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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

JustSecurity posts Trump Trials Clearinghouse

This is incredibly helpful! The Site JustSecurity, at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, has just created the Trump Trials Clearinghouse to track on the large number of criminal and civil cases in which the former president is a defendant. The site includes a calendar as well as court proceedings, key statutes, relevant government documents and correspondence, JustSecurity analysis and more for each pending case. The repository will continue to be updated as events occur.

JustSecurity is “an online forum for the rigorous analysis of security, democracy, foreign policy, and rights.”

Former President Donald Trump is a defendant in a sizable number of criminal and civil cases. To help readers parse through these complex legal developments, we have centralized information on Trump’s major cases in the most comprehensive clearinghouse of its kind. Below you will find links to relevant court proceedings, key statutes, government documents, and defense documents – as well as Just Security resources and analysis, media and other guides.

We will continue updating this page with new information as the trials develop. We hope this repository of information will be useful for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large.

If you think the Trump Trials Clearinghouse is missing something important, please send recommendations for additional content by email to lte@justsecurity.org.

Happy 2023! The state of government information in 2023

Happy new year 2023! We hope all our readers had a relaxing holiday break and are ready to get back to the important work of preserving government information and assuring its long-term access!

In the latest First Branch Forecast — you really should subscribe to this important newsletter if you haven’t already! — a side comment about the findings of the January 6th Committee caught our attention. In discussing the release of the COmmittee’s final reports, as well as the many witness transcripts, Daniel Schuman noted “We’re linking to the PDF on the Wayback Machine because the Committee’s website will be toast in early January.”

This is the troubling reality we find ourselves in. Digital government information turns out to be extremely fragile and reliant on the political winds of Washington DC. The Government Publishing Office (GPO) captured the committee’s final report and various hearings (though NOT the various witness testimony transcripts that the committee has released to its website (of which I’m also linking to the Wayback Machine!)), the final report has already been published by a private company (in this case the New Yorker and Celadon Books), and the report will no doubt be be saved by Library of Congress, NARA, and various libraries around the country. But each of those will have their own URL rather than the official URL from the actual committee that did the work. It would be amazing if there were a system of permanent URLs (called PIDs) that stay permanent and point to all the copies in the same way that DOIs work for journal articles. I and many of my depository library colleagues are working hard on putting a system like this in place for US government information. It was one of FGI’s resolutions for 2020 and I’ve been busy working on the Depository Library Council (DLC) Working Group Exploring the Durability of PURLs and Their Alternatives (charge). The working group is finishing up its work and will soon release its final report and recommendations.

Let’s hope that 2023 is the year that electronic government information is collected, preserved, and made easily accessible for the public!

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