DOJ sued to release documents on Michael Hastings following his death
A journalist and a researcher have sued the Justice Department for access to the FBI records on the late journalist Michael Hastings.
The lawsuit follows the FBI’s failure to respond to separate Freedom of Information Act requests for records on Hastings submitted by journalist Jason Leopold of al-Jazeera and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Ryan Shapiro.
Agencies are required by statute to notify applicants about whether it will fulfill their requests within a 20-working-day period of the initial application.
LAPD reported his death an accident. More details here
screenshot photo Michael Hastings CNN appearance
Moments before Hastings emailed Wikileaks’ lawyer Jennifer Robinson that he was being investigated by the federal government and notified colleagues that federal officials were interviewing his “close friends and associates.”
Leopold, a personal friend of Hastings, wrote in a piece published on the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s website that a government investigation into Hastings would not be a surprise.
“Given the nature of Hastings’s investigative work and the revelations that have surfaced about the government’s interest in journalists’ sources it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if some agency was looking into Hastings’s journalistic activities,” said Leopold
The lawsuit was filed on July 26. Leopold told the Daily Caller on Monday afternoon that the FBI “has not responded yet.”
