April 27, 2026
SENT BY EMAIL
XXXX
Re: 2026-APP-00006 (Appeal of Response 2026-FOI-100)
Dear XXXX:
On March 2, 2026, you submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (2026-FOI-100) to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for records for XXXX Federal Credit Union, Charter #XXXX, for the period January 1, 2022 through the date of processing including D&O/E&O insurance policy details, records related to XXXX real estate, itemized legal costs for trademark litigation, executive travel and perks for XXXX Federal Credit Union’s CEO and board members, and XXXX expansion and sponsorships.
By letter of March 12, 2026, the NCUA FOIA Processing Center granted your FOIA request in full, and 22 pages of responsive records were released to you. No pages were withheld nor redacted.
You appealed this determination in a correspondence received on March 30, 2026. In your appeal, you contend that the records you received do not contain information responsive to your request. You argue that while your request was “granted in full,” the agency’s release of documents unresponsive to the request is “not a legally sufficient FOIA response.” You request that NCUA either produce the responsive records; state explicitly that no records exist; or identify each withheld document and cite the statutory exemption justifying withholding.
Upon a full and independent review, your appeal is denied, as discussed more fully below.
Adequacy of Search
The FOIA generally provides a statutory right of public access to government information in executive branch agency records.1 An agency that receives a proper request for agency records must make the records promptly available2, except to the extent that such records or any portions of such records are protected from public disclosure by one of nine exemptions.3 Information maintained by an agency constitutes an “agency record” under the FOIA when the records are created or obtained by an agency, and under agency control at the time of the FOIA request.4 The FOIA only obligates an agency to provide access to those records meeting this standard. It does not obligate an agency to “obtain records from any other sources” in response to a FOIA request5, nor to “dig out all the information that might exist, in whatever form or place it might be found.”6 Indeed, the “FOIA was not intended to reduce government agencies to full-time investigators on behalf of requesters.”7
When any person requests access to agency records, the FOIA requires the agency to look for records that are reasonably responsive to the request.8 The agency must make ‘“a good-faith effort to conduct a search for the requested records, using methods which can be reasonably expected to produce the information requested.’”9 Where the adequacy of a search is in question, “the focus of the adequacy inquiry is not on the results,”10 or “‘whether there might exist any [] documents possibly responsive to the request, but rather whether the search for those documents was adequate.’”11 Generally, an agency’s search is deemed adequate when it is “reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents.”12 Courts have found that “the adequacy of a FOIA search is generally determined not by the fruits of the search, but by the appropriateness of the methods used to carry out the search.”13 Thus, “[w]here the search terms are reasonably calculated to lead to responsive documents, a court should neither ‘micromanage’ nor second guess the agency’s search.”14
NCUA conducted an adequate search, and no additional responsive records beyond those already produced were found. Any additional records, if available, may belong to, and may be under the control of the credit union or other third-party business entity. A credit union’s proprietary business records are generally not maintained, possessed, and controlled by the NCUA as a matter of course. Further, the agency has no obligation to conduct a search for records outside its possession or control or to obtain records from a third-party source, such as a credit union, in response to a FOIA request. The 22 pages that were released to you in full constitute all the agency records in the NCUA’s possession and control that are responsive to your request.15
Responsive Records
You assert that the records you received consist entirely of charter and field of membership amendment documents for XXXX Federal Credit Union, Charter #XXXX, and “contain no information responsive to any of the six categories [you] requested: D&O/E&O insurance policy details, records related to XXXX real estate, itemized legal costs for trademark litigation, executive travel and perks for XXXX Federal Credit Union's CEO and board members, XXXX expansion costs, and sponsorship records.”
