UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTY OF THE PEOPLE, INC., et al., Plaintiffs, v. Civil Action No. 17-1193 (JEB) DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Defendant. MEMORANDUM OPINION While the media continues to cover investigations of former President Donald Trump’s businesses, non-profit Plaintiffs in this Freedom of Information Act case hunt different game. They seek records discussing Trump’s connection with a two-decades-old gambling investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After the Department of Justice withheld certain documents, Plaintiffs sued. In competing Motions for Summary Judgment, the parties now wrangle with a number of FOIA exemptions as applied to diverse document categories. To aid its decisionmaking, the Court completed its own in camera review, and it now delivers a miscellany of rulings: it will affirm the Government’s nondisclosure of some records, order the release of others, and require some further segregability analysis on still more. I. Background Although extended by the COVID-19 pandemic, the procedural history of this case is not complicated. Plaintiffs — government-transparency organization Property of the People, investigative reporter Jason Leopold, and PhD candidate Ryan Shapiro — filed a FOIA request with the FBI on March 16, 2017, for records “mentioning or referring to” Donald John Trump 1 from June 14, 1946, through June 15, 2015. See ECF No. 1 (Compl.), ¶¶ 1–3, 10–11. They also requested records relating to several FBI case files, which they believed contained documents referring to Trump by name. Id., ¶ 11. After acknowledging receipt of the request, DOJ issued a Glomar response, refusing to confirm or deny the existence of law-enforcement records responsive to Plaintiffs’ requests. See Property of the People v. DOJ, 310 F. Supp. 3d 57, 62–63 (D.D.C. 2018); ECF No. 12–1 (First Declaration of David M. Hardy), ¶ 8. An unsuccessful administrative appeal of that response prompted Plaintiffs to file this suit on June 18, 2017. See Compl., ¶ 14. After this Court rejected both the propriety of Defendant’s Glomar response and Plaintiffs’ cross-motion for summary judgment, Property of the People, 310 F. Supp. 3d at 73, the parties began a long exchange of documents and status reports drawn out by pandemic- related delays. All told, DOJ identified 4,205 responsive pages, releasing more than half that number (at least in part) to Plaintiffs. See ECF No. 55 (Def. MSJ) at 1. It withheld 1,554 pages in part and 988 pages in full, invoking FOIA Exemptions 3, 6, 7(A), 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E) in its most recent Motion for Summary Judgment. Id. at 1, 7–29. Narrowing the dispute, Plaintiffs in their latest Cross-Motion contest the applicability of those exemptions with respect to only 116 pages. See ECF No. 57 (Pl. MSJ & Opp.) at 7–30; ECF No. 62 (Pl. Reply) at 2–29 Following the completion of briefing, the Court, in an effort to better understand the withholdings at issue, ordered DOJ to submit clean and redacted copies of all disputed documents for in camera review. See Minute Order (2/24/21). Having now completed its review, the Court is ready …
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