FOIA Lawsuit Seeks Information Withheld on Texas Church Shooting Perp

Devin Kelley Prohibited Person
What else did the government know about him? Why don’t they want to share it?

USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “Today we filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice and the Department of the Air Force for records pertaining to Devin Patrick Kelley,” Stamboulieh Law, PLLC announced Monday. The complaint is a response to government refusal to provide documents that are “releaseable for a deceased individual” after the FBI “unexpectedly… clamped down on the court martial transcripts.

“The question is…. why?” the announcement continues. “It is most likely undisputed that Kelley was a prohibited person that bought firearms when he shouldn’t have been able to, but why keep the underlying information secret?”

As a matter of necessary disclosure, I am the plaintiff in this action, and have written about or joined with attorney Stephen Stamboulieh in other ventures documented in this link. While the preferred course would have been compliance with the FOIA request, all Americans, and gun owners in particular, have a right to full and complete disclosure of all records to which we are legally entitled. That’s especially true when the Sutherland Springs killings are currently being exploited in order to advance more gun legislation and to gin up public support to go even further. Representative sentiments from prominent “gun control” proponents include:

Add to that innumerable editorials and statements from primarily Democrat politicians, and the target of much of their wrath, the National Rifle Association, along with the National Shooting Sports Foundation, offering up “FixNICS” as a palatable “solution” for Republicans to back.

Gun owners have a vested interest in seeing the extent of what government already knew about Kelley yet failed to act on. In the face of resistance to our request, we are compelled to make the seriousness of that expectation known in no uncertain terms.

A “compiled for law enforcement purposes” deferment hardly seems necessary or reasonable with the killer dead, and suggests some other motive for not releasing requested documents.

You can read the complaint and see attachments associated with it here. Updates to the progress of this effort will be posted as warranted on the Stamboulieh Law website.


About David Codrea:David Codrea

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.

In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

7 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
JTT

All organisms have one primary goal and that’s to perpetuate their species. Be it a coyote, skunk, human, bacteria or virus. Someone higher up is seeking to protect the organism or the system. But bad bugs need to get found out and squashed under foot. Good luck. As the old saying goes. “The King may wear the crown but the underlings run the kingdom”. Think Trump vs Deep State.

Alan

Long story made short. A government agency, in this case The U.S. Airforce blew it here, and they blew it badly. I suspect that, somewhere along the line, some suitably low level “rollable” head will be found, and that will be that, or so it is hoped. As for the organized shriekers mentioned, Freedom Of Speech comes into play. Of course, the attention these organizations garner is another question, in my opinion, they are deserving of no attention at all.. As for this FOIA request, the end result thereof might well make interesting reading, assuming that the end result is… Read more »

Tionico

My strong conviction is that there are some military brass that don’t want egg on their faces… scrambled eggs, that is. During the most recent kinyun administration, sloppiness, inattention to discipline, and non-military agendae were the norm. Concepts such as “inclusion”, “non-discrimination”, “fairness” tended to trump taking care of required details, such as reporting a misbehaving member of the military to the appropriate civilian authorities when required by law. Now the failure of milititary discipline (doing what you are required to do, and appropriate consequences for failure to do so) has led directly to the deaths of many innocents, a… Read more »

tomcat

David, thank you for taking this to task for the benefit of gun owners. I’m sure many of us did not think about a counter to the anti gun attackers. Maybe the government screw up is deeper than originally reported. It will be interesting to see what develops. Throwing more money at NICS probably won’t fix it.

diamondearthday1957

While I will thank you for your efforts your title cannot be true until validated by the FOIA request

The first word should have been WAS. Was this man prohibited? I may have missed something and if I did forgive me.

Woody W Woodward

I happened to notice a rather interesting footnote on the Department of the Air Force’s 1 Dec 17 reply to your FOIA request – – “BREAKING BARRIERS … SINCE 1947”. I’m thinking that they could add … “& ESTABLISHING BARRIERS FOR THE SAME TIME PERIOD”. This just adds more evidence to the prevailing belief that government doesn’t really protect people – – Government protects government. We The People are on our own.
[W3]

Vanns40

Thanks for this. Sunlight is always good. I look forward to reading the reply to the FOIA.