FOIAengine Highlights the Latest Media and Watchdog Requests
The latest batch of Freedom of Information Act requests to the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Board offers a window into what journalists, watchdog groups, and political operatives think is worth prying open.
From demands for details on Federal Reserve salaries to inquiries into Treasury’s handling of sanctions, ethics issues, and the idea of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund, the FOIA requests show where scrutiny is headed as fiscal and monetary policy collide with hyperpartisan politics.
The most recent FOIA requests to the Fed and Treasury were just posted to PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows.
Regular readers of this space know that we view FOIA requests to the federal government as signals – important early warning of bad publicity, litigation to come, or uncertainties to be hedged and gamed out. Since there has rarely been a moment when Washington’s fiscal and monetary power centers stood more squarely at center stage – often playing conflicting roles – today we’re featuring bellwether highlights from among the 194 FOIA requests filed with the Fed and Treasury during August. Here’s the rundown:
Sanctions and Secrecy: No arm of the U.S. government wields more financial power abroad than the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which imposes and enforces sanctions on foreign governments and other entities. Anthony Cormier of Bloomberg News filed a request seeking records on sanctions and internal Treasury finances — a potentially explosive area given ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the Trump Administration’s threats to calibrate punishments for adversaries like Russia, Iran, or China. Treasury’s summary of Cormier’s request was cryptic, indicating that the request was for “records concerning sanctions, internal financial stability and stablecoin.”
Paychecks at the Central Bank: Few things draw populist fire like government salaries, and the New York Post homed in on the Federal Reserve itself. The newspaper’s James Franey filed a request for full details of Fed staff compensation packages. Normally cloaked in bureaucratic opacity, such disclosures could stoke headlines about elites in Washington enjoying outsized pay while ordinary Americans face high borrowing costs. The Fed described Franey’s request as seeking “full details of salaries and compensation package[s], includ[ing] other perks such as healthcare [and] travel, for every current Fed governor and the Chair.”
Lisa Cook Controversy: President Trump’s highly publicized efforts to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook – part of a broader effort to put pressure on the Fed regarding its interest‐rate policy – generated numerous FOIA requests in late August as the controversy heated up on its way to a likely Supreme Court showdown. Among the requests were three from Bloomberg’s Gregory Korte, the Associated Press’ Zeke Miller, and prolific Bloomberg requester Jason Leopold.
The AP’s Miller on August 26 sought “copies of Federal Reserve correspondence and records, to include emails and memos, with both internal and external sources in the Fed’s custody relating to President Trump’s comments regarding Lisa Cook, his claimed firing of Lisa Cook, and the Fed’s reaction to those developments. My request includes communications with the White House, Federal Reserve staff and internal reaction to the development.”
Also on August 26, Bloomberg’s Korte sought “the criminal referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte to the Attorney General regarding alleged mortgage fraud by Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, dated August 15, 2025. The referral was attached as Exhibit A to the letter from President Trump to Cook dated August 25, 2025.”
The August 27 request to the Fed by Bloomberg’s Leopold, targeting Trump’s efforts to fire Cook, was far and away the most comprehensive. Among other things, in his lengthy request Leopold asked the Fed to provide “all talking points drafted by the Office of Public Affairs referencing William Pulte or Bill Pulte or Pulte and mortgage fraud” as well as “final legal guidance and final legal opinions referencing the removal of a Federal Reserve Board Commissioner by the President of the United States.”
Another Fed Vacancy: Soon after Fed Governor Adriana Kugler unexpectedly resigned her post amid controversy, Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal filed a request to learn more. Kugler’s departure occurred under an ethics cloud – her spouse purchased stocks in Apple and Cava Group without the required pre-clearance by Fed ethics officials. Trump used the surprise vacancy to put another loyalist on the board of governors by appointing his top economic adviser, Stephen Miran, to replace her. The Senate confirmed Miran in a party line 48-47 vote this week.
The Journal’s Timiraos on August 5 asked the Fed for “all correspondence, written or email, between Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler and any ethics officials on the staff of the board, including but not limited to Sean Croston and Monica Ashar [the Fed’s designated ethics officers], regarding the financial disclosure forms for 2025 submitted by Kugler as part of the annual process of certifying compliance with the FOMC Policy on Investment and Trading as most recently adopted.”
Fed Construction Cost Overruns: Another request by Bloomberg’s Leopold sought to pry into the Trump-incited controversy surrounding the renovation of the Federal Reserve’s Washington headquarters. The topic became a point of political attack after OMB Director Russell Vought raised concerns about mismanagement, alleged extravagance, and cost overruns. Trump floated the idea of firing the Fed Chair Jerome Powell over the issue.
In his lengthy request to the Fed, Leopold on August 18 sought, among other things, “all records referencing the building project that the Federal Reserve Board has turned over to Director of the Office of Personnel Management Russell Vought and any congressional oversight committee in response to their formal requests for documents about the project, [and] emails (including attachments), calendar invites, Microsoft Teams Messages, letters, memos, referencing the building project and allegations of waste, fraud and abuse related to the project.”
Leopold instructed the Fed to “interpret the scope of this request in the most liberal manner possible short of an interpretation that would lead to a conclusion that the request does not reasonably describe the records sought.”
Outside Counsel at Treasury: A request from Reuters’ Mike Scarcella zeroed in on Treasury’s contracts with outside counsel, specifically targeting any contracts between Treasury and outside lawyers that were entered into between April 1 and August 14, 2025. In the past, Treasury has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to hire law firms to handle specialized, complex, or high-volume matters, occasionally leading to controversy and Congressional hearings. The summary provided by Treasury provided no clues about what Scarcella or Reuters might be looking for.
A Sovereign Wealth Fund for the U.S.: A few weeks after Trump became president, he directed the departments of Treasury and Commerce to produce “a plan for establishing a United States sovereign wealth fund,” including funding options, governance, and any needed legislation. That plan has been rolling along, with the White House announcing in May that the departments had developed a plan, but hadn’t finalized anything. Various funding ideas have been floated, including seeding the fund with tariff income or with $1.5 trillion borrowed from the Social Security trust fund. In August, Treasury received two requests seeking to learn more. One request came from Alex Goldstein at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a liberal watchdog group. The other was from Taylor Giorno, with the non-profit News of the U.S., NOTUS for short, a new initiative from Politico founder Bob Allbritton.
So far, no headlines have resulted from the requests above. But in the age of fast-moving news cycles and polarized politics, FOIA logs don’t just catalog paperwork – they map the battle lines of the next set of controversies. Return here for updates.
To see all the requests mentioned in this article, log in or sign up to become a FOIAengine user.
Next week: Highlights from hundreds of just-released FOIA requests to the Federal Trade Commission.
FOIAengine is the only source for the most comprehensive, fully searchable archive of FOIA requests across over 40 federal departments and agencies. FOIAengine has more robust functionality and searching capabilities and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. Learn more about FOIAengine here. Sign up here to become a trial user of FOIAengine.
PoliScio now offers everyone free daily FOIAengine Email Alerts when a new FOIA request matches one of your personal keywords. Sign up here to create your account and identify your keywords.
FOIAengine access now is available for all professional members of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of journalism. IRE is the world’s oldest and largest association of investigative journalists. PoliScio Analytics is proud to be partnering with IRE to provide this valuable content to investigative reporters worldwide.
John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis. His most recent book is The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist. His next book, Summer of ’71, about events before Watergate, will be published in May 2026. Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013. Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller. Learn more about FOIAengine here. To review FOIA requests mentioned in this article, subscribe to FOIAengine.
Write to John A. Jenkins at JAJ@PoliScio.com.
