| Welcome back to another edition of FOIA Files! My quest to unearth documents related to the case of the “lost” FOIA requests linked to two convicted hackers has been met with a Glomar by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Plus, a look behind the scenes as the Secret Service prepared agents for Trump’s indictment in the classified documents case, which took place two years ago this weekend. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. ‘Neither confirm nor deny’ | A couple of weeks ago, I broke the story about a massive data breach at Opexus, a Washington-based company that contracts with federal agencies to provide software applications to manage FOIA requests and other government records. Opexus is owned by private equity company Thoma Bravo. According to the company’s internal investigation and a separate probe by an independent cybersecurity firm, two Opexus employees, twin brothers Suhaib and Muneeb Akhter, deleted dozens of databases from Opexus systems before they were fired in February. The incident brought down FOIAXpress, the platform used by agencies to process FOIA requests. Now, it is the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI. Opexus has been “actively engaging directly with our customers and the company has been supporting law enforcement since the incident occurred,” said Bonnye Hart, the chief customer officer for the company. As I reported, the brothers were previously convicted of hacking into the US State Department and had been sentenced to prison. Details about their criminal past surfaced only after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Inspector General, which uses another Opexus software program, ran a background check on one of the brothers. The agency alerted Opexus and both brothers were fired. I hit up the FDIC’s IG for documents to find out what went on behind the scenes and how the data breach impacted their work. Last week, the FDIC responded by stating that it can “neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive” to my FOIA request. In FOIA parlance, that response is known as a Glomar. It was named after the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a ship built for a secret CIA mission in the 1970s to recover a sunken Soviet submarine, whose existence the CIA refused to confirm or deny. Typically, a Glomar is used by intelligence agencies when requesters are seeking details about covert operations or programs. But over the years other agencies have adopted it as a way to avoid searching for records and to maintain a level of secrecy. Here’s where the FDIC’s response gets interesting and potentially revelatory. The agency said if the records I requested did exist (and I know they do) they would be withheld under seven different FOIA exemptions, which include ongoing law enforcement proceedings and an exemption that could reveal the identity of a confidential source. In my opinion, the FDIC’s use of the Glomar is improper and I intend to appeal the agency’s decision in an effort to get the Glomar lifted and force the FDIC to conduct a search for documents. There are several ways to beat back a Glomar response. One is by demonstrating that the information a requester is seeking has already been publicly released. That I can clearly demonstrate. As I noted in an earlier edition of FOIA Files, in February the Environmental Protection Agency publicly disclosed on its FOIA portal the existence of Opexus’s “data failure” that specifically resulted in FOIA requests being “deleted.” I also obtained documents from the Export-Import Bank of the United States in response to a separate request that laid bare how the data failure at Opexus impacted the FOIA office’s work and led to the disappearance of requests. I’ll keep readers updated on my progress. We’ve come a long way since June 9, 2023, the day Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami and charged with willful retention of national defense secrets, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and four other counts related to hundreds of classified documents he took to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House. (The case was dropped after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.) A few weeks ago, the Secret Service turned over a few dozen pages of documents that I requested a couple of years ago to find out how agents prepared for Trump’s June 13, 2023 arraignment. The documents revolve around the anticipated security threats arising from what a situational awareness report called a “historical event” involving “a former U.S. President attending his criminal arraignment,” the documents show. Most of the pages are heavily redacted, but if you want to play Mad Libs using this cache then imagine you’re the special agent in Miami writing this email to other agents and fill in the blank. The agent closed out their email by instructing colleagues to “Get some sleep and get ready to be apart [sic] of a very unique event.” Got a tip for a document you think I should request via FOIA? Do you have details to share about Opexus or the state of FOIA under the Trump administration? Send me an email: jleopold15@bloomberg.net or jasonleopold@protonmail.com. Or send me a secure message on Signal: @JasonLeopold.666. | 
