Ben Carson, Secretary; or Pam Patenaude, Deputy Secretary
| Tracking # |
18-FI-HQ-01411 |
| Submitted | April 23, 2018 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Taylor Amarel
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
I would like to obtain all emails sent to, from, or copied to Ben Carson, Secretary; or Pam Patenaude, Deputy Secretary, from January 1, 2016 to Present Day containing at least one of the following non-case-sensitive key-strings: "EB-5", "Kushner", "Hannity", or "Fraud".
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Taylor Amarel
From: Taylor Amarel
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
I would like to obtain all emails sent to, from, or copied to Ben Carson, Secretary; or Pam Patenaude, Deputy Secretary, from January 1, 2016 to Present Day containing at least one of the following non-case-sensitive key-strings: "EB-5", "Kushner", "Hannity", or "Fraud".
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Taylor Amarel
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 23, 2018. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 23, 2018. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 23, 2018. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Department of Housing and Urban Development
Hello,
Muckrock submitted a FOIA request to HUD asking for "all emails sent to, from, or copied to Ben Carson, Secretary; or Pam Patenaude, Deputy Secretary, from January 1, 2016 to Present Day containing at least one of the following non-case-sensitive key-strings: "EB-5", "Kushner", "Hannity", or "Fraud"."
Your request asks for emails of multiple HUD employees. Your request requires utilization of the Department's eDiscovery tool for a search for responsive records. The Department's eDiscovery tool is contracted with a third-party. The system utilized by this contractor auto-assigns a collection date on a first-in-first-out basis, and is capable of collecting records for a set number of custodians per day. As a result, the Department does not maintain direct control over the collection process and cannot alter the scheduled collection date for a particular request. Given the high volume of requests for eDiscovery searches, the third-party system is operating at capacity with a significant backlog. Once the record collection has been completed, responsive records will be delivered to the FOIA Branch for review. At that time, we will work diligently to finalize your request as quickly as possible.
From: Department of Housing and Urban Development
Good afternoon Taylor,
I'm emailing with regard to FOIA request 18-FI-HQ-01411. I sent an email last Monday, 7/16/18, but have yet to receive a response. The eDiscovery search has been completed, and I have been given the responsive records for review. The initial search turned up over 2,000 records, many of which are what I would consider "false positives." These are records that technically are responsive to the request - they belong to one of the named custodians and they contain one of the keywords you provided - but which have no actual substantive content. These are things like daily news subscription emails or HUD newsletters that go out to all employees. For instance, many employees subscribe to a general news service like the New York Times that sends out short news clips and links to articles. HUD Daily News Briefings are distributed to employees every day, and feature news clips from various media sources. Because some of the terms used here are widely used throughout the media (such as Kushner or Hannity), we turned up a significant amount of records of this nature - primarily HUD News Briefings. Requesters frequently tell us they do not want these records, but it is important to find out if that is the case here before beginning the review.
If you are not interested in these types of records, I can review only the documents that contain actual substantive materials - HUD employee emails and attachments with genuine content rather than generic news material. However, I have to check first because they are within the scope of what you originally asked for.
At your convenience, please send me a quick email to advise. I do not want to spend a great deal of time reviewing records that you do not actually want, and I want to be sure we are on the same page before taking any action. I can be reached at this email address or at 202-402-3450.
Best,
Ethan
Ethan G. Bodell, Esq.
Government Information Specialist
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of the Executive Secretariat
FOIA Branch, Room 10139
(202) 402-3450 | ethan.g.bodell@hud.gov
Files
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