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?
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