foia officers are often civil servants.ho are doing their jobs in the agencies, and when they get a foia request, many of them go through the process, try to figure out what they can release, how they redact it. and if we don't get the information we want, then we jump into court and we litigate over those documents that are not totally released. it is the beginning of a fight. what we want to demonstrate and what is important to us is the emoluments clause is part of the constitution. president trump put profits over the constitution on day one. when he didn't disgorge his business interest, when he didn't create a blind trust, when he pretended to be concerned about the emoluments clause and pretended to be concerned about the conflicts of interest, he disregarded the law and the constitution. we want any and all documents and we will follow that on, both in this context and other context, immigration and abortion rights, freedom of speech and civil rights. we're ready. we have to be. >> anthony romero, executive director

hate crimes prevention hate act, abusive freedom act and the foia improvement act, whereas christinewas instrumental in the successful effort to reauthorize the violence against women act, trafficking victims protection act, a bulletproof vest partnership grant program, and the justice for all act. and whereas christine has furthered efforts to protect citizens right to vote or work on the voting rights act as provided integral insight of the committee considered comprehensive immigration reform. with essential to the committees considerations six supreme court nominations, not being resolved in the united states ca committe sent on the judiciary, command christine lucius for years of dedicated service, leadership and service to the committee on the judiciary and united states senate and extended this deep appreciation to christine lucius for years served. >> to herd the resolution and i like to say without objection, it bein be adopted. i hear no objection, it's adopted. i'd like to speak for just a minute and echo what senator lee has said about christine. i want to thank you for y

i have no idea why they didn't prove the foia issue. i've been told we have no reason to believe it's any issue associated with me. >> fair enough. i am glad -- >> you should direct that to the fbi. >> okay, and i will. i accept your answer. i accept your answer. you're not being investigated but i find it interesting that you know about the letter i sent yesterday. the letter i sent with all those questions detailing all of the issues i just asked about with bank west, west bank -- >> one west. >> one west, i apologize. >> that's right. my father forgot the name sometimes as well. >> the letter i support you back in early, mid-december about this you've not even taken the time to answer and it really laid out all of this. the one west purchase went well for the treasury secretary desing ide designee but it was bad for investors and taxpayers. we can talk more about taxpayer cost on this whole process and the amount of money that he bought it for, sold it for but mostly subsidized by taxpayers. >> senator, your time is up. you take as m

the way they cracked down on whistle blowers, and tried to keep foia requests from going through. he did have this reputation that was not talked about much and it was not pressed on it much. and they had a friendlier relationship. howie: sean spicer was talking about moving the press room to larger quarters. trump settled that in a "fox and friends" interview. >> the press briefing room, are you going to move it? >> we'll move it to a larger room and the press went crazy. but some people in the press will not be able to get in. howie: did the media win that skirmish? >> i don't think the outcome is clear yet. i think the trump administration as kellyanne conway said this morning wants to change the terms of the relationship between the press and the president. clearly there is a war going on between the press and trump. we can argue all day who started it, who fault it. i don't know anyone right now who can say honestly that the press is going to fairly cover this president. it seems to me they have set themselves up as the edge any of trump. i read their twitter feeds. i saw the

and we know from foias and some of the things the director said yesterday that they just wouldn't listen we had an extraordinary event yesterday. donald trump laid out his plan to allegedly avoid conflicts of interest, and the director of the office of government ethics looked at it and said this is wrong, he can't do this, and went public. this guy, the director of that office never speaks to the press, never goes public. he felt so strongly about it he went to brookings, you know, a think tank here in washington, and did a press conference and said nothing in this plan prevents conflicts of interest. so i've been covering washington a long time. i've never seen a pib servant go before the cameras and call out the guy who's going to be his boss in a few days the way that the director did yesterday. >> and i think that's something that we in the media need to pay more attention to and of course we'll be following it here on cnn. thank you, gentlemen. i appreciate it. >> thanks, don. >>> up next, in his final days in office president barack obama surprised his vice president joe biden wit

