DOJ Tells Me It Can't Find Any Internal Guidelines For When It Seeks Gag Orders For Subpoenas
Earlier, I wrote about how I sent two FOIA requests over the bogus gag order that Assistant US Attorney Niketh Velamoor obtained to silence Reason.com about the bogus subpoena he sent to identify some rowdy commenters. The two FOIA requests were for: (1) the original application for the gag order and (2) any DOJ guidelines on when to apply for a gag order.
As we noted, I just received a response to the first FOIA request, in that I was told the DOJ could find no responsive documents. That seemed quite bizarre, given that just a few weeks earlier, the DOJ itself had released exactly that document and it appears to match up exactly with what I asked for in my FOIA request.
The DOJ also responded to my second request and -- guess what? -- it's the same damn thing. Yup, the DOJ says it has no responsive documents for any guidelines on when to seek a gag order on a subpoena.
Now, this seems to suggest two possibilities -- neither of them particularly good. (1) As with my first FOIA request, the folks at the DOJ FOIA office are simply bad at their jobs (whether on purpose or not) and are simply not finding the document that does exist or (2) the DOJ really doesn't have any guidelines for when it should seek a gag order. Neither of these situations are reasonable.
If the first is the case, and we have evidence of that based on the other FOIA response, then the DOJ needs to overhaul its FOIA efforts to actually align with the law itself, which requires them to provide responsive documents. The fact that it's bad at its job (again, on purpose or not) runs counter to the letter and spirit of the law and should be fixed.
If the latter is the case, then that's also a serious problem. A gag order in a legal proceeding should only be used in very rare circumstances, and given the fact that this particular gag order was granted based on almost nothing, rubber-stamped by a judge who didn't seem to care about the details, the DOJ really ought to have some fairly detailed guidelines that need to be followed before some kid working in the US Attorneys' office can try to hide what he's doing out of embarrassment (as appeared to be the case here). I will be asking the DOJ to explain this lack of guidelines and will continue to report on what it has to say.
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As we noted, I just received a response to the first FOIA request, in that I was told the DOJ could find no responsive documents. That seemed quite bizarre, given that just a few weeks earlier, the DOJ itself had released exactly that document and it appears to match up exactly with what I asked for in my FOIA request.
The DOJ also responded to my second request and -- guess what? -- it's the same damn thing. Yup, the DOJ says it has no responsive documents for any guidelines on when to seek a gag order on a subpoena.
Now, this seems to suggest two possibilities -- neither of them particularly good. (1) As with my first FOIA request, the folks at the DOJ FOIA office are simply bad at their jobs (whether on purpose or not) and are simply not finding the document that does exist or (2) the DOJ really doesn't have any guidelines for when it should seek a gag order. Neither of these situations are reasonable. If the first is the case, and we have evidence of that based on the other FOIA response, then the DOJ needs to overhaul its FOIA efforts to actually align with the law itself, which requires them to provide responsive documents. The fact that it's bad at its job (again, on purpose or not) runs counter to the letter and spirit of the law and should be fixed.
If the latter is the case, then that's also a serious problem. A gag order in a legal proceeding should only be used in very rare circumstances, and given the fact that this particular gag order was granted based on almost nothing, rubber-stamped by a judge who didn't seem to care about the details, the DOJ really ought to have some fairly detailed guidelines that need to be followed before some kid working in the US Attorneys' office can try to hide what he's doing out of embarrassment (as appeared to be the case here). I will be asking the DOJ to explain this lack of guidelines and will continue to report on what it has to say.
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