Press Release

WASHINGTON — Empower Oversight has filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) seeking to compel it to produce documents related to the VA’s failure to respond to correspondence from Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley. He had requested information about allegations—which have since been confirmed by the VA’s Office of Inspector General—of …

WASHINGTON — Empower Oversight sent a letter to the Office of the Inspector General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC-OIG) requesting a comprehensive review of the SEC’s ethics officials’ failure to properly manage SEC official William Hinman’s potential conflict of interest regarding cryptocurrency issues. The letter describes in detail instructions that the SEC’s Ethics …

WASHINGTON — In a new joint status report filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) argued that Empower Oversight’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit should be delayed while the SEC waits for approval from Simpson Thacher to release documents at issue in the litigation. In its portion of the joint status report, …

WASHINGTON — Empower Oversight received just under 200 pages of emails from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) responsive to its FOIA request for records that could shed light on allegations of conflicts of interest associated with the SEC’s selective enforcement actions involving cryptocurrencies. This comes on the heels of over a thousand pages of documents that the SEC released to Empower Oversight in February.  Among …

WASHINGTON — Two presidentially-appointed inspectors general were paid about $168,000 more than the law allows from 2016 through 2020, and the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s Integrity Committee  (“CIGIE-IC”) refused to open an investigation into the excess payments—according to a Department of Defense memorandum (“DOD memo”), confidential sources, and a whistleblower disclosure …

Challenges Improper Redactions of Answers to Senate and Incomplete Search in FOIA Case “The public has a right to learn everything it can about the NIH’s decision to delete genetic information at the request of Chinese researchers in the midst of a worldwide pandemic,” said Jason Foster. WASHINGTON — Empower Oversight filed an amended complaint today against the …

WASHINGTON —After suing the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) for documents related to potential conflicts of interest in its cryptocurrency-related enforcement decisions, Empower Oversight has obtained the first documents from the SEC as a result of this litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The documents consist of emails between two now-former senior SEC officials and any …

WASHINGTON — Empower Oversight has filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking to compel it to provide documents related to the independence of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into wrongdoing in the origins of the Trump-Russia probe and the 2016 election. At issue are two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from 2021, dated July …

WASHINGTON — Empower Oversight sent a letter to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt outlining research on the origins of COVID-19 relevant to the Attorney General’s ongoing civil suit against China, its Communist Party, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences for their roles in the global pandemic. The letter points …

UPDATE (February 11): On the afternoon of Friday, February 11, 2022, the government filed a motion (PDF) in the litigation referenced below, asking the judge for an extension of time to file its answer to the suit. WASHINGTON—Empower Oversight filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking to compel the SEC to comply with several Freedom …