Open Questions About Trump Administration Policies

Americans deserve answers to important questions about the conduct of President Donald Trump and the policies his administration has pursued. 

American Oversight’s efforts to expose misconduct and abuse of power have shed light on many issues — from the truth behind tragic deaths in immigration custody to troubling failures in the Covid-19 pandemic response — but we remain committed to uncovering more of the truth for the public. In this post, we catalogue some of the most important things we’ve uncovered about key policy concerns — and what we’re still trying to find out.  

Pandemic Response

American Oversight is pushing for transparency and accountability as the death count from the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rise.

A massive trove of documents we obtained from the U.S. Postal Service revealed that a plan to mail out masks to all U.S. residential households early in the pandemic came much closer to happening than previously known. That plan was scrapped by the White House, according to the Washington Post. Documents we uncovered also show the federal government’s pattern of failing to support state and local governments as the coronavirus spread across the country.

Our records requests also shed light on how meatpacking company Smithfield Foods pressured the administration to help the company reopen processing plants despite rising numbers of coronavirus cases among workers and local health department orders to shut down. Trump’s April 28 executive order that allowed the plants to remain open mirrored language from a draft the North American Meat Institute had shared with the administration just the week before.

We still want to know: 

• Were political considerations put ahead of Americans’ health in the back-and-forth over guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? In August, the agency posted revised testing guidelines that said asymptomatic individuals need not be tested, reportedly at the direction of top administration officials. These were later rolled back, but political interference at public health agencies remains an ongoing concern. We asked for communications regarding the original and revised guidelines.
• How will the government manage the rollout of a vaccine? The CDC entered into a contract with consulting company Deloitte to track the administration and distribution of vaccines, as well as with pharmaceutical company McKesson to handle the shipment of vaccines to final distribution sites. We asked health agencies for details of vaccine distribution contracts and for interim update reports. 
• Were coronavirus relief funds disbursed effectively? Misallocation of money, instances of fraud, and millions of dollars going to large companies and Trump associates have raised a host of issues with how relief aid was managed. We’re digging for answers, with records requests at the Office of Management and Budget, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies. 

Immigration Detention Center Abuse and Deaths in Custody

Reports of overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in U.S. immigration detention centers and deaths in custody raise serious human rights concerns. American Oversight’s inquiries have already uncovered disturbing information.

We received the full text of the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General investigation reports for two Guatemalan children, Felipe Gómez Alonzo and Jakelin Caal Maquin, who died in Border Patrol custody in December 2018. Outside reporting and statements made by surviving relatives had already complicated or contradicted the agency’s narrative, but particularly in the case of Alonzo, the full text indicated that the initial summary released by the government was grossly oversimplified and incomplete. Sworn affidavits from Alonzo’s father and Customs and Border Protection agents who interacted with him, released in response to our requests, were covered by Buzzfeed. 

We still want to know: 

• Were detention facilities prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic and how has it affected detainees? We submitted multiple requests for directives, assessments, and testing data related to the pandemic. 
• Do public accounts of deaths in custody match official documentation? We’re suing for specific, standard-form documents or notifications related to deaths to compare with public statements, including information about some of the first people to have died of Covid-19 while in custody.
• Disturbing news broke in September 2020, when a nurse filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that immigrant women at a detention center in Georgia had received unwanted hysterectomies; since then, the number of allegations of such procedures has skyrocketed. To what extent has the Irwin County Detention Center forced women to undergo unwanted sterilization?

Ukraine and Impeachment

Although the impeachment proceedings against President Trump ended in a questionable acquittal by the Senate, American Oversight’s efforts helped shed additional light on the president and his administration’s attempt to pressure a foreign country to investigate the son of Trump’s political rival Joe Biden.

For example, we obtained Department of Defense emails indicating that the “final decision” to withhold congressionally approved aid for Ukraine rested with Trump alone, contradicting the White House claims about why the military aid had been held up. We also obtained State Department records showing that Rudy Giuliani’s assistant leveraged White House channels to connect with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in March 2019 — just as the smear campaign against U.S Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was heating up.

We also received emails showing meetings between then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry and a former campaign donor with Ukraine energy industry ties. Perry’s efforts to advance gas deals beneficial to his allies are closely tied to the events that resulted in Trump’s impeachment. 

