On September 26, 2024, The U.S. Department of Justice signed a final settlement which enforces the court order under the Freedom of Information Act issued September 8, 2006, by Judge Paul Friedman of the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. While the DOJ was ordered to start providing the information by November 1, 2006, now nearly 20 years ago, the DOJ appealed Judge Friedman’s decision to the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, and it has taken the DOJ until now to agree to comply.

This will significantly expand the range of data that the DOJ is required to provide TRAC. The settlement also requires them to go back and re-release all previously released data TRAC had obtained over the years so that this new information, where present, is included.

TRAC’s legal efforts to obtain the records from each U.S. Attorney Office resulting in this court victory was only possible with the unwavering, dogged, pro bono assistance of the Public Citizen Litigation Group. It was through the original efforts of their attorneys that the data TRAC has long provided the public on federal criminal enforcement was also obtained. All of this earlier released data on federal criminal enforcement has long been made available on TRAC’s public website at trac.syr.edu and subscription website, tracfed.syr.edu.

New Information to be received: Judge Friedman’s ruling ordered the DOJ to turn over to TRAC various categories of information that it previously has withheld, including the following:

• The name of the suspect if a corporation or business in each recommendation for prosecution by an agency, along with the file name and docket number in filed cases.
  With the limited exception for terrorism program cases:
• The program category for each recommendation by an agency that an individual or business be prosecuted.
• The “lead charge” involved for each recommendation by an agency that an individual or business be prosecuted.

When TRAC receives re-released data containing these additional fields, we will start the task of processing these re-releases so that we can update the data currently available to the public on our websites so that this more inclusive and comprehensive view of federal criminal enforcement over the years will be available to the public. For our current monthly updates, we will add these new features as soon as they start being released and we can process them.

We would welcome contributions to these processing and reprocessing efforts which will be a massive effort. Since we have to be self-sustaining and have no grant funds for these efforts, your contributions will increase our ability to speed the availability of this new and valuable window which these new data provide into federal law enforcement. Please email support@tracreports.org if you would like to contribute.