| On Discover
Merger Fed Ex Parte Met
Capital One Redacted
FOIA Docs Now Appeal
Filed
by
Matthew R. Lee
SOUTH
BRONX, March
6 – Before Capital One
announced and applied to buy
Discover, they and their law
firm were allowed to meet
secretly with the Federal
Reserve.
After they
applied late March 20,
Inner City Press submitted a
Freedom of Information Act
request to the Fed. While they
granted expedited treatment,
they delayed nearly a near
before on March 4 dumping over
1000 redacted pages.
These
begin with ex parte meetings
between the bank, its law firm
and the Fed - telephone calls
in February 2024, and a
meeting inside the Fed on
March 7, 2024 (the Fed waited
until March 4, 2025 to
disclose this). 1000 page on
Inner City Press'
DocumentCloud here.
200+ more pages here.
FOIA determination letter here
Inner City Press
has filed a FOIA appeal to the
Federal Reserve including that
"the records are heavily
redacted. On this proposed
merger in which antitrust harm
to consumers is a major issue,
the Board has withheld in full
for example so-called
'Confidential Exhibit B
Additional Information on
Competitive Impact.'
In the second
file the Board provided on
March 4, 2025, pages 119 to
201 are redacted in
full.
FOIA expressly mandates that
any "reasonably segregable
portion" of a record must be
disclosed to a requester after
the redaction - 5 U.S.C. §
552(b). And see, PHE, Inc. v.
Dep’t. of Justice, 983 F.2d
248,252. Likewise, from the
communications between Federal
Reserve staff and
representatives of the bank(s)
there are redactions we are
challenging on appeal. As
simply one example, FRB
attorney Lucy Chang received
an email from Capital One's
outside counsel on March 22,
2024, before public
announcement of the merger
proposal - after "thanks for
getting back to me," an entire
paragraph is redacted. In the
same chain, "the vmail I left
you next week [REDACTED]."
These should all be reviewed
on appeal.
On March 3, days
after the CFPB dropped its
lawsuit against Capital One,
the OCC suddenly declared
Capital One "Outstanding"
under the Community
Reinvestment Act. Who's in
the OCC's and Fed's
wallet, now?
***
Your
support means a lot. As little as $5 a month
helps keep us going and grants you access to
exclusive bonus material on our Patreon
page. Click
here to become a patron.
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
SDNY Press Room 480, front cubicle
500 Pearl Street, NY NY 10007 USA
Mail: Box 20047, Dag
Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other, earlier Inner City Press are
listed here,
and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2024 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com
|
,
