute violations of federal statutes or regulations, involve the potential safety and security of high value data assets in the cloud, possibly provided unauthorized or inappropriate access to agency enterprise data storage solutions, and may involve unauthorized data exchange with other agencies,” Borges wrote in his Friday letter.

    In a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday, SSA spokesperson Nick Perrine defended the agency’s data-security practices and claimed that the data Borges’ complaint references is “walled off from the internet.”

    “SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information,” Perrine said. “The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA’s information security team.”

    Borges’ whistleblower complaint included documents showing that DOGE affiliate John Solly, working under the SSA, asked a career agency employee to copy data from Numident, a master SSA database including a lifelong record of all SSN holders, to a “virtual private cloud,” identified in the complaint as an Amazon Web Services server controlled by SSA. Edward “Big Balls” Coristine was also involved with the project, according to the complaint.

    “Mr. Borges’ disclosures involve wrongdoing including apparent systemic data security violations, uninhibited administrative access to highly sensitive production environments, and potential violations of internal SSA security protocols and federal privacy laws by DOGE personnel Edward Coristine, Aram Moghaddassi, John Solly, and Michael Russo,” the complaint reads. “These actions constitute violations of laws, rules, and regulations, abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, and creation of a substantial and specific threat to public health and safety.”

    Neither Coristine, Moghaddassi, Solly, nor Russo immediately responded to WIRED’s request for comment.

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    Makena Kelly, David Gilbert

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  • Police transparency expands with new national database — except Michigan

    Police transparency expands with new national database — except Michigan

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    A new online tool called the National Police Index launched this week, allowing residents in 17 states to access the employment history of police officers, with the aim of increasing transparency and accountability in law enforcement.

    But for now, Michigan is not included in the database. That’s because the state police refused to disclose public records about the identities of current and former police officers.

    In November 2023, Metro Times teamed up with the nonprofit news organization the Invisible Institute to file a lawsuit against Michigan State Police, alleging the agency violated the Freedom of Information Act.

    The database — created by a coalition of journalists, attorneys, and data scientists, including the Invisible Institute, the Innocence Project New Orleans, and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) — is designed to help track “wandering officers” who move from department to department after engaging in misconduct. The tool provides detailed information on why an officer left a position and allows users to download the data for further analysis.

    “So-called ‘wandering officers’ have presented a significant danger to residents of every state, and an impediment to lasting police accountability,” said Chaclyn Hunt, legal director of the Invisible Institute, which is based on the South Side of Chicago and is known in part for the creation of the Civic Police Data Project, a repository of Chicago Police misconduct information dating back to 1988. “The National Police Index allows all stakeholders to view the employment history of officers in their city, town, village, or college.”

    In Michigan, wandering cops have been a big problem. In October 2023, Metro Times revealed that the Detroit and Eastpointe police departments violated a 2017 law by failing to properly report officer misconduct, which enabled a disgraced former cop to get a new job. Ex-Detroit cop Kairy Roberts landed the new job in Eastpointe last year, despite an internal investigation that found he had punched an unarmed man in the face in Greektown, failed to provide medical aid, and then lied about the encounter in August 2021.

    After Roberts resigned under pressure from the Detroit Police Department, the city did not report the alleged misconduct — as required — to the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), the state agency responsible for regulating police. And Eastpointe falsely claimed to MCOLES that he had met the character fitness standards, which is required for officers to get their licenses reactivated. Those standards are intended to prevent abusive cops from getting another law enforcement job in the state.

    Concerns about wandering cops are increasing as agencies face a shortage of officers. Without enough applicants, some police departments are lowering their standards for new officers and hiring cops with a history of misconduct, Metro Times revealed in a previous cover story investigation.

    In March, MCOLES launched an investigation into the Warren and Romeo police departments after a Metro Times cover story showed that both departments appeared to violate the 2017 state law intended to stop wandering cops. At the time, Warren’s police commissioner William Dwyer told MCOLES that another officer, Robert Priest, retired in “good standing,” even though he was under investigation.

