Biden administration agency sued for concealing records on request for Israel to stand down post-Hamas attack

EXCLUSIVE — The Biden administration is being accused in court of withholding internal records pertaining to a top Palestinian agency’s widely mocked social media post last year that urged Israel not to retaliate against Hamas, according to a complaint.

The State Department-housed Office of Palestinian Affairs came under widespread scrutiny for asking “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks” in an X post as Hamas terrorists raped, murdered, and kidnapped Israelis in the Jewish state on Oct. 7. Now, a nonpartisan watchdog is suing the State Department to unearth the OPA’s communications surrounding this post, as well as more information about its organizational structure that the outside group says is shielded from its website, the Washington Examiner has learned.

“I’m sure the OPA would like to forget tweeting that while the Israelis were still sorting through the carnage, and the Israel Defense Forces was still fighting pockets of terrorists in Southern Israel,” said James Fitzpatrick, director of the Center to Advance Security in America, which filed the complaint on Monday. “But the law doesn’t allow OPA that choice, and ignoring lawful Freedom of Information Act requests just leaves people to wonder if the State Department is hiding something far worse than an ignorant tweet.”

The lawsuit comes as the Biden administration has landed itself in a tough spot on Israel. It has attempted to thread the needle between supporting a key ally and not alienating Jewish Americans, while also catering to the left-wing base in the Democratic Party accusing the Israelis of genocide in Gaza and protesting in support of a ceasefire. The Jerusalem-based OPA was previously called the Palestinian Affairs Unit and was launched in 2022 after President Joe Biden restarted Palestinian aid. The Trump administration cut off the aid over concerns about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s history of antisemitism and ties to terrorism.

OPA Chief George Noll, a longtime State Department diplomat, said upon the office’s 2022 launch that it “operates under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and reports on substantive matters directly to the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau in the State Department.” The office is “focused on engagement with and outreach to the Palestinians,” another State Department official said at the time. The scope of what the OPA actually works on is not entirely clear, but it has posted images on social media of Noll meeting with leaders in Palestinian territories and also shares images of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visits with foreign officials.

To the Center to Advance Security in America, the State Department-housed agency seems to have disclosed very little about its operations and employees. The watchdog group sent a records request on Oct. 30, 2023, requesting “a detailed organizational staff chart” for the OPA and seniority levels for its federal employees.

CASA asked the agency to turn over all “meeting requests, calendar entries, virtual meeting invitations, call logs, and any chats” on platforms related to its controversial Oct. 7 social media post that the OPA later deleted, documents show. The watchdog also asked for the agency’s communications with media outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, and ABC News, on the post, and exchanges between Blinken and other top officials with phrases such as “ceasefire,” “violence,” and “Hamas.”

However, the State Department “has not fulfilled its statutory obligations under FOIA” in connection to the requests and “appears unwilling to do so absent litigation,” CASA argued in the complaint.

The group led by Fitzpatrick, an Army veteran and former Labor Department employee, said in the complaint that the State Department went “silent” over the request. In the eyes of CASA, the release of the information “is in the public interest because it will help the public understand whether the U.S. government is appropriately using taxpayer resources to keep Americans safe,” according to the complaint.

“The department has not produced responsive documents to plaintiff, has not communicated to plaintiff the scope of the documents it intends to produce or withhold — along with the reasons for any such withholding — and has not informed plaintiff of its ability to appeal any adverse portion of its determination,” CASA argued in the complaint.

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“Through the department’s failure to make a determination within the time period required by law, CASA has constructively exhausted its administrative remedies and seeks immediate judicial review,” the group said in the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Dhillon Law Group.

The OPA did not return a request for comment.