A bipartisan government accountability group, Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research (EOWR), has publicly come forward to request information from the Biden administration about the newly enacted sanctions on Russian ammunition and arms.
EOWR is expressing its concern that the sanctions may not be about punishing Russia and may instead be about enacting the Presidents gun control agenda. The organization said in a statement that this might be a “deceptive abuse of the sanctions process in order to pursue President Biden’s domestic gun control agenda and restrict Americans’ access to ammunition by administrative fiat.”
The organization has filed a 6-page long Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department. This request is looking to find any documentation or communications about the sanctions as well as any communications between the White House and prominent anti-gun groups.
The Biden administration argued that these sanctions were intended to punish Russia for President Vladimir Putin’s alleged poisoning of a government critic, Aleksey Navalny. The issue with these claims is that the Biden administration can not draw a solid connection between the incident and the ammunition manufactures.
If it comes out in the FOIA request that the administration made these sanctions in order to punish gun owners the sanctions might be overturned. The Supreme Court has maintained that courts can overturn agency actions under the Administrative Procedure Act so long as the agency’s reasoning for an action is artificially manufactured.
This means that if EOWR can prove that these sanctions were not brought about by Putin’s alleged poisoning they can overturn them. There may be hope for the ammunition market if Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research is successful.
