A federal judge ordered the State Department to release all internal communications of the Trump administration right through to October 18 that could be of interest regarding Trump’s alleged dealings with Ukraine.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper consented on Friday to the request of the non-profit watchdog on legal transparency American Insight. They demanded under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIL) a preliminary injunction request for the documents, including communication records concerning Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
The non-partisan group was delighted by the ruling. “Despite the Trump administration’s obstruction of Congress, the paper trail of the Ukraine pressure campaign is continuing to come to light,” Clark Pettig, a spokesman for American Insight, said in a statement to the HuffPost.
The organization had requested the documents previously, but the Department only issued documentation up to August 2. That is, without the juicy part when Trump lifted the ban on military aid to Ukraine, including documents that could explain exactly what led to this decision.
NEW: A federal court just ordered the State Dept. to search for and release additional Ukraine-related records to us by January 8.
State had previously failed to search for documents dated after Aug. 2, 2019. The court says searches must cover up through Oct. 18, 2019. pic.twitter.com/MlBNXbkRNA
— American Oversight (@weareoversight) December 13, 2019
Why the Department failed to provide any materials after the notorious date of August 2, they would not say, nor had they “adequately justified” why it used the early date, judge Cooper ruled. He added that the Department should clear its records through Oct. 18, ultimately by January 8.
American Oversight said in a tweet that the new records “would include any communications of senior officials, like Sec. Pompeo, with Giuliani or with anyone outside the government about the Ukraine pressure campaign.”
“The judge zeroed in on communications with Rudy Giuliani to be most subject to public disclosure. Why? Because he doesn’t work for the government,” CNN reported American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers telling reporters after the hearing.
“The time period covered by Friday’s court order includes some of the most critical events under scrutiny in the impeachment investigation, including the creation and release of the whistleblower report, and the eventual lifting of the freeze on aid to Ukraine,” Pettig said, according to the HuffPost.
Judge Cooper on October 23 already ordered the State Department to begin producing within 30 days documents related to the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, saying the records were of obvious public interest.
Among the records the American Insight asked for are documents related to interactions between Giuliani and Ukraine, as well as documents about the recall of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine have come under intense focus since a person who has not been named publicly filed a complaint against him, alleging he used the office of the president to pressure Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals.
According to a transcript of a July call between Trump and Zelensky, the president asked his counterpart to “look into” former Vice President Joe Biden’s actions in the country.
Epoch Times reporter Zachary Stieber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
