SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 7 – The Office
of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul spent more than a
year as a co-plaintiff with the U.S. Department of Justice
in the antitrust case against Live Nation and
Ticketmaster, tried the case to an April 15, 2026 jury
verdict before Judge Subramanian in the Southern District
of New York, and issued press releases about fighting for
consumers against the ticketing monopoly.
But when Inner City Press, which covered
that trial daily, asked under Illinois's Freedom of
Information Act for the office's records about the case —
including about the settlement that six other plaintiff
states signed and Illinois declined, the proposed Final
Judgment, and the Tunney Act public comment process — the
Raoul office's answer was a study in having it both ways.
Their filings on Inner City Press' DocumentCloud here
For four core categories, it said, no
records exist at all. Not one email with the settling
states about the settlement terms. Not one communication
with DOJ about the Competitive Impact Statement. Nothing
about the Tunney Act comment period — the process whose
entire statutory purpose is public participation. And
whatever records do exist?
All of them exempt, the office said, as
deliberative material and attorney work product. How
thorough was the search behind the claim that nothing
exists?
By the office's own account, a call was
scheduled with the Antitrust Bureau Chief on Friday, April
10, and she furnished records the following Monday. One
custodian, one business day. The office's answer describes
no search of the trial team's files, no search of the
Assistant Attorney General to whom the request was
directly addressed, no search terms, no date ranges —
despite the reviewing office expressly demanding a
detailed description of the measures taken.
Then came the twist. Inner City Press
appealed to the Public Access Counselor — a bureau housed,
as it happens, within the Attorney General's own office.
On July 7, the PAC transmitted the AG's answer and invited
a reply within seven business days. But the AG's actual
argument for withholding — the "detailed explanation of
the factual and legal bases" the PAC had demanded — was
filed as a "Confidential Analysis" that, the PAC's letter
states, cannot be shared with the requester.
The publicly visible answer consists of a
four-sentence chronology and two paragraphs quoting the
statute. So the Illinois Attorney General — the office
charged with enforcing FOIA against every other public
body in the state — is arguing for secrecy, secretly, to a
review bureau inside its own building, and inviting the
journalist to rebut arguments he is not allowed to see.
Inner City Press filed its reply on July 7,
asking the Public Access Counselor to require a public
version of the confidential analysis, to find the
one-custodian search inadequate, and to reject the
categorical exemption claims — noting that the trial is
over, that DOJ and the settling states were never the
Illinois AG's "clients" for privilege purposes, and that
Illinois law requires non-exempt portions to be segregated
and released rather than withheld wholesale. The contrast
with other states is stark. As simply one example,
Washington State's Attorney General has produced a decade
of Ticketmaster and StubHub consumer complaint files to
Inner City Press.
Illinois — which litigated the case — says
its records are simultaneously nonexistent and exempt, and
that its reasons are confidential. Inner City Press will
report on the Public Access Counselor's determination, as
well as on its FOIA case against the DOJ withholding all
records. Strange that the two agencies take the same
approach...
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