Legal watchdog launches to hound Trump agencies
Group seeks release of documents
WASHINGTON Concerned by the shortage of government experience and early missteps by Trump administration officials — including President Trump — a group of lawyers is launching a watchdog organization that will seek to track the administration’s ethics and expose potential conflicts, fraud or other wrongdoing.
The organization, “American Oversight,” which says it is nonpartisan despite some of its founders having deep ties to Democrats, will focus on prying loose documents through public records requests and lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act.
Regardless of what they uncover, such efforts could haunt the administration much the way similar actions by conservative group Judicial Watch produced emails from the State Department that dogged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“We were very troubled to see in the wake of the election all the red flags going up about how this executive branch was going to be run, and how Congress was reacting, which was essentially to put its head in the sand or only act when really forced to do so over egregious matters,” said Austin Evers, a State Department lawyer under Obama and now executive director of American Oversight.
“So we’re going to be using the tools available to citizens to extract information about corruption, about how money’s being misspent, about how rules aren’t being followed and publicize it so at minimum, voters can hold their government accountable.”
There are numerous watchdog groups in Washington, but many are focused on Congress and the White House. American Oversight plans to target federal agencies, including the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Education, both of which are led by secretaries without governing experience.
According to Evers and Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser to the group, they will delve well below the cabinet level down into the thousands of mid- and lower level appointees and employees.
One of their most pressing concerns as they launch is the preservation of records.
Evers is sending letters Mon- day to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the chief archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, David Ferriero.
She is asking them to investigate recent reports that administration officials and career government employees are using encrypted apps and other methods to conduct official business that violate the Presidential Records and Federal Records acts.
The organization timed its launch to kick off Sunshine Week, an annual national effort to highlight the importance of access to public information.