Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has sued the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for allegedly failing to respond to his request for information about the classified documents lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.
Ramaswamy announced on Twitter (now known as X), and the complaint was filed in the district court in Columbia on August 1.
The 2024 Republican presidential candidate claimed that the Department of Justice did not provide a substantive response to his FOIA request seeking information about what President Joe Biden and other White House officials said to Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith before the unprecedented indictment of a former U.S. President and one of Biden’s political opponents in the classified documents case.
The biotech businessman has stated that he will be submitting a fresh FOIA records request for more information on communications of a similar nature pertaining to the recently filed indictment against Trump.
A grand jury appointed by special counsel Smith on Tuesday accused Trump in a 45-page indictment of obstruction of justice for allegedly conspiring with others to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
Trump was indicted on charges of conspiring to obstruct a congressional hearing on January 6 and attempting to obstruct and impede the certification of electoral votes.
Trump is also facing charges of conspiring to defraud the United States and violate the rights of American individuals.
In addition to the defendants, the indictment names six alleged conspirators, four of whom are lawyers and one of whom was an official at the Department of Justice.
The indictment against the ex-president recognizes the constitutional rights of all citizens, including Trump’s, to freely discuss an election and even to assert that he was the victor.
According to the indictment, Trump claimed he had the right to contest the election results formally.
But the indictment states that Trump knew his claims about winning were false. Still, he repeated and published them anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of elections.
According to the prosecution, Trump also attempted to influence the election results by discrediting legitimate votes through illegal tactics.
President Trump is the clear frontrunner in the race for the White House in 2024. His campaign has characterized the new indictment as the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the election.
In his extensive X post, Ramaswamy argued that the legal basis behind the indictment of Trump was novel. He cited the Supreme Court decision U.S. v. Alvarez, in which the court ruled that candidates for public office are protected by the First Amendment even when they intentionally make false assertions.
It should not be founded on novel legal theory, Ramaswamy argued, if a former president and major presidential candidate will be indicted. It’s also a stretch to say that someone committed a crime if they went to their own lawyers for advice.
Ramaswamy went on to say that by designating Trump’s lawyers as co-conspirators for offering him legal advice, Jack Smith had set a dangerous precedent. The future of the American judicial system is at stake.
Ramaswamy reportedly vowed to pardon the former president if he were elected, as stated in the complaint he filed with the DOJ on June 12, 2023, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.