Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the agency refused to provide records of communications related to election misinformation flagged by its Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).
Related: Senator Josh Hawley demands answers from DHS over social media censorship collusion
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after another agency under the DHS, the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) failed to comply with an FOIA request filed last October.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
Judicial Watch had requested all communications related to EIP’s work sent via Atlassian’s Jira platform between employees and CISA employees and social media companies and other organizations that flagged election misinformation including The Center for Internet Security, the National Association of State Election Directors, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory.
Numerous organizations privately communicated through Jira, according to the lawsuit.
“The Elon Musk ‘Twitter Files’ are the tip of the iceberg, as the federal government ran a massive, secret censorship op against the American people,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That the DHS is hiding these censorship records in violation of FOIA law shows the agency still has something to hide.”
In a separate lawsuit, Judicial Watch is suing the DHS for all communications between CISA and EIP, alleging that the agencies were actively flagging content in last year’s midterms. EIP flagged right-leaning news websites, including The Epoch Times, Breitbart, Fox News, The Washington Times, the New York Post, and Just the News.
