Kerry Sanders

The Freedom of Information Act was designed to help overcome obstruction by federal agencies that were blocking the release of Public records that we own. Today, it has been corrupted and perverted by bad actors in the federal agencies, often in partnership with industry, for the purposes of obstruction. I’m currently stonewalled on an FDA FOI request. The law requires them to err on the side of producing documents rather than withholding them. But they do the opposite. They manipulate and search for ways, even illegitimate or illegal ways, to withhold documents and information and delay the release of what they give so that it’s no longer useful for a timely news story. And it’s never turned over within the time limit required under the law. Another thing they do is require the simplest requests that could and should be answered immediately to go through the FOI process and queue, ensuring it will take a long time and also ensuring the queue gets longer, which then provides them with the excuse of why they can’t meet the statutory deadlines— there are too many requests in the queue. In other words, they create and ensure backlog, and then use the backlog to their advantage to obstruct the release of information. Another device they use, which was recently confirmed in some of the releases of the Fauci documents, is to put people in charge of the FOI departments who actually hate FOI and actively work to undermine it. A Fauci email discussed how the FOI officer they were working with taught them how to hide documents so that they would not have to be produced for the public… Which is illegal under the law of course, but those officers are never held accountable. In fact, they’re rewarded for their obstruction. The FOI officers know what they’re doing. Everyone familiar with this process knows what they’re doing. But nobody does anything about it.