Coronavirus Lawsuits, Abuses of Executive Privilege, and Cries of Voter Fraud


** Enforcing Accountability:
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** Coronavirus Lawsuits, Abuses of Executive Privilege, and Cries of Voter Fraud
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Litigation Drives Results

Litigation and perseverance have always been the backbone of American Oversight’s effectiveness. We know we can’t rely on Trump administration officials to be transparent on their own; we need to fight to enforce the public’s right to know. And on top of that, we know that the constant churn of scandal can mean important issues get lost in the shuffle. By fighting aggressively and sticking with issues, we ensure we get answers — and that no one can escape accountability.

We have some great examples to share this week:

First, we are at the beginning of a long road of coronavirus accountability. In addition to hundreds (literally) of open records requests, American Oversight has filed three lawsuits in the last month to uncover strategies and intent behind the government’s early response to the coronavirus outbreak.
* American Oversight v. HHS, FDA ([link removed])
* American Oversight v. HHS, FDA, NIAID, CMS ([link removed])
* American Oversight v. HHS, FDA ([link removed])

While President Donald Trump and his administration have been preoccupied ([link removed]) with messaging and misinformation, we are pursuing answers to understand how the government’s response has been tailored to promote and preserve the president’s political interests, why states continue to face supply shortages, and how internal accountability measures have been undermined or ignored.
Find Out More ([link removed])
Executive Privilege Assertion Called into Question
American Oversight has been actively investigating potential abuse of office — and misuse of taxpayer resources — by President Trump and other top officials. In multiple cases, the administration has tried to block the release of potential evidence by claiming that certain records are protected by executive privilege. We’ve been fighting back, and in the past weeks, we’ve had multiple important victories.

In a lawsuit against the Department of Defense, where American Oversight is seeking records related to senior federal officials’ use of military aircraft for official or personal travel, the government invoked “presidential communications privilege” to withhold key documents from the public. We countered that unless President Trump was himself engaging in the logistics of trip planning and seating arrangements, this assertion was absurd. Last week, a court agreed and gave the Department of Defense one more chance to explain why the documents are covered by privilege. We are doubtful they’ll be able to do it.
Similarly, in our ongoing investigation into the canceled relocation of the FBI headquarters — which would have involved redeveloping a plot of land just a few blocks from President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel — a court ruled that the White House budget office could not arbitrarily withhold records under the “presidential communications privilege” without actually demonstrating that the records reflected the president’s decision-making.

In both cases, American Oversight’s persistence and legal maneuvering is challenging the government’s over-broad assertion of privilege to build a cocoon around President Trump. Months in the making, these rulings help build case law we and others can draw on in the future to drive transparency.
FBI Building Victories

In addition to calling out improper use of executive privilege, our FBI headquarters relocation litigation ([link removed]) has forced the government to conduct an actual investigation for documents rather than speculate about the success of American Oversight’s requests. This may sound weedy, but American Oversight’s emphasis on crafting specific and actionable requests for document searches means that agencies have a difficult time running shoddy or blunt searches. The result is one of the strongest statements from a District of Columbia federal court: Agencies cannot just speculate that proposed search terms would generate onerous searches and false positives; without a good reason otherwise, they must search for the terms requested. Let me put that into plain language: a court held that American Oversight’s clear requests were not optional just because the
FBI speculated they might be fruitless. Our analysis shows the requests would not be fruitless, and we caught the agency trying to use guesswork in place of actual legal work.

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American Oversight Praised for Fighting Fraud

Now a fun one. We didn’t make the cover, but yesterday, Rolling Stone ([link removed]) referred to American Oversight as “a world-class assemblage of legal talent dedicated to high-impact litigation and investigation.” Well, thank you! The story details how Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap and American Oversight filed a lawsuit in 2017 that abruptly ended Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, proving that the administration’s campaign to uncover “voter fraud” was nothing more than a partisan charade. It is as much a story about an honest public official who believes in transparent government as it is an important reminder of the constant threat this administration poses to the basic principles of our democracy.

It begs an important question: if the administration is willing to go to such lengths to create and justify an untenable voter fraud hypothesis, what else are they willing to do? American Oversight will continue to fight for transparency, to promote voting rights, and stop corruption before it erodes our democratic institutions.
Thank you for sharing our commitment to uncovering the facts and holding our government accountable.

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The American people have a right to a transparent and ethical government. We're holding the Trump administration accountable—because Congress won't.

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