At Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) slammed the failure of the federal government to obey FOIA requests.
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00:00Thank you. You know, it's astounding to me, I'm almost aghast actually that we're hearing brought up time and time again, Senator from Rhode Island, Senator from Illinois, talking about firings of people that have handled FOIA, especially those that were handling it in the last administration, when that was undoubtedly the greatest government gaslighting in the history of our nation.
00:30on some pretty catastrophic cover-ups. Specifically, let's start with the COVID pandemic. The state of Florida had to do a grand jury investigation to determine how much the people had been misled. And, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but the first three words in our constitution, we the people say, who is in charge of this government.
00:57The whole point of the Freedom of Information Act is to make sure that we, the people, can assess the performance of our government. And how in the world are we supposed to determine if government has run amok, if it's done under the cover of darkness, and we can't get information?
01:16It's saddening that you had a state that had to do a grand jury investigation to get information.
01:23And is it shocking to anyone that the new administration came in having seen the damage and the carnage over the last four years related to COVID and deaths and immigration and an overrun and a surge of inadmissible and dangerous people of our nation? Is it any doubt or surprise that this new administration would go,
01:49those people who are in charge of those people who are in charge of those people who are in charge of answering to we the people, gotta go?
01:54That should shock no one. And the fact that it's brought up when we're going back to the root of the purpose of FOIA?
02:01I mean, in the last administration, we saw people and policy unleashed like termites that weakened and destroyed the structure of this nation.
02:14And when we the people needed answers for that, we got nothing. And I know a little bit about this because I was the Attorney General of Florida.
02:28And not only did I make requests myself when the Biden administration started releasing criminals here illegally back into our communities rather than detaining them on serious felonies and deporting them.
02:39When they started pushing and actually start saying that we needed quotas to mass release into our interior people that were inadmissible or dangerous.
02:51When they started releasing people on the terrorist watch list into our nation.
02:57When they started hiding information on why they were pushing out things related to COVID.
03:09I mean, these were serious, serious things that weakened our nation.
03:13And we the people needed to get on top of that. We the people needed to make sure that our government was being accountable to us.
03:20And in 2023, the US government agencies censored, withheld or claimed records could not be located two thirds of the time.
03:28I believe my office as the Attorney General in the state of Florida, we brought over half a dozen lawsuits against this administration when they wouldn't respond.
03:42And I concur wholeheartedly that it shouldn't take lawsuits to get our government to respond to us.
03:50I mean, thankfully, I took it as a responsibility when it was like the wreck it radicals unleashing on our nation.
03:57I took it as we'll be fix it Florida and do whatever we need to do to get the information to the people.
04:02But the reality is, we now have an administration that says, okay, we're going to try and deal with the career embedded people that withheld from we the people.
04:15But we now as Congress need to say, how did this happen?
04:19How could you have that go on?
04:21That gaslighting go on and have people in Mayorkas, Kamala Harris say repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, the border is secure.
04:30And you can't check us on it because we're going to withhold all the information from you.
04:35What is the biggest change we could make to the statutes right now, Mr. Howell, that would prevent that from ever happening again?
04:44So the two things I point out in my testimony are one, penalties as Senator Kennedy discussed in great detail.
04:50And two is clarifications about the exemptions that they routinely use to withhold information,
04:55whether it relates to personal privacy, law enforcement exemptions are very broad,
04:59or other sorts of exemptions they're using to force us into court to fight them for those documents that belong to all of us.
05:05Thank you, Senator Korn.
05:08Mr. Chairman, I guess-
05:13Chairman, I guess.