First Amendment News

With reports that President Donald Trump confiscated translator’s notes of his 2017 meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Democrats are looking for a way to shed light on the meeting even suggesting they could subpoena the interpreter. In 1978 Congress passed the Presidential Records Act making presidential records public. It is now up to Congress and perhaps the Supreme Court to make sure Trump abides by the law. (Public Radio International, January 14, 2019, by

With the passage of a California law requiring the release of police misconduct records, recent public records requests reveal a number of instances in which police departments in the Bay Area failed to adequately inform the public. The Fremont Police Department reported 8 cases of police conduct in 2017 but details were never made public. In Burlingame, the police department fired an officer for offering to help a woman charged with a DUI if she

While attorney general nominee William Barr said it is vital that the results of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election be released to Congress and the public, some are concerned that the qualifier “consistent with the law” provides him with an out. But law professor John F. Banzhaf, ValueWalk, January 14, says that there are valid reasons for withholding grand jury testimony and classified information. Barr said in written

The lack of transparency in the California’s rejection of 10 of former Governor Jerry Brown’s clemency requests has riled court observers. The court stated last March they would  override not on merit but only if there was an abuse of power. But since the court seals clemency cases, it is impossible to know if the court saw abuses of power in those 10 cases. (ABA Journal, January 11, 2019, by Lorelei Laird) The court rejected

Three organizations filed an appeal in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to obtain White House visitor logs and lists of presidential visitors to Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties. The National Security Archive, the Knight First Amendment Institute and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington contend that the records are agency records subject to the Freedom of Information Act and not presidential records that can only be obtained five years after a president leaves office.