The FOIA does not define what constitutes a responsive record. Consequently, “agencies . . . in effect define a ‘record’ when they undertake the process of identifying records that are responsive to a request.”16 There are a “range of possible ways in which an agency might conceive of a ‘record’.”17 [O]nce an agency identifies a record it deems responsive to a FOIA request, the statute compels disclosure of the entire responsive record,” unless a statutory exemption applies.18
Your FOIA request asked for records including, among others, any “field of membership expansion approval documents related to XXXX FCU's expansion into XXXX.” The charter amendment documents you received were determined by NCUA, in good faith, to be responsive to your request for “any field of membership expansion approval documents” filed with the agency by XXXX Federal Credit Union. Once the agency determined the charter and field of membership records were responsive to your request, the NCUA was obligated under the FOIA to disclose them. Therefore, the scope of the records that were responsive to your request was appropriate.
For these reasons, your FOIA appeal is denied. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. §552(a)(4)(B) of the FOIA, you may seek judicial review of this determination by filing suit against the NCUA. Such a suit may be filed in the United States District Court where you reside, where your principal place of business is located, the District of Columbia, or where the documents are located (the Eastern District of Virginia).
The 2007 FOIA amendments created the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) to offer mediation services to resolve disputes between FOIA requesters and Federal agencies as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. Using OGIS services does not affect your right to pursue litigation. You may contact OGIS in any of the following ways:
Office of Government Information Services
National Archives and Records Administration
8601 Adelphi Road - OGIS
College Park, MD 20740-6001
Email: ogis@nara.gov
Web: https://ogis.archives.gov
Telephone: 202.741.5770
Toll-free: 877.684.6448
Fax: 202.741.5769
Sincerely,
/s/
Frank Kressman
General Counsel
OGC/PY
SSIC: 3212
2026-APP-00006; 2026-FOI-100
Footnotes
15 U.S.C. §552(f)(1).
25 U.S.C. §552.
35 U.S.C. §552(f)(2)(A).
4See DOJ v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136, 144-45 (1989).
5Callaway v. Dept. of the Treasury, 893 F. Supp. 2d 269, 275 (D.D.C. 2012) (quoting Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 153 (1980)); see also Williams v. U.S. Attorney’s Office, No. 03-674, 2006 WL 717474, at *5 (N.D. Okla. Mar. 16, 2006) (noting that the FOIA obligates agency to search only “its own records,” not “records of third parties”).
6Frank v. DOJ, 941 F. Supp. 4, 5 (D.D.C. 1996).
7Assassination Archives & Research Ctr. v. CIA, 720 F. Supp. 217, 219 (D.D.C. 1989), aff’d in pertinent part, No. 89-5414, 1990 WL 123924 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 13, 1990) (per curiam).
85 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(D).
9Nation Mag. v. U.S. Customs Serv., 71 F.3d 885, 890 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (quoting Oglesby v. U.S. Dep't of the Army, 920 F.2d 57, 68 (D.C. Cir. 1990)).
10Hornbostel v. U.S. Dep't of the Interior, 305 F. Supp. 2d 21, 28 (D.D.C. 2003), aff'd, No. 03-5257, 2004 WL 1900562 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 25, 2004).
11Steinberg v. DOJ, 23 F.3d 548, 551 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (quoting Weisberg v. DOJ, 745 F.2d 1476, 1485 (D.C. Cir. 1984)).
12Weisberg v. DOJ, 705 F.2d 1344, 1351 (D.C. Cir. 1983).
13Jennings v. DOJ, 230 F. App’x 1, 1 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (quoting Iturralde v. Comptroller of Currency, 315 F.3d 311, 315 (D.C. Cir. 2003)); see also Newman v. BOP, No. 20-3761, 2022 WL 1521797, at *5 (D.D.C. May 13, 2022) (noting “[t]he touchstone of [a search] inquiry is the reasonableness of the search, not the records produced.”).
14Bigwood v. DOD, 132 F. Supp. 3d 124, 140 (D.D.C. 2015) (quoting Agility Pub. Warehousing Co. v. NSA, 113 F. Supp. 3d 313, 339 (D.D.C. 2015)).
15Because your FOIA request was granted and all responsive records were released to you in full, the NCUA did not invoke any FOIA exemptions to withhold or redact any records.
16American Immigration Lawyers Association v. EOIR, 830 F.3d 667, 668 (D.C. Cir. 2016).
17Id.
18Id.