Insider sues federal government to obtain names

Insider Inc. is suing the Biden administration to obtain the names of staffers who have this year earned taxpayer-funded paychecks while working for former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, reports Dave Levinthal of Insider.

Levinthal writes, “In response to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests from Insider senior correspondent Robin Bravender, the General Services Administration released the names of some staffers who continued to work for Trump and Pence aides, including Trump aides Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino.

“The General Services Administration also revealed that several Pence aides, including his former chief of staff Marc Short and former director of strategic initiatives Paul Teller, stayed on the former vice president’s team.

“But GSA withheld the names of five Trump employees and four Pence employees who worked on the transition, citing a privacy exemption. The agency denied Insider’s administrative appeals of this decision, saying that ‘disclosure of the names would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy’ of the Trump and Pence staffers.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.