How attorney Gunita Singh is fighting to keep the government accountable
Bookmakers have put the chances of President Trump being impeached before 2020 at pretty much even. The odds of the Senate trying him are decidedly longer. But attorney Gunita Singh believes she can prove he acted unconstitutionally.
In early 2018, Singh (’12, CAS’14) helped reveal what she says are “violations of the domestic emoluments clause of the constitution”: travel receipts and expense documents showing government agencies filling the coffers of Trump hotels. “I can guarantee you,” says Singh, a staff attorney at the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Property of the People, “that these receipts and documents are likely to feature very prominently in any articles of impeachment.” Trump, she says, is in breach of Article II, Section I, Clause 7 of the Constitution, which says the president “shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States.”
At Property of the People, Singh is a member of a group of activists and attorneys dedicated to helping journalists and activists access government records, what the organization calls “the aggressive pursuit of governmental transparency in the service of democracy.”
Singh is an expert in filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, writing complaints against noncompliant agencies, and assisting in litigation aimed at prizing documents from the government. According to Singh, Property of the People has filed 635 FOIA requests since opening its doors on November 9, 2016, the day after election day; 500 are still outstanding and 35 are moving through the courts.
The Trump hotels case began in June 2017 when Property of the People made an initial request for Department of Defense travel expense information. Silence followed. “An agency has 20 working days to tell the requestor whether they’re going to provide the requested documents,” says Singh. “It rarely works that efficiently.”
In December, Singh and her colleagues decided to up the pressure: They filed suit in court demanding the records be handed over. The group soon received 369 pages of travel documents and receipts. By March 2018, its findings were making headlines: “Defense Department employees charged just over $138,000 at Trump branded properties in the first eight months of Donald Trump’s presidency,” reported CNN, citing the records Property of the People unearthed.
“Repeatedly, our FOIA litigation has revealed blatant financial conflicts of interest resulting in the transfer of taxpayer dollars to Trump properties and likely constitutional violations,” Singh told Gizmodo.
Collegian spoke with Singh about holding the government to account and what information she’s going after next.
What are you working on at the moment?
Singh: I am in the process of retrieving every single résumé and position description for every single Trump appointee. We have submitted over 100 FOIA requests to 63 government agencies. We’re working in conjunction with ProPublica on this and they’re making sure these are all text searchable, organizing them in a really user-friendly way, compiling all of the data.
One of the biggest trends is the prevalence with which we’re seeing the appointees having previously worked on Trump’s campaign; it seems to be the number one requirement more than tangible qualifications, skills, and experience.
Wouldn’t it be natural for President Trump to appoint those people? He’s worked with them before, he trusts them, they support his views.
I think that soon with the Mueller investigation, for example, we’re going to see—with an astounding degree of abundance in terms of the materials coming out—how far these individuals have gone to serve their own interests at the expense of our democracy. I do think it is important to make sure we’re holding the administration accountable, because even prior to the [presidential] election, I think it’s been clear that the interests of the citizens took a back seat to filling their own pockets.
You don’t hold back in your statements to the press: “In the White House sits a con artist and Womanizer in Chief” and “we fully intend to aggressively continue our FOIA work exposing kleptocracy at the highest reaches of government.” Do you worry some will see your efforts as politically motivated and dismiss them?
I’m not terribly concerned about that because I am very comfortable in my opinions and I like to think that my opinions are well-founded and well-researched. Regardless of who’s in power and regardless of what party controls the current administration, I think that there’s always going to be a need for people holding the government accountable and keeping it transparent.
For example, President Obama denied more Freedom of Information Act requests on national security grounds than any president before him. Thomas Jefferson [supposedly] said, “Information is the currency of democracy.” I love that so much, and that’s going to motivate me regardless of who is in power, but I do see an even more pressing need with President Trump in power just because of his hostility to the media and his conflicts of interest.
How tough is it to pry information out of the government?
Under the Freedom of Information Act, there’s what’s called a presumption in favor of disclosure. And this is a presumption that’s developed over decades of case law. That means that government records are presumed disclosable unless an exemption applies; disclosure is the default. That said, we still see agencies brazenly and inconsistently withholding documents, redacting documents all the time, which makes it all the more important for groups like Property of the People to be vigilant.
We’re in something of a post-facts age where someone who doesn’t like a fact can just deny it or call it fake news. Have you come across that, and how do you respond?
I’m a big fan of going directly to the source to get raw information and then providing it to people so they can form their own conclusions. We post every single document we get on our website. I feel like if I get a document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that says former deputy assistant director of the FBI John Lewis stated that animal rights activists pose a serious domestic terrorism threat, that’s not me saying it, it is former assistant director John Lewis. If someone sees that on paper, then they can come to their own conclusions about whether that’s a correct designation or whether that seems kind of preposterous.
Watch Singh talk about her work with RJ Eskow on The Zero Hour. The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow
Scandals seem to bounce off our current president, at least as far as he and his supporters are concerned. Does it sometimes make you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle?
There is a lot of darkness and there seems to be still so much apathy and corruption, but it is very heartening to be able to get tangible pieces of evidence, for example, of domestic emoluments laws violations. If impeachment is on the table, this tangible violation is going to be one of the things that actually makes impeachment a reality. The fact that I’m able to play a role in exposing a constitutional violation actually does give me a lot of hope, so I think it’s helping me to stay positive.
What are the next things you have in your sights?
We’re continuing to get access to the White House visitor logs. Every quarter, we’re submitting requests to the agencies within the executive office of the president: Office of Management and Budget, Council on Environmental Quality, and a couple others. We’re trying to figure out who is visiting these agencies and on what types of business. We see a lot of stuff about the revolving door and the often incestuous relationships between government and business, and we want to make sure we’re keeping tabs on who is visiting the executive office of the president.
We’re also doing a lot of work on what’s called the 1033 Program, which is a military surplus program wherein the Department of Defense is donating their surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. I’m looking forward to seeing what sorts of accountability mechanisms are in place, either on the federal end or the local end, to make sure that this military equipment, which is designed for warfare, is being used for the right reasons, but also ensuring that an abuse of power doesn’t take place.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.