On September 30, 2016, CfA called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to improve its ethics enforcement program. Documents published by the Google Transparency Project reveal that top NHTSA officials were in frequent contact with Google executives while working on federal guidelines for self-driving cars.
On September 26, 2016, 37 organizations signed an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging McConnell to reject any poison pill language in budget legislation that would prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from strengthening corporate disclosure laws by requiring transparency of secret political spending.
On September 19, 2016, CfA sent a letter to Sen. Robert P. Corker (R-TN) asking him to recuse himself from the hearing scheduled by the Senate Banking Committee for Tuesday, September 20.
On September 15, 2016, CfA sent a second letter to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting an investigation of Donald Trump for failing to accurately disclose his finances in connection with his presidential campaign. CfA’s new letter follows Newsweek’s revelations that Trump failed to disclose receiving millions of dollars from his extensive contractual relationships with overseas businesses. In August, CfA called on DOJ to investigate Trump for apparently vastly overstating the value of his golf course empire on his financial disclosure forms.
Following more than two months of stalling by the Utah Commission for the Stewardship of Public Lands, CfA formally requested that the commission immediately release the findings of its internal investigation into abuse of taxpayer funds by attorneys and consultants the commission hired to study the feasibility of forcing the federal government to relinquish 31 million acres of Utah’s public land.
On September 13, 2016, CfA called on the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate leaks by the FBI regarding the identity of Paul Combetta, a witness in the investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address.
On August 30, 2016, CfA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section requesting an investigation of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for filing apparently inaccurate financial disclosure reports for 2015 and 2016.
On July 19, 2016, CfA released a new report, Google’s Silicon Tower, revealing how academics and experts funded by Google have played a major role at academic and government conferences, debating some of the company’s core issues. Nearly all of the Google-funded participants failed to disclose their financial ties to Google, now a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc.
On July 15, 2016, CfA Executive Director Anne Weismann issued a statement in response to the Department of Defense’s refusal to investigate Secretary Ashton Carter for misusing his private email account.
On July 14, 2016, CfA released a new report, Documenting Discrimination, uncovering how national right wing religious groups – working through smaller local groups – are spearheading the movement to legalize discrimination against LGBT individuals through Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) legislation.