We still want to know:

• How much did Vice President Mike Pence know about Trump’s series of quid pro quos? We have an open lawsuit against the State Department for Pence or his staff’s related communications and meeting records to find out. 
• What role, if any, did Attorney General William Barr play? In a now-infamous July 25 call, Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to talk to Barr about investigating the Bidens. We’ve already received documents indicating Barr had contact with Giuliani in August and September 2019, and litigation remains ongoing.
• Did the White House direct key agencies to obstruct the impeachment inquiry? Rep. Adam Schiff indicated that intelligence agencies were withholding documents relevant to the impeachment inquiry, and we’re suing to find out more.

Politicization of the Justice Department

The integrity of the Department of Justice has been rattled by the actions of Attorney General William Barr and the calls by President Trump for the agency to investigate his political rivals and serve his personal interests over those of the American people.

American Oversight’s investigations have already shown that Barr was deeply involved in the probe of the origins of the Russia investigation led by federal prosecutor John Durham. Records we obtained through litigation showed Barr met with Durham 18 times in the seven months after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation ended. Our documents also revealed that Justice Department counsel Seth DuCharme — whom Barr appointed this summer to be the new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York — was closely involved in Durham’s investigation.

Barr has also repeatedly commented on the progress of Durham’s politically charged investigation, a break from longstanding Justice Department policy, even as the department has withheld documents about the investigation from the public.

We also uncovered new details about Justice Department leadership’s unprecedented intervention in the criminal case of Trump associate Roger Stone in February. Emails sent in the days before and after the Justice Department reversed its original sentencing memo reveal internal confusion among officials about the abrupt change and provide new information about who was involved in the controversial move. 

We still want to know:

• What role is the Justice Department playing in pushing false voter fraud narratives? Barr recently cited incorrect information alleging significant fraud in elections that rely on mailed ballots, an error the Justice Department attributed to an incorrect briefing memo. We’ve requested that memo, as well as agency directives regarding potential investigations into election fraud, ballot fraud, or voter fraud. 
• How was “Operation Legend” designed and how is it being implemented? In July, Barr announced the deployment of federal police to Kansas City, Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee to “fight the sudden surge of violent crime” — we’re asking for details about the plan, including directives, deployment figures, crime statistics, and communications that will shed light on its origins and the actions of federal agents. 
• How is the agency responding to Trump’s Twitter announcement that the U.S. would designate the antifa movement as a terrorist organization? Trump made the claim on Twitter in May 2020 and Barr appeared to express support for the idea, but there isn’t a clear mechanism for such a designation and antifa is not a single, centralized group. We’re asking for agency directives about such a designation.
• To what extent has agency leadership intervened in politically sensitive cases? Just a few months after the reversal in Stone’s sentencing recommendations, the Justice Department also filed a motion to drop the criminal charges against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. We filed a lawsuit for records that could shed light on any improper political influence in that decision, and we’ve also requested records that could tell the public more about Barr’s reported attempt to negotiate a settlement with Turkey’s Halkbank, which would have allowed the bank to avoid an indictment for fraud. 

Regulatory Capture at Environmental Agencies

Industry influence at agencies tasked with protecting America’s natural resources, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior, raises serious concerns about conflicts of interest that have alarming consequences for consumer safety, clean air and water, and the future of public lands.

American Oversight obtained calendars from senior EPA officials that shed light on the high volume of contacts between officials and industry representatives as the agency worked to undo decades of environmental regulations. Other documents we requested shed additional light on how EPA official David Dunlap, a former Koch Industries employee, was involved in scuttling an EPA study on the effects of formaldehyde, even as he was taking steps to recuse himself from the project. “This is very sad news, but not at all surprising,” wrote a retiring scientist heavily involved in the project, adding, “The years that I wasted working on the formaldehyde assessment are like a big hole in an otherwise fruitful and rewarding career.”

We also uncovered documents that appear to show Interior Secretary David Bernhardt — a former industry lobbyist who reportedly had to carry a list of all his conflicts of interest — traveling to a conference involving former clients, despite having been given contrary internal ethics advice. 

We still want to know: 

• What’s the full extent of industry influence over the Department of the Interior? We’re suing for communications between Solicitor of the Interior Daniel Jorjani, a former adviser to the Koch brothers, and 26 energy companies and groups advocating deregulation of the energy sector, including the Koch Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Enterprise Institute. 
• To what extent did special interests play a role in the rollback of the Obama-era rule regulating methane emissions? We’ve requested communications between top EPA officials and external political and business interests to uncover what if any influence they had over the change, which effectively lets oil and gas companies police themselves. 
• What has Bureau of Land Management Acting Director William Pendley, whose appointment courts ruled was illegal, been up to? We’re still in litigation to shed light on Pendley’s work, asking for his calendars, external communications, and ethics documents.

