Freedom Line Blog

Tribal Chairman’s sister previously worked at the White House and Department of Interior

ALEXANDRIA, VA – Over recent days, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) has sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to five government agencies seeking information on communications between officials at those agencies and Jodi Gillette, the sister of the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Dave Archambault.

“There have been a lot of rumors about the backroom dealings that led to the Administration’s decision to not issue the final easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline,” said Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs.  “We would hope that the self-purported ‘most transparent Administration in history’ would provide the American people with the background and information that went into this important decision to halt an infrastructure project that had already been approved and was more than 90 percent complete.”

From the FOIA requests:

There is growing concern about the relationship between Dave Archambault II’s sister, Jodi Gillette, and the Obama Administration.  Mr. Archambault is the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST) and a critic of the project.  Ms. Gillette is a former senior advisor to the President and Secretary of the Interior, and is currently a lobbyist on behalf of the Standing Rock Sioux with Sonosky, Chambers, Chambers, Endreson & Perry, LLP.  We seek to ensure that Mr. Archambault and Ms. Gillette haven’t wielded improper influence over the Administration’s policies that have resulted in delays in the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline project

I request access to and copies of all records since February 1, 2016, related in any way to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and Jodi Gillette. This request includes, but is not limited to, all emails, other correspondence, correspondence logs, records of meetings, records of appointments and visitor logs.

CFIF sent the FOIA requests to the Departments of Interior, Justice and Energy, as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Due to the scope of the project and the consequences of the Administration’s decision, we are currently reviewing other potential FOIA requests on the matter,” Mr. Lee added.

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The IRS is out-of-control.

In the last year we’ve learned that Lois Lerner and other officials in the tax-exempt unit singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny before approving their requested non-profit status.

That was followed by revelations from IRS higher ups that they mysteriously lost thousands of emails from Lerner and others during the timeframe of interest to congressional investigators.

Last week, a private jet company alleged that the IRS “wiped clean a number of computer hard drives containing emails and other electronic documents that the Government was required to produce.”

And now this.

“The Internal Revenue Service wrongly withheld or failed to adequately search for records in hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests, while accidentally releasing sensitive taxpayer information in other instances, an independent government watchdog found,” reports the Washington Free Beacon.

The Beacon is summarizing an analysis released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

“TIGTA sampled FOIA requests to the IRS and found 11 percent ‘in which taxpayer rights may have been violated because the IRS improperly withheld or failed to adequately search for and provide information to the requestors’.”

As an independent federal agency, the IRS has a grave obligation to be accountable to the citizens it serves, either directly through FOIA requests or indirectly through congressional oversight panels. That the IRS seems chronically incapable – and increasingly, it seems, unwilling – to honor due process and the rule of law is reason enough to launch a full-scale reconsideration of what the agency does, how it does it and what kind of people should be entrusted to follow the rules.

Thanks to a report by Colorado’s Independence Institute based on FOIA requests, we now know that the Department of Homeland Security loses about 1,000 computers a year.  You read that right.  And DHS has absolutely no idea where they are.  Fear not, though, because a department spokesman assures an incredulous public that no one is at risk because there wasn’t any sensitive information on the lost computers.

Assuming that’s true, then why did DHS need the computers in the first place?  If there is nothing particularly important stored on the computers such that losing 1,000 of them in one year doesn’t impede DHS’s ability to secure the homeland, why spend taxpayer money on them?  Maybe that money could be better spent on other programs that help prevent another undie-bomber.  You know, something that helps the system “work.”

H/T: World Net Daily