DOVER, Del. (Legal Newsline) - A judge upheld the University of Delaware’s refusal to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for papers President Joseph Biden donated to his alma mater, finding the school had provided sufficient evidence to conclude they weren’t purchased or stored with state funds.
Biden donated his Senate papers, including 1,850 boxes of archival records and 415 gigabytes of data, to the school in 2012 under an agreement to keep them from public view until two years after he “retires from public life.” Judicial Watch and the nonprofit foundation that owns the Daily Caller news site filed FOIA requests with the University of Delaware for the documents in April 2020.
A lower court rejected the FOIA request but the Delaware Supreme Court revived the case last year, ruling the University of Delaware must explain how and why it rejected the request, including a statement under oath that state funds weren’t involved. It remanded the case to Delaware Superior Court for further consideration.
The University of Delaware filed a Feb. 3 affidavit by Jennifer M. Becnel-Guzzo, the school’s FOIA coordinator, which the Superior Court found lacking in a March 7 opinion. The judge gave the University of Delaware 45 days to submit, under oath, answers to questions including whether any salaries associated with the papers were paid with state funds and whether the state paid for the university email system used to communicate between the school and Biden representatives.
Becnel-Guzzo followed up with an affidavit saying she had “responded to numerous FOIA requests” over the years involving the school’s relationship with Biden. To process those requests, she said she had questioned the university’s budget director, Lionel Gilibert; and the vice provost of libraries and museums, Trevor Dawes, and was told state funds were not used to pay Biden for his papers or to hold and curate them.
In an Oct. 19 decision, Superior Court Judge Mary M. Johnston found the explanation sufficient.
“The requested information is not subject to FOIA,” she concluded.