Jacob Bliss 25 Mar 2022
Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), a federal watchdog, filed a transparency lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State to enforce their legal rights regarding a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday for records involving John Kerry’s Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change (SECC).
The federal watchdog decided to file the lawsuit in an attempt to obtain records after the State Department estimated that it would not be able to complete the release of the FOIA request until after the next presidential election, on November 18, 2024.
PPT stated in a press release Thursday, after their request was “delayed,” that the American people are suffering from the skyrocketing price of gasoline, the rising cost of everyday goods from inflation, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
When PPT attempted to obtain records to shed light on these issues, they sought those records from the SECC, where Kerry is in charge of one of the administration’s top priorities, climate change. Thus, the work he performs has the ability to impact the pocketbook of each American, rising inflation, the price of oil, and international crises.
“Looking at the State Department’s schedule for providing records, it would be hard to convince the American public that political considerations were not factored into their reaction to this request,” stated PPT’s Director, Michael Chamberlain.
The watchdog’s press release indicated that the State Department’s replies to the FOIA request and the PPT’s follow-up were inconsistent with “both the spirit and the letter of Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland’s memo last week to heads of departments and agencies regarding FOIA.”
Quoting from Garland’s memo, which in turn was quoting the Supreme Court, PPT wrote that FOIA is “‘a vital tool for ensuring transparency, accessibility, and accountability in government’ whose ‘basic purpose . . . is to ensure an informed citizenry,’ which is ‘vital to the functioning of a democratic society [and] needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.'”
The watchdog indicated that to Kerry’s SECC, however, this FOIA request “apparently” does not matter until after the next election.
more
https://www.breitbart.com/law-and-order/2022/03/25/state-dept-too-busy-to-release-john-kerrys-climate-czar-records/
