“It’s up to Congress to reform the FOIA process, and in the meantime, it’s up to independent organizations to sue aggressively to force the federal government to comply with transparency laws.” -
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Empower Oversight
@EMPOWR_us
Accountability and public integrity through the power of information.
Empower Oversight’s Tweets
“Federal bureaucrats do everything in their power to conceal information from the public. Whether it’s over-classification or improper redactions and stonewalling [FOIA] requests, they instinctively err on the side of hiding information to avoid embarrassment” -
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“According to Jason Foster, president and founder of Empower Oversight, a transparency and government accountability group that...files FOIA requests, these redactions are a prime example of the federal government’s blatant over-redacting and censorship.”
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"’[T]his is another example of the evidence that we're seeing…and it was predicated on just the thinnest’ of evidence...The fact that someone is in DC and goes to a rally...is just not reason [enough] to open up a criminal investigation." -
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"And this is a perfect example of that, where you have tons of people [who] just want to push numbers, and they want to get tons of cases open so that they can say they're addressing domestic violent extremism and they can say that there's a big problem with it." -
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“After 9/11, everybody was upset that we didn't connect the dots. We didn't find a needle in the haystack, and what's happened since is we turned the FBI into a domestic surveillance organization, and now we collect tens of thousands of haystacks” -
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“[], who worked for years under Sen. Chuck Grassley, said the whistleblowers have provided Congress with a portrait of the FBI that, ‘keeps feeding public suspicion that it's too focused on political narratives and not focused enough on fighting crime.’"
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“[George] Hill and [Steve] Friend both are being advised by former Senate investigator Jason Foster, the head of Empower Oversight, a whistleblower support nonprofit.”
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"More serious investigations into the matter are needed to shed light on the NIH and NIAID’s failures and learn to what extent these failures impaired earlier warning and understanding of the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic." -
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"Our federal government should not be keeping Americans in the dark on key questions related to COVID-19." -
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The NIH FOIA request:
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To gain further insight into the cumulative failures of NIH, NIAID, and EcoHealth Alliance, Empower Oversight filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with HHS-OIG and NIH. The HHS-OIG release is below.
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Nevertheless, NIH insisted to HHS-OIG that it did not believe that either experiment associated with the enhanced growth is associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
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HHS-OIG found that NIH/NIAID did not follow up in a timely manner when EcoHealth Alliance failed to submit an annual progress report related to their grant from the government, which is entitled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.
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On January 25, the HHS-OIG issued a report that raised questions about the origins of COVID-19 in the context of serious failures by the NIH and NIAID to enforce grant oversight requirements related to EcoHealth Alliance and its subrecipient, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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Empower Oversight Probes Failure to Oversee Grants to EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute
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Thank you, , for having the courage to put your career on the line and blow the whistle.
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This is a great organization. Thank you @EMPOWR_us for helping me in this fight. Any other potential @FBI whistleblowers have an ally in @JsnFostr . Come forward and let's reform this agency. Anyone else willing to assist us, please consider donating: secure.anedot.com/empower-oversi
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This is a great organization. Thank you for helping me in this fight. Any other potential whistleblowers have an ally in . Come forward and let's reform this agency. Anyone else willing to assist us, please consider donating: secure.anedot.com/empower-oversi
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Empower Oversight Demands Answers on FBI Retaliation Against Whistleblower Steve Friend
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"Empower Oversight filed two Freedom of Information Act requests, the first of which seeks documents in connection with the bureau's alleged retaliation against whistleblower Special Agent Stephen Friend."
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"These disclosures ought to be impartially investigated by the Inspector General, and Special Agent Friend should be treated fairly by the FBI." -
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“Not everyone has the courage to blow the whistle when they encounter wrongdoing in government. Those who do deserve to be protected, not punished." -
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"Special Agent Friend did exactly what he was supposed to do when he witnessed the FBI’s improper deviation from its normal procedures and its excessive use of risky SWAT teams for what he believed were non-operational reasons." -
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Empower Oversight seeks communication within the DOJ-OIG regarding Friend’s allegations of systemic abuses at the FBI, any investigative activities taken by DOJ-OIG, and its rationale for failing to conduct any investigation of the underlying allegations.
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In its FBI FOIA request, Empower Oversight is requesting all communications between and among FBI personnel related to Special Agent Friend’s protected disclosures to officials in his supervisory chain on August 19 and 23, 2022, and September 1, 2022.
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The second FOIA request seeks documents from the DOJ-OIG regarding its initial decision not to investigate Special Agent Friend’s underlying allegations.
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One FOIA request seeks documents relating to the FBI’s retaliation against Special Agent Stephen Friend for his protected disclosures about the FBI’s failure to follow its regulations and normal protocols in the sprawling investigations related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot
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Empower Oversight filed two Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records to shed light on the actions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General.
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Empower Oversight Demands Answers on FBI Retaliation Against Whistleblower Steve Friend
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"The watchdog group Empower Oversight...is suing for documents that could explain why the foreign broadcasting group Al Jazeera appears to have received favored treatment from the US Dept. of Justice."
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Here's my interview with FBI whistleblower, . We cover the decision to risk his
career by becoming a whistleblower, the current politics of the FBI, as well as my own #Jan6-related experience with the FBI . . . and much more.
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2. : “In 35 years of doing this, I have never personally bumped up against a stonewalling effort as I have from the NIH regarding the origins of COVID-19”
has found the same and was forced to sue the NIH to comply w/ #FOIA
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No wonder didn't want to answer 's questions.
VA takes no "special steps" to protect "retail investors" when announcing enforcement decisions about publicly traded companies.
But it gives an advance heads-up to certain outside groups and Congress?
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The second document obtained is an unredacted version of draft answers to Grassley, who inquired about the VA's selective release of information about an enforcement action.
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"Given the VA’s failure to locate and produce these documents to Empower Oversight, its searches pursuant to our FOIA request cannot be trusted." -
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"Yet, the VA failed to mitigate those conflicts and refused to answer congressional oversight questions about those conflicts—even after gathering the information and drafting the answers." -
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"These new documents demonstrate that VA supervisors had early knowledge—long before the OIG investigation—of these conflicts of interest." -
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The second document obtained is an unredacted version of draft answers to Grassley, who inquired about the VA's selective release of information about an enforcement action.
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One of the documents obtained is an affidavit filed in an EEO case where, in February 2019, a VA official claims that she was “proven innocent of all allegations” involving her conflict of interest with her husband’s outside activities.
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The docs were included with a notice filed in related litigation and point to knowledge of conflicts of interest at the VA long before the VA-OIG launched the inquiry that later substantiated whistleblower reports to the office of .
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Empower Oversight has obtained documents the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) failed to provide pursuant to an August 2021 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
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Empower Oversight Obtains Documents VA Failed to Disclose in Conflicts Case; Notifies Court
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