Obama's final year: US spent $36 million in records lawsuits

Did a quick search and found nada so hopefully this has not been posted yet.

The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.

For a second consecutive year, the Obama administration set a record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn't find a single page of files that were requested.

And it set records for outright denial of access to files, refusing to quickly consider requests described as especially newsworthy, and forcing people to pay for records who had asked the government to waive search and copy fees.

The figures reflect the final struggles of the Obama administration during the 2016 election to meet President Barack Obama's pledge that it was "the most transparent administration in history," despite wide recognition of serious problems coping with requests under the information law. It received a record 788,769 requests for files last year and spent a record $478 million answering them and employed 4,263 full-time FOIA employees across more than 100 federal departments and agencies. That was higher by 142 such employees the previous year.

Source

So much for the most transparent government in history. Obama is without a doubt the worst president in history. I just hope Trump doesn't see this as a challenge to up the ante.

What does ATS think about this? Was Obama's administration the most transparent in history?

a reply to: PraetorianAZ

The least transparent, perhaps. He excluded members of the media as well... except he wasn't even transparent about that.

a reply to: PraetorianAZ

The total lack of transparency of the past administration simply shows the success of the efforts to dumb people down and that the bakeries and ringmasters were working plenty of overtime.

a reply to: PraetorianAZ

Easily one of the worst presidents this country has ever had the displeasure of knowing