    As a result, Priest was able to get another police job in Romeo, where he was fired after pulling over former Warren Deputy Police Commissioner Matt Nichols as part of a “special project” in February 2022. Nichols claimed Priest was out to get him because Nichols played a role in denying Priest a promotion to the rank of lieutenant.

    The need for such a tool is also highlighted by cases like that of Sangamon County Deputy Sean Grayson, who was charged with the murder of Sonya Massey in Illinois. Grayson, who had been discharged from the U.S. Army for misconduct, worked in five police departments, with documented issues in at least two.

    “If the Sangamon County sheriff knew people could easily monitor a police officer’s employment history, maybe Sean Grayson would have never been hired,” Hunt said.

    The National Police Index currently includes employment data from 17 states, and efforts are ongoing to collect similar data in states, like Michigan, that have made it inaccessible.

    In the FOIA request to Michigan State Police in January 2023, Metro Times and the Invisible Institute requested the names of all certified and uncertified officers in the state, along with information about their employment history.

    On March 8, MSP declined to provide the identities of certified and uncertified officers, along with other information, arguing “the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.” State police also argued that releasing the names of officers “would endanger the life and safety of the law enforcement officers and their families, because the information would lead to [their] doxing,” referring to the act of publishing identifiable information about an individual on the internet.

    But by withholding the identities of officers, MSP is impeding the public’s ability to track cops who lose their job in one place only to be rehired at another.

    The University of Michigan Civil Rights Litigation Initiative filed the lawsuit on behalf of Metro Times and the Invisible Institute.

    In an unusual move in April, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sided with the news organizations’ lawsuit against the state police, filing a motion in support of releasing the public records in April.

    As more information becomes available, additional states will be added to the index.

    The Invisible Institute and its partners said they are committed to expanding the tool’s reach and continuing the fight for transparency in policing.

    The launch of the National Police Index is considered a critical step toward improving police transparency nationwide, building on the success of the Civic Police Data Project, which has been used by journalists, activists, and wrongfully convicted people to expose misconduct and promote reform.

    “The National Police Index works to make real the bedrock principle that records that relate to police transparency belong to the people,” said Craig Futterman, a former public defender and director of the University of Chicago Law School’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. “The Civic Police Data Project in Chicago has powerfully contributed to this historic opportunity for police accountability. People wrongly in prison have used this information to win their freedom. Journalists and scholars have exposed systemic problems and created opportunities for policymakers to implement solutions. Community members have identified police officers engaged in patterns of abuse and held them to account.”

    Futterman added, “The National Police Index holds the promise of enhancing police accountability throughout the country.”

    The development of the National Police Index was supported by a broad coalition of organizations, including reporters, attorneys, and students, and is part of a wider effort to make police misconduct data accessible to the public. The partnership with Innocence Project New Orleans and HRDAG brings together experts in law enforcement accountability and human rights violations to track officers who move between agencies despite histories of misconduct.

    Tarak Shah, a data scientist at HRDAG, pointed out the importance of this new tool for addressing impunity in law enforcement: “Police often avoid accountability by moving to another agency rather than face discipline. This tool, allowing anyone to look up and track the histories of such officers, provides an invaluable service for the human rights community in our fight against impunity.”

    The National Police Index is seen as a powerful resource for law enforcement reform, addressing a longstanding gap in how officers with histories of misconduct are tracked.

    “This tool will address a shortcoming in law enforcement hiring practices that has plagued our nation for years,” said Chris Burbank, former Salt Lake City Police Chief and current law enforcement consultant with the Center for Policing Equity. “Lacking prior accountability, officers who have been disciplined traverse the country seeking employment, and often, repeat the same poor practice or behavior. I applaud the work in this area and look forward to its success.”

    The project was made possible by a coalition of journalists, legal professionals, and data organizations, including Big Local News at Stanford, CBS News, Hearst Newspapers, and others.

