Communications between William Barr and John Bolton

To Whom It May Concern:

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

-copies of any and all written communications between Attorney General William Barr and former National Security Advisor John Bolton which were sent between February 14, 2019 and September 10, 2019 (inclusive of those dates). In particular, I am looking for written communications that were transmitted electronically, such as (non-exhaustively) email, text messages, social media messages, etc. I also request the metadata of these communications as well.

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,

Christopher Tidmarsh

To whom it may concern:

I would like to file an appeal of the denial of my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request numbered FOIA-2020-00022.

It is in the public interest for any records of communications between Attorney General William Barr and former national security adviser John Bolton to be released to the general public. Releasing the documents to the general public would help provide the public a better understanding of the events surrounding the phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, for which Mr. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power. Releasing the aforementioned documents to the general public could serve to exculpate those who are innocent and incriminate those who are guilty.

Furthermore, certain discussions between Mr. Barr and Mr. Bolton related to the Ukraine incident and other such matters have already been reported publicly, in articles such as the following:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/john-bolton-william-barr-impeachment-fight/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/john-bolton-trump-book-barr.html

I ask the Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General to provide a compelling reason as to why the documents in question must be kept classified which is stronger than the public interest in releasing the documents in their entirety to the general public.

Sincerely,

Christopher Tidmarsh

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, which was originally submitted on Jan. 29, 2020, and which was given the reference number FOIA-2020-00022. On September 29, 2020, the Office of the Attorney General denied my request, but on October 21, 2020, I filed an appeal of the denial. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response to my appeal.

Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

Sincerely,

Christopher Tidmarsh