like to continue to work with the chairman to find out what the enforcement proceedings cited in the foia denial is and how they relate to the nominee, if at all. for mr. mnuchin, relativity's failure wasn't much of a setback, considering the profits that onewest's foreclosure machine was still pulling in. the purchase price of the bank in 2009 was less than $1.6 billion. after five years of foreclosures and profits, it sold for $3.4 billion to cit group. outside onewest and relativity, mr. mnuchin spent years as a director of the holding company that owned sears, an iconic american brand. he served on the committee that watchdogged the employee pension fund. the record shows the plan was routinely mismanaged and underfunded. retirees saw their pensions cut, losing a monthly health care stipend that was enough to offset roughly a third of the premiums seniors pay for medicare part b. sears has also shuttered hundreds of stores nationwide over the last few years, and recently announced another round of closures. once again showing a truly impressive capacity to advantage himself while othe

university leadership will have to defend their scientists against the onsalute of foia requests and personal attacks that are the modus operandi of phony science fronts propped up by the fossil fuel science fuel industry to spread calculated misinformation. the american scientific community faces a real threat from that operation. on to pennsylvania, i had the opportunity to spend a day traveling with my friend and colleague, bob casey, around southeastern pennsylvania, getting a firsthand look at the effects of climate change and hearing about the work pennsylvanians are doing to address it. at university of pennsylvania's morris ash read up, leaders from the moms clean air force, from physicians for social responsibility and from other groups talked about kids with asthma and other conditions that worsen when temperatures and pollution levels are high. in malvern, we toured the lead platinum north american headquarters of st. gobaine, the world's largest building materials company. the companies demonstrating that green building materials and technologies can be married with style

. >> let's talk about foia. as i understand it, there is a request to the oklahoma attorney general's office to your office for e-mails between your office and cok cook industries and americans for prosperity is and marie energy into the american petroleum institute and the information i have is the request was filed more than 740 days ago. more than two years ago that in response to become your office e has conceded that there are 3,000 responsive documents between your office and companies and about in the 740 days it is exactly zero that have been produced. is that an acceptable turnaround? and should we be concerned that it will be before you as the administrator? >> we have the general counsel dedicated to performing the provided responses for the records request we go through training with officials and know the record of walls. >> given how many have been put putting financial interests before the epa, do you not think that 3,000 e-mails back and forth between you and your office and then are relevant to

became gradually more willing to just affirmatively say this is what is going on, not to fight the foia case, but say you can have the documents, give us the time to redact them and i appreciated that very much. i'm not sure that moment is going to endure the way you just suggested that it would. i certainly think other parts of the -- correct me if you disagree -- that other parts of the intelligence community that were not forcibly exposed like the surveillance world was, such as the central intelligence agency, i think never went through that cultural change. and i -- one of the things i've been thinking about lately, the usa freedom act, one of its provisions was the intelligence court, fisa court, had to make public when it has made -- novel and significant interpretations of surveillance law. and the provision doesn't say "going forward." it's ambiguous. just says the government shall make public these things. it raised a question about whether fisa court opinions that are novel and significant, enacted between 1979 and 2015 must also now be made public at least in summarized form

he's at the department of justice as well and apparently he leaked some information about an ongoing foia, freedom of information act request, regarding hillary's e-mail server. they're looking at that too. the headline is they're looking into comey. >> it looks as if the democrats on the way out of the door are trying to leave behind as many land mines as they can to at least cast doubts on the legitimacy of the trump victory. i'm not sure this is the best way to assure a good transition, one where you transfer not just the authority of office but the legitimacy, but that seems to be what the democrats want to do as they get out of power. brian: in a way it's working because if you look at the media travel ratings, donald trump got the boost. controversy from the electoral system being the wrong system from fake news really giving the election to him to russia hacks the reason, now the comey investigation and now we spend all of this sparring, now only has the honeymoon lasted eight minutes. now the ratings are down to where they were right before the election, which by the way, he won c

letter and i assume the fbi did a thorough review of the report and no idea why they didn't approve the foia issue. we have no reason to believe it's not any issue associated with me. >> fair enough. >> but direct that to the fbi. >> i accept your answer, you're not being investigated. but i find it interesting that you know about the letter i sent yesterday, the letter i sent with all the questions detailing all the issues that i just asked about with the bank west, bank west -- >> one west. >> one west. my father forgot the names sometimes as well. >> but i sent the letter and you've not taken the time to answer and it really laid out. i think the issue is the one west purchase went well for the treasury saeblg deseecretary de it was a disaster for homeowners and for taxpayers. we can talk more about taxpayer cost on this whole process and the amount of money he bought it for and sold it for. >> senator, your time is up now. you take as much time to answer. >> thank you very much. first of all, i did enjoy meeting you. i don't believe we had the opportunity to meet before that time and if