Trump Has A Plan To Cripple Government Transparency

Federal agencies set a record for censoring and withholding documents sought through freedom-of-information requests in Trump's first term. Now it's likely to be much worse.

When it comes to the public’s ability to pry documents loose from federal agencies, Donald Trump’s supporters accept nothing less than full disclosure and have spent the past few years bombarding federal agencies with requests for records. But it seems overwhelmingly likely that posture will soon change ― right around noon on Jan. 20.

Take Trump-era Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who is now a key member of the president-elect’s transition team and is widely expected to land another powerful administration post next year.

In a May 2023 episode of the America First Policy Institute’s podcast, “The Tank,” Bernhardt bemoaned that left-wing organizations he’d “never heard of” had “inundated” federal agencies with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests during Trump’s first term, “to the point that it created a lot of activity in terms of slowing down the agenda.”

“Frankly, I think they were very effective,” he said. “They’re highly funded by non-disclosed entities, and that’s fine. I was even surprised to find that much of their activity is tax-deductible.”

“I’m not suggesting it’s illegal, but what I am suggesting is that it is incredibly one-sided,” he added. “That one-sided effort meant that their voice was often the only voice in the echo chamber surrounding policies related to the administration.”