Newsletter: American Oversight’s 2024 in Review

As American Oversight prepares to combat the corruption and abuses of power that President-elect Trump has promised, we’re taking a look back at some of the biggest stories from our work in 2024.

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The past year has been a tumultuous one for our democracy — and significant challenges lie ahead. This week, we’re taking a look back at American Oversight’s work this year and revisiting our biggest stories.

From the election denial movement that sought to undermine the 2024 election to the far-right efforts to reshape public education, American Oversight kept close tabs on influence networks and uncovered thousands of pages of records detailing attacks on democratic institutions.

We launched our Threats to Democracy Tracker, a comprehensive, interactive resource that maps out and spotlight the actions of election deniers and partisan actors across the country working to undermine democracy.
Our 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook analyzed eight tactics used by anti-democracy activists and political leaders to suppress votes and sow chaos and confusion about voting processes ahead of the election.

In Georgia, we sued the State Election Board after its far-right, Trump-aligned majority held a meeting in violation of state law, during which they tried to advance controversial new election rules. After we sued, the board withdrew its problematic rules, later reintroducing them during a properly noticed meeting — but one held less than three months before the election. Our investigation also revealed the board’s significant failures in complying with the state’s public records law, leading us to file another lawsuit in October.
Records we obtained from the Maryland State Board of Elections showed that two members were communicating and coordinating with a far-right election denial group called United Sovereign Americans, which was suing the board. After the Baltimore Banner reported on the records, the board passed a bylaw prohibiting members from communicating with litigants.
We also uncovered documents detailing the Oklahoma state school superintendent’s extreme right-wing agenda, records from the Virginia Department of Education’s ahistorical review of the state’s African American history course, and emails showing confusion among educators in North Carolina as they sought to comply with the state’s “don’t say gay” law.

Protecting the health of our democracy requires guarding against threats to civil rights and liberties so that all people can participate fully in society. This year, we investigated barriers to voting, restrictions on reproductive choices, vilification of immigrants, attacks on free expression, and conditions in detention centers.

In June, we published a report with the ACLU and Physicians for Human Rights that revealed 95 percent of immigrant deaths in ICE facilities could likely have been prevented with adequate medical care. The report generated significant media coverage and spurred Sen. Dick Durbin to launch an investigation of medical and mental health care for people in custody.
Documents we obtained that were reported on by NPR this spring revealed that people in Texas state prisons submitted more than 4,200 heat complaints over just five months in 2023. In response to our request to the Florida Department of Corrections for heat complaints, the department sent us just two.

Our investigations and litigation also revealed abuses of power and helped ensure officials were held accountable for their actions.

Early in the year, our amicus brief was cited in oral arguments in a federal appeals court’s consideration of whether Trump was, as he claimed, immune from criminal prosecution in his federal election interference case. In June, however, the Supreme Court partially agreed with Trump’s claims, further delaying the case and ensuring he didn’t have to face trial before the election.
In November, we sued for records from the FBI investigation of Matt Gaetz — who Trump had nominated as attorney general — for serious criminal allegations, including sex trafficking of a minor. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration shortly thereafter.
Also in November, the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a disciplinary complaint against Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice who led the Wisconsin Assembly’s partisan and baseless inquiry into the results of the 2020 presidential election. The complaint outlines Gableman’s conduct and failures to comply with state public records laws, as revealed through American Oversight’s litigation.
Other records we obtained this year shed light on Project 2025’s recruitment methods, as well as the close ties between prominent election deniers and followers of the far-right constitutional sheriffs movement.

A strong democracy requires an informed electorate, and American Oversight took legal action in states across the country where officials were undermining access to public records.

In Florida, we sued Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office for its pattern or practice of unlawful delay in releasing public records. We also sued Pinal County, Ariz., and Sheriff Mark Lamb for failing to properly respond to multiple requests.
Our lawsuit against Arizona’s Cochise County and two supervisors who had delayed the 2022 election certification forced the release of public records related to election administration and election denial efforts, including hundreds of communications that had been deleted.
Other important wins for transparency this year included obtaining the Army’s incident report from Trump’s August visit to Arlington National Cemetery, and a federal appeals court’s May ruling that government agencies cannot use the “consultant corollary” doctrine to evade public disclosure when the supposed consultants have their own interests in the outcome of agency decisions.

Pinal County Sheriff’s Public Records Failures

Last month, American Oversight settled its public records lawsuit against Sheriff Mark Lamb and Pinal County, Ariz. The litigation served as an important affirmation of the right of Pinal County residents to hold their officials accountable, having revealed the office’s significant failures in responding to records requests.

American Oversight and co-counsel the ACLU of Arizona filed the lawsuit in May 2024 after the sheriff and county failed to produce any records in response to five requests submitted between October 2020 and June 2023.
At the time of the lawsuit’s filing, Lamb, who lost to Kari Lake during the state’s Republican Senate primary this year and whose term as sheriff ends this month, had emerged as a key figure in the far-right “constitutional sheriffs” movement and its efforts to cast doubt on U.S. election integrity.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office admitted in litigation it had failed to properly respond to the requests, including by not beginning to search for requested electronic communications until after the lawsuit was filed.
Additionally, the office stated that “[h]istorical text message data” from two prior cell phones that the county had replaced in April 2024 “cannot be retrieved.”

On the Records

Tracking Trump’s Nominees

Reporting this week revealed that Michael Duffey, a former Trump appointee who played a key role in the corrupt withholding of aid to Ukraine in 2019, is reportedly leading the Trump transition’s Pentagon team. We previously obtained emails Duffey sent during the aid freeze.

When we obtained the documents, they hadn’t yet been produced to Congress. Included was a prep sheet for Duffey in advance of a July 26, 2019, “interagency meeting to discuss the President’s decision to halt assistance to Ukraine.”
That meeting was one day after Trump’s infamous phone call asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. The prep sheet was sent to Duffey the same day as that call.

The OMB records and unredacted versions obtained by Just Security also revealed details about then-OMB General Counsel Mark Paoletta’s involvement in the scheme. Trump said earlier this month that he’d asked Paoletta to serve as upcoming general counsel at OMB.
Robert Wilkie, Trump’s former Veterans Affairs secretary, was previously reported to be the Defense transition lead. Emails we obtained show that Wilkie disagreed with a 2019 Fox News article by Pete Hegseth, Trump’s appointee to lead the Pentagon. “Nonsense by Hegseth and the Starbucks CEO,” Wilkie wrote in an email containing the article link, sent to two officials in the first Trump administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs.

Newsletter: American Oversight’s 2024 in Review

On the Records

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