The U.S. government today filed its motion for summary judgment in Muchnick v. Department of Homeland Security — my lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to force the public release of George Gibney’s American immigration records.
Accompanying the brief is a 27-page document known as a “Vaughn Index,” which lists withheld documents and explains the defendant’s claims of privacy exemptions for them under FOIA. The Vaughn Index shows that of the 40 Gibney documents remaining in dispute (totaling 82 pages), at least five of the documents (covering a total of eight pages) are law enforcement records.
The original 50 documents and 98 pages were whittled down in pre-motion negotiations between my attorney, Roy S. Gordet, and the U.S. attorney’s office. The parties also set a briefing and oral argument schedule for both the government’s motion for summary judgment and our own competing motion for summary judgment. The latter is currently slated to be filed next month.
I’ve uploaded the Vaughn Index at http://muchnick.net/vaughnindex.pdf. Highlights:
My original FOIA request to Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had resulted in the production of a 102-page Gibney file — 98 pages of which were withheld in their entirety by the government on various privacy grounds. The four pages that the government did produce, a printout from a child watch group chronicling the sexual abuse allegations against Gibney on two continents, can be viewed at http://muchnick.net/gibneychildwatch.pdf.