This Sunshine Week, American Oversight Celebrates Six Years of Victories in Government Transparency

This week, American Oversight is celebrating both Sunshine Week — an annual initiative promoting government transparency — and our sixth anniversary of fighting to bring government records to light. 

Since its founding in 2017, American Oversight has worked to advance truth, accountability and democracy by enforcing the public’s right to government records. Below are six of our biggest wins for transparency.

1. Combating election denial in Arizona and Wisconsin and strengthening record retention policies

American Oversight’s public records litigation in Arizona and Wisconsin didn’t only expose the partisan biases and influence of voter-fraud conspiracy theories behind sham election reviews — it also reaffirmed the importance of document preservation and public accountability.

Our investigation revealed that the 2020 election “audit” initiated by Arizona Senate President Karen Fann had roots in a multi-state effort to overturn the election and involved the encouragement and “expertise” of prominent Trump allies and election-denying conspiracy theorists. Our litigation also produced court rulings confirming that Arizona’s public record requirements extend to third-party contractors and requiring public disclosure of records held by Cyber Ninjas, the biased firm that conducted the “audit.” 

In Wisconsin, our litigation revealed that leaders of the state Assembly’s election review failed to properly maintain documents in accordance with the state’s public records law. Attorney Michael Gableman, who led the taxpayer-funded inquiry, admitted in court to having frequently destroyed or disposed of records that were deemed not “helpful” to the review. Multiple court decisions affirmed the public’s right to those records and the importance of preservation, including a Wisconsin judge’s March 2022 order for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to produce emails related to the review that had been deleted, or to provide an explanation for why they could not be retrieved, yielding a release of more than 20,000 pages of previously deleted documents from Vos’ office a month later.

2. Improved record-retention policies at the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security

In court filings in American Oversight’s lawsuit for top Trump administration officials’ text messages from around the Jan. 6 attack, the Department of Defense and the Army revealed to American Oversight that certain officials’ mobile devices of had been wiped when they left their positions and that messages from the day of the attack had been deleted. American Oversight immediately called for investigation. Two days later, the Pentagon announced a new policy regarding the preservation of text messages and other information stored on mobile devices. 

Following reporting that the phones of certain Trump officials at the Department of Homeland Security had also been wiped, DHS announced that it would adopt a similar policy and would conduct a review of its handling of mobile device records. In November 2022, in our lawsuit against DHS for top Trump administration officials’ communications with proponents of election conspiracies, the department and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told us that they could not search for certain requested records because of its prior practice of routinely collecting and wiping the phones of departing agency personnel.

3. Defeating attempts to jettison public records lawsuits in Texas, South Dakota and Virginia

American Oversight has successfully fought attempts of several high-profile officials to evade transparency through immediate dismissal of public records lawsuits. Last year, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem attempted to dismiss our lawsuit for the release of expense records related to travel for political and personal events, as well as records of costs to taxpayers resulting from the alleged forced retirement of a state official who had initially refused to grant Noem’s daughter a real estate license. In January, a South Dakota judge rejected Noem’s efforts to prevent public accountability and ruled that American Oversight’s lawsuit could proceed.

The office of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also sought to dismiss our public records lawsuit for records related to the governor’s tip line, which was created to collect reports about the teaching of critical race theory and other “divisive concepts” in state schools. In January, a Virginia judge rejected Youngkin’s efforts to block the lawsuit and granted our petition requiring the office to release the records.

Similarly, a Texas court denied an effort by Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to dismiss our lawsuit related to several public records requests, including for communications with the gun lobby and communications sent in the days around Jan. 6. In a letter explaining the decision, the judge pointed to open questions about how Abbott and Paxton classify records, as well as about whether records were incorrectly withheld under attorney-client privilege.

4. Landmark settlements upgrading public records practices

In 2021, American Oversight reached a landmark settlement with the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to improve the state’s handling of open records requests. We had originally filed suit against the office in October 2020 after more than 30 of our requests went unanswered. Under the terms of the settlement, the secretary of state’s office agreed to streamline the process for requesting and obtaining public records. The office also agreed to provide open-records training to staff and to ensure requesters receive better information about costs, time estimates, and the status of their requests. 

At the federal level, we reached an important settlement agreement this year in a lawsuit filed in 2020 against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the agency’s illegal practice of routinely rejecting valid FOIA requests. The settlement included a requirement that the CDC send an instructional email to all FOIA staff regarding the improper rejection of requests as “overly broad” — a claim the agency had used to deny several of American Oversight’s requests related to the pandemic. The settlement affirmed the importance of government agencies properly responding to requests and communicating with requesters.

5. Creating detailed research guides and references

In our vast investigation of how the government responded to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, we combed through thousands of pages of emails, timelines, and call logs from key federal agencies and compiled our findings into a comprehensive timeline of that day, as told also through news reports and the Pentagon’s published timeline. American Oversight’s minute-by-minute timeline offers a window into the chaos and confusion before, during, and after the attack, and is a valuable reference for assessing new information and cross-checking testimony as details about that day continue to emerge.

We created another valuable research timeline based on records we uncovered related to the Trump administration’s family-separation policy. As records continue to come to light, the timeline provides a detailed look at the formulation and implementation of the “zero tolerance” initiative and lays bare the disorganization and lack of adequate planning for reuniting separated children with their families.

6. Holding the Trump administration accountable through the release of public records

The throughlines between today’s threats to our democracy and the Trump administration’s abuses of power can be seen in numerous ways, from ongoing attacks on civil rights and voting access to the dangerous lies about election fraud and corresponding refusal to accept the results of free and fair elections.

In addition to debunking the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election, American Oversight’s years of investigating the abuses of the administration resulted in the public learning more about Trump’s efforts to politicize the U.S. Justice Department and the ways his personal business profited off presidency; top cabinet officials’ misuse of government resources; the influence of industry lobbyists in formulating policy; the chaos of the cruel family-separation policy; and, of course, the former president’s authoritarian effort to coerce Ukraine into helping attack his political rivals.

Many of these efforts remain ongoing, whether it’s adding to the record of the Trump administration’s actions or continuing to push for better transparency practices at the state and national levels. As American Oversight looks toward our next six years, we will continue our work to advance democracy, expose attacks on civil rights, and enforce the public’s right to government records.