News round-up of American Oversight's FOIAs, lawsuits, and new records, including records related to Charlottesville, family separation, and references to immigrants detained at the border as #CatchOfTheDay on social media.

Records obtained by American Oversight provide a behind-the-scenes look at the administration’s attempt to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), including emails rife with miscommunication, poor coordination, and tension between Congress and the Office of the United States Trade Representative

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s position at the Department of Justice continues to draw scrutiny from both Congress and watchdog groups, as does that of Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski, who previously represented the Russian entity Alfa Bank and has been screened off from the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference.

On Tuesday, American Oversight filed multiple lawsuits regarding the development and implementation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.

Updated November 30, 2018. This week, the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) circulated troubling new Hatch Act guidance about the type of activity permitted for federal employees.

After last week’s Washington Post report that Ivanka Trump used a personal email account for official business on hundreds of occasions, American Oversight is continuing its investigation not just into the extent to which the president’s daughter and senior adviser violated records rules, but also into whether such risky actions extended to other officials within Trump’s cabinet.

Update: The Office of Special Counsel has opened a case file in response to American Oversight's call for an investigation into Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker's potential Hatch Act violations. American Oversight wrote to multiple federal offices requesting investigations of Whitaker.

American Oversight today sued six federal agencies to uncover the extent of Jared Kushner's use of personal email for official governmental business. The suit comes the same week as news broke that his wife, Ivanka Trump, used personal email to conduct White House business on hundreds of occasions in 2017 — which White House officials only discovered when a May 2017 lawsuit filed by American Oversight sparked an internal review.

On Tuesday, American Oversight obtained and posted Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker’s financial disclosure forms after we demanded the release of the forms last week.