FOIA What FOIA

There is an inescapable pattern of the United States Department of Justice with respect to its non-compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) law. It pretty much goes as such – oh you sent a FOIA request? FOIA what FOIA? We didn’t get it, We don’t know what happened to it, We don’t understand the nature of your request, Are you going to pay us $100,000+ in fees to comply with the FOIA requested (if he had received the request) commected to journalism especially as it relates to fraud, waste, and abuse? Well its going to take eight or nine months to respond to your simple FOIA request because we are busy, even though we have publicly stated it only takes eleven (11) business days to respond to a simple FOIA request. Oh but wait, since we don’t like the nature of your request and we think you won’t fight us, we will magically recast your FOIA request as “Complex,” and thus we can set our own arbitrary response time i.e. eight or nine month, maybe more.

That pretty much sums up how “Justice” handles FOIA requests directed to it or one of its components i.e. the United States Marshal Service (“USMS”) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). And what if an inquiry regarding public corruption is involved -- like say with magistrate judge Virginia K. DeMarchi in the San Jose, CA district court? The interaction pretty much goes something like this:

USDOJ: We talked about this before, why are going to go and bring up stuff like that? That’s not nice – be nice.

Legalhotwater: Well it involves what we understand to be a $5 million dollar cover up scheme for a case against the United States in 2019.

USDOJ: Look, didn’t we just mention about being nice! be nice!! And anyway, do you have money to fight us? We have the judges in our pockets. We tell the judges what to do. The judges work for us not for you. Go away and don’t bring this up again.

Legalhotwater: Well we thought the FOIA statute applies equally to all agencies and departments not specifically excluded by the FOIA statute.

USDOJ: Well you thought wrong!! The rules are different for us. Like we said -- the judges work for us not for you. And we have a “No judgment rule against us,” so where do you think you are going with this? And we are not going to pay you attorney fees even if we lose. And we are not going to pay you damages either. Go away now and don’t bring this up again!!!

So the problem here is that, per Legalhotwater’s narrative, this is how things play out (generally based upon FOIA history with the FBI) via FOIA requests directed to the Department of Justice under the President Biden administration. But what about when the FOIA request is initiated under the President Trump administration and met with the same stonewalling, dilatory conduct, and ultimately [criminal] cover up(s)? That is exactly the case, here, as this matter originated under the Trump administration, including a very high probability of misconduct related to this request involving [criminal] judicial misconduct and/or money crimes. So what exactly is “Justice” hiding? Perhaps we will find out. Perhaps not -- or at least not prior to four (4) years as is historical with the Department of Justice.

See the documents below, to gleen where we are at with the Department of Justice's United States Marshal Service FOIA request.