Whether the failure of an agency to respond to a FOIA request violates due process

QUESTIONS PRESENTED “On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, the President[, Barack Obama,] issued a memorandum to all executive departments and agencies emphasizing that the FOIA reflects a ‘profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government”, Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, “President Obama’s FOIA Memorandum and Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines,” DoJ, July 23, 2014, calling for “federal executive departments and , agencies to administer the FOJA with ‘a clear presumption: [i]n the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Id. : According to (DoJ), President Obama “directed departments and agencies not to withhold information ‘merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears”, Ibid., and “[h]e instructed agencies to respond to requests ‘promptly and in a spirit of cooperation.” Id. (citations omitted). He “further directed agencies to adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure with | regard to all FOIA decisions”, Ibid., and “[t]hat presumption requires agencies to proactively release records, without waiting for specific requests, and use technology to inform citizens ‘about what is known and done by their [g]overnment.” Ibid. The FOIA is central to the matter raised, in assignments of error, on appeal, and, since [i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”, U.S. v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), presenting the following questions: I. Whether, given “the accepted rule that a complaint should not be dismissed for -ii N failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief’, as articulated in Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41 (1957), it constitutes a violation of due process, under the Fifth Amendment, when an agency fails to respond, in any manner, to a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552/Privacy Act (PA), 5 U.S.C. § 552a. II. Whether, under Fed.R.Civ.Pro. 8, the guidance that “all the Rules require is ‘a short and plain statement of the claim’ [footnote omitted] that will give the defendant fair notice of what the plaintiffs claim is and the grounds upon which it rests”, Id. (citing Fed.R.Civ.Pro. 8(a)(2)), imposes a limit upon the extent to which an unrepresented plaintiff may articulate allegations in his or her claim. III. Whether a Trial Court, in abuse of discretion, offends Fed.R.Civ.Pro. 8(f)’s mandate that “all pleadings shall be so construed as to do substantial justice,” where, granted priority of action, under statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1657, and where ‘ granted a specific right to “to enjoin the agency from withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant”, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B), having been acknowledged to have been “deemed to have exhausted his administrative remedies with respect to such request if the agency fails to comply with the applicable time limit provisions of this paragraph”, 5 U.S.C. § 552 (6)(C)(i), by dismissing said complaint. IV.Whether, under Fed.R.Crim.Pro. 6(a), which provides, in relevant part that “the court must order that one or more grand juries be summoned’, it is sufficiently in -iii the public interest, where a court is presented a prima facie case for commission of a felony, precluding prosecutorial discretion. PARTIES AND