Voting Rights

Soon after taking office, President Trump, baselessly claiming that millions of votes were unlawfully cast for his opponent, promised a “major investigation into voter fraud.” A few months later, he established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which he packed with activists who had long promoted unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in order to advocate for restrictions on voting rights.

American Oversight represented a member of the commission who had been shut out of the panel’s work, winning the release of thousands of pages of documents to the commission member, who then made them public. The documents revealed that while commission staff had drafted an outline of a report alleging widespread “voter fraud issues,” they had failed to identify any evidence of such issues to go into the report. 

The commission was dismantled amid several ongoing lawsuits in early 2018, yet the activists behind it have continued to be busy at the state level, as the president has continued to push the same allegations of widespread voter fraud. American Oversight has expanded its open-records work into state and local oversight to help expose threats to Americans’ voting rights.

In Georgia, our litigation forced the secretary of state to release thousands of pages of records related to voting rights and election administration, including documents showing that a newly created “Absentee Ballot Fraud Task Force” had not found widespread fraud to investigate, as well as previously unreported communications with proponents of voting restrictions. Separately, documents we obtained from Gwinnett County, Ga., illustrated a larger problem of threats to the voting rights of people detained in jails. 

In Florida, we obtained records about a conservative group’s attempt to instigate a purge of voter roles in Palm Beach County, sending county officials lists of voters who supposedly had voted after dying. Reveal used our records to investigate the group’s claims, and could find no instances of ballots being cast in the name of deceased people.

Our efforts also shed additional light on technical problems with Florida’s online voter registration system in 2018 — problems that again surfaced this year on the state’s registration deadline. We’ve also received a number of records about Florida’s  ballot measure that restored voting rights for people with prior felony convictions and the poorly implemented state law that has kept thousands of them disenfranchised.

We still want to know: 

• What role have outside activists played in state crackdowns on voting rights? We’ve filed open records requests in states including Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia seeking officials’ communications in the weeks leading up to the election with advocates of increased restrictions on voting.
• What impact are last-minute voting restrictions in the states having? We’re investigating decisions to close ballot drop boxes in Texas and Florida, and have submitted public records requests in numerous states for officials’ communications about voting by mail, which has been a focal point for efforts to restrict voting rights during the pandemic.
• What has the Justice Department told federal prosecutors about pursuing and publicizing “voter fraud” allegations? In October, the Department of Justice weakened its long-standing policy preventing federal prosecutors from publicizing voting-related investigations close to an election, shortly after the department issued a highly unusual press release about an investigation into an incident involving a small number of ballots in Pennsylvania. We’re seeking communications about that press release and any directives that DOJ leadership has given to federal prosecutors about voting-related investigations.

Family Separation

The Trump administration’s family-separation program has created an ongoing humanitarian crisis that is still keeping hundreds of children from their parents.

Public documents obtained by American Oversight show poor planning and confusing communications inside the Department of Homeland Security as the policy was carried out, from its initial pilot stages to its larger-scale rollout. Even as then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen repeatedly denied the existence of a family-separation policy, the documents reveal that internally, officials were discussing and preparing for its large-scale rollout. 

In a particularly wrenching document, an official in the DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office circulated a memo in early 2018 evaluating family separations that the agency had undertaken up to that point, highlighting poor coordination among government agencies that led to prolonged and even permanent separations and “new populations of U.S. orphans.”

We’ve produced a timeline that details the key records we’ve obtained about the policy’s planning process and its deployment. 

We still want to know: 

• To what extent has the Trump administration reintroduced family separation under the guise of responding to Covid-19? Reports indicate that detention officials pressured parents to separate from their children, placing the parents in detention and potentially deporting or removing them while the children stayed with selected sponsors. We’re seeking records related to these incidents.
• Who was behind the Trump administration’s rapid deportations of hundreds of unaccompanied children amid the pandemic, sometimes within hours of their arrival to the United States, and how did they justify it? Many of those deported may not have safe places to return, leading one federal judge to say he was “troubled” by the government’s apparent attempt to “orphan” children.