    “This data is imperative for holding police officers accountable and tracking the movement of officers across jurisdictions, a common loophole exploited by those with histories of misconduct,” said Julie Ciccolini, the CEO and founder of Techtivist, a firm that works with defense attorneys and others to use data to track police misconduct. “By making officer information public, we close this gap, ensuring that there is public accountability and officers cannot escape scrutiny by simply changing uniforms.”

    The Civil Rights Litigation Initiative (CRLI) at the University of Michigan Law School represents the Invisible Institute and the Detroit Metro Times in their lawsuit seeking the names of police officers in Michigan. The Michigan Court of Claims rejected the state’s attempt to dismiss the case and the parties are now in discovery. The court is likely to schedule an evidentiary hearing later this year.

    “CRLI is excited to support the development of this national tool which will enable the press nation-wide to report on police misconduct and movement of officers between departments,” said Ellory Longdon, a student attorney with CRLI. “While we are disheartened that this tool does not yet include data on officers in Michigan, we are hopeful that the outcome of this lawsuit will enable greater transparency and accountability for law enforcement in Michigan.”

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Michigan Senate finally passes bills to expand FOIA to governor and Legislature

    Michigan Senate finally passes bills to expand FOIA to governor and Legislature

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    Michigan is one of only two states that shields the governor’s office and the Legislature from providing records under the Freedom of Information Act.

    That could soon change after the state Senate on Thursday passed bipartisan legislation aimed at expanding FOIA to include the executive and legislative branches of state government.

    Lawmakers approved the two bills by a 36-2 vote, with Sens. Jon Bumstead, R-North Muskegon, and Jonathan Lindsey, R-Allen, voting against the legislation.

    It has been a long time coming. Sens. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, and Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, first introduced the bills nine years ago while they were in the state House.

    Finally, the bills are headed to the state House for a vote. But the legislation will have to wait until the House comes back from its summer break.

    “We can no longer sustain any more scandals in Lansing that are made possible by the dark areas in law in which they can exist,” Moss said in a statement. “We have finally reached the elusive Senate vote to expand FOIA and our majority is beginning a new chapter of openness in our state.”

    If passed by the House, as expected, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will likely sign the bills into law. When she was running for her first term in 2018, Whitmer said expanding FOIA would be a priority.

    McBroom said the legislation will shine more light on elected officials.

    “There are many ways to help our state government be more accountable and this is one that should have been in place years ago,” McBroom said. “I hope we will get this passed and keep working to put the citizens first in how the government actually operates.”

    The governor and Legislature have been exempt from FOIA since the law was enacted in 1976.

    Michigan and Massachusetts are the only states in the country that allow the governor’s office and Legislature to bypass FOIA.

    Michigan’s state government faces significant trust issues with voters and was ranked last in the nation for integrity in a 2015 report from the Center For Public Integrity.

    In November 2022, after state lawmakers failed to act, Michigan voters approved a measure that created new financial disclosure requirements for the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and state lawmakers. Under Proposal 1, state elected officials are required to file annual reports detailing their assets and sources of income, positions held outside of state government, and agreements or arrangements regarding future employment, gifts, and travel payments received.

    State lawmakers said the FOIA legislation is an important step in restoring trust with voters.

    “The passage of this bipartisan legislation demonstrates our staunch commitment to increasing government transparency and accountability, and in turn, restoring public trust in our institutions,” Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, said.

    Additional action is needed to create more transparency and trust, said state Sen. Michael Webber, R-Rochester Hills.

    “We still have a lot of work ahead of us, and I will continue to advocate for more transparency at all levels of government,” Webber said. “Government that is for the people, by the people works best out in the open for all to see.”

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Pro-Trump Michigan attorney loses spectacularly in yet another courtroom drama

    Pro-Trump Michigan attorney loses spectacularly in yet another courtroom drama

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    Michigan “Kraken” lawyer Stefanie Lambert, who unsuccessfully tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Michigan and was later charged with improperly accessing voting equipment, has lost yet another court battle in her quest to prove baseless claims about voter fraud in the state.

