I'm sure to be too wordy with this, so I'll be sure to include direct links to the info where I have it.
On January 15, 2013, Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit with the Supreme Court of the New York requesting that the office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg be ordered to produce all records of communications between the Office of the Mayor, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), and Vice President Joe Biden. The FOIL suit also requested that the mayor’s office be required to produce records of a January 9, 2013, meeting attended by MAIG representatives, Biden, and Attorney General Eric Holder. Here's the original FOIL request: http://www.scribd.com/doc/125669065/1978-NYC-req.
One interesting thing is the timing of the response...or lack thereof. Remember that 2013 was the last year of Bloomberg's term as mayor of New York. The Office of the Mayor (Respondent) signed for the request on January 22, 2013. Pursuant to the New York law, the Respondent was required to state the approximate date would be granted or denied within five business days.Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton wrote:We have good reason to suspect that New York taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun group. We have records showing that other municipalities also foot part of his anti-gun lobbying efforts. And it is well past time for the public to have a full accounting from Mayor Bloomberg about MAIG taxpayer-funded activities. Giving the document cover-up, it looks like Mayor Bloomberg has something to hide.
The Office of the Mayor didn't respond until March 8, and that letter said it expected to respond in 20 days as to the status.
There was no response by June 12, and Judicial Watch filed an appeal. On June 26 Judicial Watch received a letter from the Office of the Mayor saying two of the three requests contained in the petition would receive "a determination in approximately two months." The biggie in the petition--the request for any and all records of communication between Bloomberg and/or his chief advisor with the director of MAIG--was dodged in this response saying that the request was "not reasonably described." The request was modified on July 10.
Here's a July 22 update bulletin from Judicial Watch.
Fast forward to October 3, 2013. Still no response from the Office of the Mayor, not even a response as to whether it would grant or deny access to the requested information. Judicial Watch didn't cave. It filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court of New York. I've saved a PDF copy of this petition, which contains the history of the FOIL request, to my server; it's 788K and you can access it at http://tacticsandtraining.com/TXCHL/MAI ... tition.pdf. Here's an October 10 synopsis update from Judicial Watch.
Under threat of the lawsuit filed with the Supreme Court of New York, and fully understanding that it had already broken the law by its denial of response and, ergo, knew that it had no defense in the Supreme Court lawsuit, the Office of the Mayor finally decided to provide the requested documents...almost one year after the initial petition. Data for items number two and three, which did not involve MAIG, were provided November 22, 2013.
Item number one, which expressly involved MAIG, was answered on December 20, a grand total of 11 days before Bloomberg left office. If Christmas vacations hadn't been pending, my bet is that they would have stalled even longer.
This response to item number one consists of 547 pages--primarily email records--and is stored in a very large PDF file (24MB). If you would like to review or download the file, it's available here: http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content ... sponse.pdf (if for any reason that link becomes invalid, let me know; I've uploaded a copy to my server). It's a very interesting insight into anti-gun strategies and tactics.
In addition, it's a record of what may very well be illegal activities of Bloomberg and MAIG. But I doubt any of you are surprised at that.
The Blaze article supplies a good snapshot, but here are some comments.
Evidently, New York City employees--high ranking employees with significant salaries--spent significant time on the taxpayers' payroll actually performing MAIG functions and operations. Feinblatt has the most significant audit trail in the FOIL response, but other public employees are in there, as well. It looks almost indisputable that billionaire Bloomberg used taxpayer-funded public employees to work for MAIG.John Feinblatt, chief adviser to Mayor Bloomberg for policy and strategic planning and the criminal justice coordinator wrote:I must have some metrics. [Feinblatt wrote on December 22, 2012, days after MAIG tried to maximize the political impact of the Newtown shooting] We are pouring money into this effort and I can’t answer the most basic questions--money raised, petitions sent, names acquired, etc. There is no sure recipe for the money drying up than to be caught empty handed when asked how are we performing.
On the day of the Newtown shooting, Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, emailed Feinblatt suggesting Bloomberg should stay "ahead of Congress, the White house, the press." He suggested Bloomberg should meet with Obama and Biden and "possibly bringing survivors with him."
Infighting between MAIG and the Brady Bunch is almost humorous...except for their shared mission to destroy the Bill of Rights.
Glaze became angry when he learned that the Brady Bunch was recruiting some of the same Hollywood celebrities for "public service announcements." Only two days after the Newtown massacre:
Brady president Daniel Gross responded:Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns wrote:Dan--if true that you are attempting to intervene in the work we are doing with celebrities on Demand A Plan [demandaplan.org] and drive them toward Brady: don't.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, in light of the Newtown incident, supported arming school principles and teachers. In an email December 18, 2012, referring to McDonnell, Feinblatt said to Glaze: "Need to hit him." Glaze responded: "We are. The sound of a political career dying."Daniel Gross, President, Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence wrote:Making our schools and communities safer is the only thing on our mind versus our misplaced focus on strange e-mails and threats. Bottom line is, some people are coming to Brady to engage, some people are coming to MAIG and some are coming to both. What’s most important is that they’re engaging at this most critical moment, to crated [sic] the change we all seek.
In the same email, the MAIG director suggested including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the pile-on-Newtown gun control effort. "He’ll be in town on Monday--and if not invited to join us, doubly snubbed. Should figure out how to finesse that."
- Since 2008, Mayors Against Illegal Guns has spent a total of $1,280,000 on federal lobbyists. That excludes $580,000 of in-house lobbying expenses for the organization in 2013 (the first year they reported any such expenditures). The total (in-house and out-sourced) lobbying expenses are $1,860,000 since 2008.
- Since 2009, MAIG's primary lobbying firm has been The Raben Group, founded and led by former Clinton Assistant Attorney General Robert Raben.
- Through the United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund, MAIG has paid for regional coordinators to be employed in mayors' offices throughout the country, including Minneapolis, Columbus, Lewiston, Reading, and Seattle.
- In 2010, MAIG provided grants totaling more than $371,000, and at least $346,000 in 2011 to fund these positions. The positions, however, are not cost-neutral for the municipalities in which coordinators are installed. The funding includes a matching requirement that the recipient of the award funds will be required to pay for all fringe benefits provided to the Regional Coordinator and any salary paid to the Region: a minimum of $717,000 over 2010 and 2011.
Where is the media outrage that Michael Bloomberg abused the authority of his office, perhaps illegally and prosecutable, to promote his personal agenda of gun control?
He is no longer mayor of New York, but he is still a billionaire. And his nanny-state mentality will never end.
He remains a major threat to our Second Amendment rights.
