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Fox News exclusively obtained the letter AFL sent to the administration requesting documents pertaining to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, which Biden created in April to study issues including possibly expanding the number of justices on the court. AFL says the documents should already have been made public.
AFL vice president Gene Hamilton told Fox News Thursday that the conservative organization has been working to make sure that the administration is not using the Supreme Court commission to push a predetermined political agenda.
“America First Legal is working to ensure that amid all the promises of transparency and the rhetoric of ‘wanting to just consider the issue’ that the political leadership of the White House has not predetermined the outcome – and is just using the commission as a pretext – to accomplish its political goals,” Hamilton said.
“This is too important of a matter to be conducted in secret, behind closed doors,” he continued. “The Biden administration must be fully transparent with this entire process.”
In the letter, the conservative legal group pointed out that, under the law giving the president the ability to create commissions, the involved documents “shall be available for public inspection and copying at a single location in the offices of the advisory committee or the agency to which the advisory committee reports until the advisory committee ceases to exist.”
The letter also highlighted the General Services Administration’s (GSA) guidance regarding the law that says it is to “provide a meaningful opportunity to fully comprehend” the committee’s work.
“We are therefore requesting an opportunity [to] inspect the Commission’s records as provided for in Section 10(b). We would like to inspect, at a minimum, the following records and documents,” the letter read.
The list of documents includes records “of all drafts of any reports or sections of any reports” as well as “all drafts of any reports or sections of any reports which were made available to or prepared for or by any Commissioner or Commissioners.”
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Additionally, the group called on the White House to make available records “of all resolutions proposed or adopted by the Commission or any committee of the Commission” and those “of all communications, including, but not limited to, electronic mail, texts, memoranda, and handwritten notes, relating to the Commission’s work.”
In response to the AFL letter, executive spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a Thursday email, “What is America First Legal?”
Houston Keene is a reporter for Fox News Digital. You can find him on Twitter at @HoustonKeene.
