In the wake of Kash Patel’s appearance before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, and after receiving no response from the FBI pursuant to my Freedom of Information Act request to pry loose the training videos created by agencies detailing how to flag and redact Donald Trump’s name from the Epstein Files, I have filed a motion for summary judgment with DC District Judge Beryl Howell.
A motion for summary judgment is a request asking the court to make a determination in the case based on law before the case goes to trial. In this case, we’re asking the judge for a partial summary judgment - expedited relief. We contend there’s no genuine dispute that my request should be expedited.
For background, the Trump administration assigned over 1,000 FBI personnel to review nearly 300,000 pages (100,000 documents) of the Epstein files. As part of the review, the personnel were tasked with finding and flagging any mentions of Donald Trump. My exclusive reporting uncovered the existence of training videos embedded in PowerPoint presentations that gave detailed instructions to log the document number and page number where Trump’s name appears into a local Excel spreadsheet, then send their findings to a portal where the logs would be consolidated. I filed a FOIA request for those training videos, and I asked that my request be expedited because of the widespread media interest.
Thus far, the FBI has failed to respond to my request for expedited processing, and given the continued public interest in the case, we are now requesting the court make a determination that expedited review is required.
After MSW Media cited the widespread media interest in the information contained in these records as a compelling need for its request to be expedited, FBI failed to issue a determination regarding MSW Media’s request for expedited processing. Even now, two months after receiving this request—and forty-five days after the filing of this case—FBI still has not issued a determination and continues to drag its heels. For the reasons demonstrated herein, the Court should grant summary judgment to MSW Media on Count 1 and order FBI to process its FOIA request in an expedited fashion.
According to both the Freedom of Information Act and DOJ policy, expedited processing of my request is proper - as proven by the Patel testimony before the two committees this week.
FOIA defines “compelling need” as, in part: “[W]ith respect to a request made by a person primarily engaged in disseminating information, urgency to inform the public concerning actual or alleged Federal Government activity.”
Department of Justice (“DOJ”) FOIA regulations also provide for expedited processing of requests involving “[a] matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist possible questions about the government’s integrity which affect public confidence.”
In order for me to be eligible to ask for expedited processing, I have to be recognized as a representative of the news media. At first, the FBI determined that I’m NOT a member of the news media, but we appealed and won. On September 5th, we received that notification:
You appealed on behalf of your client, MSW Media, Inc., from the fee category determination made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on your client's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request No. 1675664-000.
The FBI has informed this Office that it has changed your client's fee category to representative of the news media.
Additionally, I have to show that there is an urgency to inform the public. Here’s what we have to say about that:
It is of particular note that as MSW Media is drafting this brief, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees have just held two days of hearings with FBI Director Kash Patel, in which: (a) various Representatives addressed the Epstein files at least sixty times; (b) various Senators addressed the Epstein files at least thirty times; (c) Epstein’s name was mentioned 175 times in total; and, most relevantly (d) various Representatives and Senators specifically addressed FBI’s review of the Epstein files—the exact subject of this FOIA request— approximately seventy times. Ranking Member Durbin even took time during his opening statement to tee up the issue: “[A]fter Attorney General Bondi publicly stated in February that the Epstein client list was quote sitting on my desk right now to review, that’s what she said on Fox, Director Patel diverted more than a thousand FBI personnel from their critical missions to work on 24-hour shifts reviewing over 100,000 pages of Epstein-related records. These personnel were instructed to flag any records in which President Trump was named, but that review ended in an unsigned memorandum from DOJ and FBI stating simply, ‘There is no incriminating client list.’ Close quote. Director Patel still has not responded to my letter from two months ago asking about his role in this coverup.”
Finally, we try to preempt an expected response to our request: that they’ll try to dismiss my bid for expedited review simply by moving my request to the “top of the pile” as they have attempted to do in similar cases:
Between now and 17 October 2025, when FBI’s opposition to this Motion is due, FBI may decide to move MSW Media’s request to the top of its first-in, first-out queue without granting its request for expedited processing. If it does so, it can reasonably be expected to argue that this renders this Motion moot, as it has in comparable cases. In anticipation of this potential argument, MSW Media will briefly explain how that is not the standard for judicial review of expedited processing denials, and how nothing short of a formal grant of expedited processing will moot this question.
FOIA requires agencies to process requests which warrant expedited processing “as soon as practicable,” it does not require them to move them to the top of their queue and then process them at their leisure. Were FBI allowed to claim that the question of expedited processing was moot once the request has been moved to the top of the queue, it would render the “as soon as practicable” language—not to mention the word “complete”—“insignificant, if not wholly superfluous.”
The motion concludes as follows:
MSW Media has demonstrated that it has a compelling need to be granted expedited processing for its FOIA request. For the reasons described above, MSW Media is entitled to partial summary judgment on Count 1 and an order directing FBI to process its request as soon as practicable.
You can read the entire motion here.
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Thank you for doing this .
You know what you're doing, Allison. Thanks for the work you do.