    Macomb County Circuit Judge Edward A. Servitto dismissed Lambert’s request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain election records from local clerks that contain sensitive information, including voter history extract files from electronic pollbooks. Her legal claims are baseless, the judge ruled.

    Last summer, Lambert sued 16 cities and townships, along with their clerks, to force them to disclose the information as she continued to peddle false conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud.

    Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson instructed the clerks to deny the FOIA requests based on exemptions in the public records law. Benson asked the clerks to redirect the FOIA request to her department, which could provide the information without the sensitive data.

    Arguing the information from the clerks contained proprietary information and sensitive voter data, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of Benson.

    In addition to dismissing the case, Servitto rejected Lambert’s argument that Benson lacked the authority to instruct the local clerks to deny the requests.

    “I am grateful that the Court reaffirmed Secretary Benson’s authority to safeguard Michigan election records and to provide public data without compromising private, sensitive information,” Nessel said. “My office will always protect election security against those who have a blatant disregard for voter privacy.”

    Lambert, a lawyer from South Lyon, has worked on lawsuits alleging “massive election fraud.” She also teamed up with disgraced Texas attorney Sidney Powell, who described her legal actions as releasing the “Kraken.”

    Lambert was arrested in Washington D.C. in March after she failed to appear at a hearing involving felony charges of improperly accessing voting equipment in her quest to prove her baseless claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. She is facing two different sets of criminal charges in connection with allegedly mishandling voting equipment.

    Metro Times couldn’t reach Lambert for comment.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Michigan State Police a finalist for ‘Most Secretive Public Agency’ award

    Michigan State Police a finalist for ‘Most Secretive Public Agency’ award

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    click to enlarge

    TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo

    Michigan State Police on patrol in Lansing in 2021.

    The Michigan State Police has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the nation’s most secretive public agencies for refusing to disclose public records about the identities of current and former officers.

    The grassroots nonprofit organization Investigative Reporters and Editors announced Thursday that the state agency is among five finalists for the Golden Padlock Award, an annual celebration of “the most secretive public agency or official in the U.S.”

    MSP earned the ignoble accolade by rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request by Metro Times and Invisible Institute, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit organization. The news organizations filed a lawsuit against state police in November for failing to disclose the names of all certified and uncertified officers in Michigan, along with information about their employment history, among other information.

    In an unusual move, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sided with the news organizations’ lawsuit, filing a motion in support of releasing the public records in April.

    The other finalists are the Georgia Department of Corrections, Los Angeles city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, former Marion (Kansas) Police Chief Gideon Cody, and the Hawaii Department of Human Services.

    “This group of finalists have exhibited unique ingenuity in their attempts to ensure the public is left in the dark about important issues impacting their communities,” Golden Padlock committee chair Robert Cribb said. “Their commitment to secrecy is matched only by the impassioned work of journalists fighting to make it public.”

    Michigan is no stranger to secrecy. In fact, the Golden Padlock Award went to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the city of Detroit in 2020 after top officials intentionally destroyed public records related to the nonprofit Make Your Date.

    In 2019, Michigan State University received the Golden Padlock Award for “keeping sweeping sexual assault scandals under tight wraps, including serial abuse by disgraced team doctor Larry Nassar and hundreds of student complaints against faculty, staff and students,” IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix wrote at the time.

    Metro Times couldn’t reach MSP for comment, but we congratulate the state agency for its devotion to secrecy, especially at a time when police misconduct is a top issue for many residents.

    The FOIA request is part of an ongoing Metro Times investigation into “wandering cops,” or officers who move from department to department amid allegations of misconduct.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Settlement reached in suits over FBI posing as AP reporter

    Settlement reached in suits over FBI posing as AP reporter

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    WASHINGTON — The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will get a $145,000 settlement following a pair of lawsuits filed after an FBI agent posed as a reporter for The Associated Press and created a fake story.

    The long-running Freedom of Information Act cases led to appeals court decisions that will help bolster access to public records, said Adam Marshall, an attorney for the group. The cases also shed light on FBI agents posing as members of the media, a tactic that free press advocates say undermines media credibility and blurs lines between law enforcement and the press.

