(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A month after blasting the FBI for its “woefully inadequate” response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about its involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, a U.S. federal judge has ordered the bureau to start producing 2,000 pages of OKC bomb records per month.
U.S. Judge Daphne Oberg’s Monday order was made in a lawsuit filed by Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue, who has been suing the FBI for records about a CIA asset and FBI informant who helped fund the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as for records about a neo-Nazi bank-robbery gang also involved in the attack.
Trentadue initially requested the records from the FBI in 2015, and waited nine years before filing his lawsuit in February 2024. In response to the lawsuit, the FBI proposed to produce 500 pages of documents per month, which would mean that it would take another nearly 12 years for the entire disclosure.
Last month, Judge Oberg blasted the FBI for such a slow rate of production. “The FBI’s proposed processing rate is woefully inadequate under the circumstances,” she said, ordering the parties to meet and confer about a processing rate of more than 500 pages per month.
More good news in Jesse Trentadue's FOIA lawsuit for OKC bomb records. After blasting the FBI for only producing 500 pages per month (only a tiny fraction of which are actually responsive) a U.S. Judge has ordered the bureau to start producing 2,000 pages per month.
The FBI, for… https://t.co/WHWcWyD7ve pic.twitter.com/BfKFqWhD7o
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) April 29, 2025
In response to Judge Oberg’s order, Trentadue said on April 10 that the FBI should produce 3,000 pages per month—lowering his initially request for 5,000 pages per month.
In response to Trentadue, the FBI offered last Wednesday to produce 2,000 pages per month “or less.” The FBI told the judge that it has more than 10,000 unprocessed FOIA requests, and that devoting more resources to the Trentadue case will mean other requesters have to wait even longer.
“The FBI submits that it requested budget enhancement to supplement FOIPA staffing in FYs 2024, 25, and 26; none of the enhancement requests were funded. For every resource devoted to processing records in FOIPA litigation, fewer pages can be processed for requesters whose requests are pending at the administrative stage, which only increases the backlog of requests,” the FBI complained to the judge.
“The FBI maintains that the general public’s access to FBI records is being impeded by the interests of the few who are able to litigate their cases. The FBI declares that processing 2,000 pages per month for Plaintiff’s Requests, will divert the FBI’s current resources away from other requesters.”
In her Monday order, Judge Oberg accepted the FBI’s proposal for 2,000 pages per month, starting in July.
“The FBI is ORDERED to process responsive documents at a rate of 2,000 pages per month, with the first production to occur by July 31,” Judge Oberg said.
Trentadue’s OKC Bomb Litigation
Trentadue has been suing the U.S. government for OKC bomb-related records for nearly 30 years, ever since his brother was murdered in a federal penitentiary. The complex story of how the death of Trentadue’s brother relates to the OKC bombing can be read in Mother Jones.
One of the key players Trentadue seeks info about is a man named Roger Edwin Moore (not the James Bond actor), who was an FBI informant as part of the bureau’s 1980s- and early 90s-era Operation Punchout. In the early 90s, Moore met McVeigh. The two would become business partners, embarking on the national gun show circuit in 1993.
“According to Terry Nichols, one of McVeigh’s accomplices, not only did Moore provide them with the Kinestik explosives used to detonate the bomb that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building, but Moore also told McVeigh that he knew McVeigh ‘would put them [the Kinesteik] to good use,’” Trentadue said in his Wednesday court filing.
Along with Moore, Trentadue also continues to seek info on the Aryan Republican Army, a neo-Nazi bank robbery gang from the 90s, which had close ties to McVeigh.
In 2001, then-Indiana State University criminologist Mark Hamm published a book making the case that the ARA helped carry out the bombing. Hamm’s In Bad Company: America’s Terrorist Underground detailed the movements of McVeigh and the ARA throughout 1993 and ’94, showing that the bomber was often in Arizona, Kansas and Oklahoma at the same time as several other ARA members. McVeigh and ARA members were also both spotted by witnesses at Elohim City, a white nationalist compound in the Ozarks.
Even more shocking, Trentadue later uncovered evidence that the ARA may even have been an FBI front group. Trentadue obtained an email from former FBI agent Don Jarrett—who investigated right-wing terrorism in the 1990s—saying that the Aryan robbers were thoroughly infiltrated by FBI informants.
In his lawsuit, Trentadue expressed his belief that the ARA was indeed an FBI front group.
“Timothy McVeigh participated in some of those robberies and is reported to have used money obtained from these crimes to help fund the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Members of the ARA also assisted McVeigh in carrying out the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building,” he said in his February 2024 complaint.
“The ARA was actually a front group created by the FBI in which the Bureau had embedded at least one informant.”
Meanwhile, Trentadue still has another lawsuit against the FBI for records about the OKC bombing.
That lawsuit, which has been ongoing for decades, seeks surveillance footage of the blast. The FBI has denied that such footage exists, but Trentadue has evidence to the contrary—including a Secret Service investigative memo that describes the surveillance footage.
Trentadue’s lawsuit went to trial in 2014. There, he was to have FBI informant-turned-whistleblower John Matthews testify on his behalf about how the bureau was monitoring McVeigh in the lead-up to the attack.
However, Matthews changed his mind about testifying the night before he was supposed to take the stand, leading to Trentadue alleging that the FBI engaged in witness tampering and threatened Matthews.
Trentadue’s allegations have been subject of a court-appointed investigation for the last nearly eight years. The investigation has been conducted behind closed doors, with gag orders on all parties.
Trentadue recently moved to have Matthews’ deposition unsealed in this case, but Trump’s DOJ has opposed his request. More details of that dispute can be found here.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
