FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A pro-Trump investment firm is demanding the Federal Reserve hand over a transcript of its closed-door meeting this week, in which the committee decided not to lower interest rates.
Azoria Capital applied for a temporary restraining order requiring the Federal Open Market Committee to allow the public to watch its meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. A judge denied the request, saying the FOMC is not an agency as defined by the Government in the Sunshine Act, so was exempt from it.
However, the Fed’s counsel admitted that the FOMC meeting would be held jointly with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, which is an agency subject to the Government in the Sunshine Act.
As a result, Azoria Capital’s lawyers from the conservative law firm Lex Politica penned a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and members of the Board of Governors making two demands: that the board immediately publish its vote to close the meeting to the public and that the board release a transcript of the joint meeting.
“Azoria is hopeful that the Board will comply with its request for transparency and compliance with federal law—both in the context of the just-concluded July 29-30 meeting, and into the future,” the letter states.
The Federal Reserve withholds the release of meeting transcripts for five years, so if Azoria doesn’t prevail, American won’t know what happened at the meeting until 2030.
“If the Board refuses to comply voluntarily, Azoria is fully prepared to seek injunctive and other relief, including through its pending lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” the demand added.
James Fishback, founder and CEO of Azoria, the investment firm behind the anti-DEI exchange-traded fund known as the Azoria 500 Meritocracy Fund, said the only remedy to the Fed’s secrecy is transparency.
“Not only does basic integrity demand that Powell immediately publish the meeting transcript—so does federal law,” he said. “Because this week’s Fed meeting was a joint meeting of the FOMC and the Board of Governors, it is subject to the Government in the Sunshine Act, which mandates that ‘every portion of every meeting of an agency shall be open to public observation.’”
“At a moment of historic division within the Fed, Americans deserve the truth about what went down in that meeting,” Fishback continued. “Azoria will continue to fight so every worker, retiree, and business owner gets the transparency and accountability they deserve from the Federal Reserve.”
