Ciepelowski and Shuck

Daniel Boguslaw filed this request with the Broadcasting Board of Governors of the United States of America.
Submitted Feb. 20, 2020
Est. Completion None
Status
Withdrawn

Communications

From: Daniel Boguslaw

Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request: Ciepelowski and Shuck

Fax


To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

A copy of all emails, memos, and other communications between Matthew Ciepelowski and/or Matthew Shuck and members of BBG and/or VOA and its international counterparts, between the dates of January 1st 2017 and January 1st 2018 Including any of the following non-case sensitive search terms:

"Change" "Trump" "Fake News" "Russia" "Remove" "Alter" "re-write" "Putin" "Coup" "Take Down"

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,

Daniel Kaufman

From: Broadcasting Board of Governors

Subject: Please narrow your FOIA request to USAGM

Email

Hi Mr. Kaufman-

I am contacting you regarding your FOIA request, dated February 20, 2020, received by the FOIA Office this morning,

You requested:

A copy of all emails, memos, and other communications between Matthew Ciepelowski and/or Matthew Shuck and members of BBG and/or VOA and its international
counterparts, between the dates of January 1st 2017 and January 1st 2018 Including any of the following non-case sensitive search terms:
"Change" "Trump" "Fake News" "Russia" "Remove" "Alter" "re-write" "Putin" "Coup"
"Take Down"

As formulated, your request is far too broad for us to process.

Please contact me to discuss how we might narrow the request to more efficiently identify the documents you seek.

As a starting point, I would suggest the following changes:

* Reformulating to request copies of "emails sent or received by Matthew Ciepelowski and/or Matthew Shuck"

* Removing the following far too common terms from your request: "change" "trump" "remove" "alter" "re-write."

Given that VOA is an organization made up of journalists and editors and the fact that President Trump is often in the news, your search as currently formulated is not viable. Neither of the individuals identified currently works at USAGM, so we would likely perform an email search for the documents you seek.

I look forward to working with you on this matter.

Best.

Dana

Dana Sade
Assistant General Counsel
U.S. Agency for Global Media
202-203-4548 (office)
202-499-0740 (mobile)
dsade@usagm.gov<mailto:dsade@usagm.gov>

From: Daniel Boguslaw

Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Ciepelowski and Shuck

Email

Dear Dana,

Thank you so much for taking the time to review my request and for providing such helpful suggestions for re-formatting. Please find below an updated version of the request which I hope better meets the parameters for execution.

All the best,
Dan

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

A copy of all emails sent to or from Matthew Ciepelowski and/or Matthew Shuck between the dates of January 1st 2017 and January 1st 2018 Including any of the following non-case sensitive search terms:

"Fake News" "Putin" "Coup" "Take Down" "New Hampshire" "Corey Lewandowski" "U.S. Audience" "American Audience"

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,

Daniel Kaufman

From: Broadcasting Board of Governors

Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Ciepelowski and Shuck

Email

Hi Dan-

Thanks for this. It is much better.

Look for an acknowledgement letter shortly-

Dana
.com <requests@muckrock.com>

From: Broadcasting Board of Governors

Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: Ciepelowski and Shuck

Email

Hi Dan-

I am now starting my review of the emails responsive to your narrowed search.

Many off the emails I am seeing are widely distributed ones coming from external list serves or large internal distributions.

I don't think that is what you are looking for.

Thinking back on your original request, can you please identify the names of specific white house or related folks as recipients of senders (to and from Matthew C and S). I propose excluding the broadly circulated documents and then using those names (as senders or recipients) and the terms we agreed on too find responsive documents within the set I have now.

I think that would be a reasonable way to proceed. However, please give me a ring at 202-499-0740 if you have any ideas about how to find the documents you are seeking within the current set (emails to/from either of the Matthews containing the terms below).

Thanks, Dan.

DS

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