    The agency failed to follow its own rules over such undercover operations when an agent posed as an AP reporter and sent a link to a fake story in an investigation in Washington state in 2007, according to documents uncovered in the lawsuit filed along with The Associated Press.

    Then-FBI Director James Comey called the technique “proper and appropriate” under FBI guidelines at the time, though he said it would require higher-level approvals when the incident came to light seven years later, in 2014. No actual story was published and it led to an arrest, he maintained.

    The agent posing as an AP reporter sent a link to the fake article to a 15-year-old suspected of making bomb threats at a high school. When the teen clicked the link, a tracking tool revealed his computer’s location and helped agents confirm his identity.

    The FBI declined to comment Friday.

    Kathleen Carroll, then executive editor of the AP, said in 2014 that the FBI’s “unacceptable tactics undermine AP and the vital distinction between the government and the press.” A letter signed by two dozen news organizations called the revelations “inexcusable” and the Reporter’s Committee specifically called out the use of the AP’s name as “cover for delivery of electronic surveillance software.”

    Lauren Easton, an Associated Press spokeswoman, declined additional comment Friday.

    The lawsuits were filed as part of an effort to get records about FBI news-media impersonations, and eventually resulted in important court decisions about how far agencies must go in searching for requested documents and the standards they must meet in order to withhold documents, Marshall said. The settlement will cover attorney’s fees and costs.

    “This has shown that there are significant, concerning and ongoing issues with respect to federal law enforcement impersonation of the press in the United States,” Marshall said. The cases have also “shown that the Reporters Committee and The Associated Press were committed to finding out as much as we could about what happened here for the public to know.”

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  • Contrary To Trump Claim, White House Ordered USS McCain Hidden During His 2019 Japan Trip

    Contrary To Trump Claim, White House Ordered USS McCain Hidden During His 2019 Japan Trip

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    Despite what Donald Trump claimed at the time, the USS John McCain destroyer was partially hidden from view, by orders of the White House, when the then-president visited a Navy base in Japan in 2019, according to new records newly obtained by Bloomberg.

    The name on the warship, named for the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his father and grandfather, who all served in the Navy, was covered with a tarp when Trump visited Yokosuka Naval Base.

    Trump insisted at the time that he had nothing to do with hiding the name and that some “well-meaning” person had apparently obscured McCain’s name. But Navy personnel were attempting to at least partially comply with White House orders, which appalled Navy officials, according to the emails, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request.

    “This just makes me sad,” one official said to another in an email.

    The records confirm and elaborate on reporting at the time by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

    Trump was a bitter rival of McCain. The two battled for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and Trump belittled McCain’s sacrifice in the Vietnam War when he was a Navy pilot. McCain was captured and held as a prisoner of war for years in horrific conditions. Trump, who dodged military service by claiming to have bone spurs, disputed that McCain was a hero.

    “He was a war hero because he was captured,” Trump scoffed about McCain during a talk in 2015. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

    (In conversations with his staff after visiting a French war memorial in 2018, Trump reportedly called Americans who were killed in World War I “losers” and “suckers.”)

    In an email to the Navy ahead of Trump’s state visit that May, a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command staffer presented a list of demands, including the directive that “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight,” according to the records. The staffer followed up later, demanding: “Please confirm #3 will be satisfied.”

    Ultimately, the ship was not hidden, but the McCain name was obscured with a tarp.

    The Navy gave all sailors aboard the McCain the day off as Trump visited Yokosuka, the Journal and the Times reported. McCain sailors — whose uniforms included the ship’s insignia — were not invited to hear Trump speak that day, unlike sailors from other U.S. warships at the base, according to the Times, citing several unnamed Navy service members.

    Trump insisted that he played no role in covering up the name. He also claimed following his visit that he was “not informed” about any action by his own administration to hide the destroyer.

    Months later, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan confirmed that the White House Military Office had made the request to keep the ship out of Trump’s sight.

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