Commerce Department releases records it illegally withheld for over a year about sensitive technology going to China

On February 2, 2026, the Bader Family Foundation sued the U.S. Department of Commerce for violating the Freedom of Information Act, by improperly withholding agency records. The Liberty Unyielding blog and the Bader Family Foundation had submitted a FOIA request to the Commerce Department on August 18, 2025, for certain records about exports of sensitive U.S. technology to China, such as artificial intelligence chips.

Legally, the Commerce Department was required to respond to that FOIA request within 20 working days.

But 167 days later, the Commerce Department had failed to provide either the records requested in that FOIA request, or even a determination about what records it would produce in the future, as is required by the Freedom of Information Act (see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i)).

FOIA generally requires an agency to provide a determination of the number of responsive records it intends to release or withhold within 20 working days after receiving the request. As a federal appeals court has explained, agencies must “inform the requester of the scope of the documents that the agency will produce, as well as the scope of the documents that the agency plans to withhold under any FOIA exemptions” within the statutory deadline of 20 working days. (See CREW v. FEC, 711 F.3d 180 (D.C. Cir. 2013)).

That 20-day deadline expired on September 16, 2025. But by that date, the Commerce Department neither provided a determination about what records it would produce, nor produced any records in response to the FOIA request.

The remainder of 2025 passed with no such determination or records being provided by the Commerce Department. So did January of 2026.

Finally, on February 2, 2026, the Bader Family Foundation lost patience, and sued the Commerce Department for violating FOIA.

On October 14, 2026, the Commerce Department finally produced records covered by the FOIA request — 75 heavily redacted pages. Why that date? Because a joint status report was due on that same day, which required the Commerce Department to spell out what it had done to comply with FOIA.

The records the Commerce Department released are attached.

The FOIA request sought the following records:

1. All emails or memoranda sent between March 1, 2025 and the date you process this FOIA request, about whether to allow AMD or Nvidia to sell artificial intelligence chips to the People’s Republic of China.
2. All emails or memoranda sent between March 1, 2025 and the date you process this FOIA request, about whether to allow AMD or Nvidia to sell semiconductor chips to the People’s Republic of China.
3. All emails or memoranda sent between January 20, 2025 and the date you process this FOIA request, about whether to allow AMD or Nvidia to sell artificial intelligence chips to the People’s Republic of China, in exchange for a fee.
4. All emails or memoranda sent between January 20, 2025 and the date you process this FOIA request, about whether to allow AMD or Nvidia to sell semiconductor chips to the People’s Republic of China, in exchange for a fee.
5. All emails or memoranda sent in July 2025 about Cadence Design Systems.

These records may turn out to contain newsworthy information, if you put two and two together. Take a look for yourself at this link. The subjects covered by the FOIA request were newsworthy and of public interest, as news articles about them demonstrated. (See, e.g., Julia Shapero, Senate Democrats urge Trump to walk back Nvidia, AMD Deal, The Hill, August 18, 2025, available at https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5457662-nvidia-amd-china-ai-chips/).