Biden Administration Tipped Off New York Times To The Federalist’s Request For Transparency

Biden Administration Tipped Off New York Times To The Federalist’s Request For Transparency

  • October 19, 2022

Tristan Justice, The Federalist

If probing collusion between government officials and their allies in the corrupt media counts as trolling, then call me a troll. At least, that’s how Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz described The Federalist’s attempting to use open records laws in a September text to New York Times reporter Coral Davenport last year.

After a source relayed that The New York Times was courting a reluctant Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for an explicitly friendly profile, curiosity led me to request emails between agency staff and the Times through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The results were striking. Emails showed the paper taking direction from administration officials and functioning as a government PR department — especially when compared to how the same reporters covered President Donald Trump.

“The Federalist just FOIAed all communication between us and NYT since Jan. 20,” federal employee Schwartz wrote to the Times’ Davenport in a text on Sept. 29, 2021. “Fun.”

“[Well] they’ll certainly get to the bottom of..something?” Davenport wrote back.

The text message was unearthed in a separate documents request this fall by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), an independent government transparency group that shared the exchange with The Federalist.

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