Another victory for honest government. Biden thinks he is a little kid, playing hide and seek with other little kids. Instead, he is withholding documents that belong in the public eye. Congrats to the US Justice Foundation, Jim Lacy and their team of attorneys.
I suggest that instead of the taxpayers reimbursing the attorney fees, Hunter Biden should pay for it from his allowance for prostitutes and drugs. That would be fair.
| Federal Judge David O. Carter Orders Biden’s State Department to pay Plaintiffs $81,925 in attorney fees to Plaintiffs after ruling that the State Department wrongfully withheld emails of-and-between Hunter Biden and Antony Blinken James Lacy, US Justice Foundation, 8/22/23 https://usjf.net/. This afternoon U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter found in favor of the Plaintiffs, over objections from the Biden State Department, and ordered the State Department to pay Plaintiffs James V. Lacy and the United States Justice Foundation (“USJF”) $81,925 in attorney fees for wrongfully withholding documents in a Freedom of Information Act case decided in their favor on May 3. The documents State attempted to wrongfully withhold included email exchanges between Hunter Biden and then Deputy Secretary of State (and current Secretary of State) Antony Blinken, which validate the information subsequently disclosed by Fox News two years later on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Judge Carter had previously found on May 3 that the State Department failed to make the proper disclosure determination involving over 200 documents evidencing official communications between State Department employees, then Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Hunter Biden, regarding meetings between Biden and Blinken and additional exchanges on Biden and Ukraine and the Ukrainian business Burisma. Lacy had filed three Freedom of Information Act requests, starting in February, 2020, with the State Department related to Hunter Biden and his meetings with Blinken, all of which were rejected by the State Department over the course of two years. Finally, on May 22, 2022, Lacy filed suit in Federal Court in Orange County with the support of the USJF. During the one-year course of this litigation, the State Department changed its position on whether they possessed responsive documents and delivered over 200 of them, many with redactions. The documents that the Biden State Department finally produced, only after litigation, include ones that validate those reportedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop as reported by Fox News, regarding meetings between Hunter Biden and then Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2015. Other documents disclosed implicate “Blue Star Strategies” and its co-founder Karen Tramontano, a former Clinton Administration official, as having likely violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by illegally lobbying State on a U.S. policy position while not registered. Tramontano may also have misled Congressional investigators about her lobbying activity as a result of a document produced in Lacy’s lawsuit. Lacy said “Judge Carter’s ruling today uses the only real sanction possible to hold the Federal government to task for violating its’ own transparency rules – an attorney fees award after forcing disclosure of improperly withheld documents. And in this award, which the Biden State Department opposed in court, Judge Carter gave us everything we asked for. This is a victory for the transparency promised by the Biden Administration, but not delivered.” Judge Carter’s original ruling on the main case is available for download here. At the time of that ruling Lacy said “this ruling is a victory for pubic disclosure and its necessity stands in stark contrast to the hollow claims of the Biden Administration that it is the ‘most transparent’ in history,” He added, “we will now be sending discovered documents to the relevant Congressional inquiries and the Department of Justice as evidence for their consideration.” Lead counsel for Lacy and USJF was Chad Morgan of Law Office of Chad D. Morgan. Morgan was assisted by attorney Alex Tomescu of Orange County. A copy of the Judge’s decision awarded attorney fees is available from the Federal District Court or by contacting James Lacy at [email protected]. -30- |
