The lawsuit relates that a bipartisan commission recommended a map to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan on November 5 that he approved, but the legislature passed a different proposal in a straight party-line vote. On December 9, 2021, Hogan vetoed this proposal, and, the same day, the state legislature overrode his veto on another party-line vote.

In its appeal, Judicial Watch highlighted how the Justice Department was undermining the FOIA reforms passed into law Congress under the FOIA Improvements Act in 2016 that “established a new, heightened standard of proof that agencies must meet when making discretionary withholdings of records requested under FOIA. Congress intended the FIA to shore up FOIA, not preserve a years-long, unsatisfactory status quo of ‘withhold-it-because-you-want-to’ exemptions and ‘knee-jerk secrecy.’”

“It took six months and a federal lawsuit to confirm that our embassy in Beijing was concerned about the Chinese government’s invasive anal swab and other COVID testing of our diplomatic personnel – and that as many as two people were asked to submit to a test,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Our diplomatic personnel were harassed in a reprehensible way by the Chinese government, and the Biden administration seems to have done little in response – except to cover it up.”

Judicial Watch is fighting to “force the release of Joe Biden’s Senate records,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton states in the Weekly Update. “Given the public interest in these records, the public financing of the University of Delaware under Delaware law, we thought these records should’ve been public,” Fitton adds.