I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to The Classifieds. Read on to learn about the week’s top secrecy news.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments last week in our fight to stop the Trump administration from privatizing presidential papers. The battle stems from a Justice Department memo declaring that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional and that White House files are now the president’s personal property — not the public’s.
FPF and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued over this attempt to hide the most consequential records in government — and in May, we won an emergency preliminary injunction requiring the White House to follow the law.
