Sponsors (3)
Introduced January 22, 2026 by Summer Lee · Last progress January 22, 2026
The bill substantially increases public access, preservation, and oversight of historical COINTELPRO records—promoting transparency and potential accountability—while creating meaningful privacy and national-security risks and imposing notable administrative costs and funding trade-offs that could shift priorities and spark litigation.
The American public (researchers, historians, victims, and taxpayers) will gain substantially increased access to historical COINTELPRO records, improving transparency about past government surveillance and abuses.
Researchers, journalists, and the public will get faster, searchable, and digitized access to records (with defined timelines such as 6 months / 60 days for transmissions and a 25-year deadline for withheld records), speeding public availability and study of material.
Victims, communities targeted by COINTELPRO, and members of the public will have a time-limited independent Review Board with subpoena and enforcement powers to compel testimony and document production, increasing chances of accountability and preservation of records.
People named in COINTELPRO records (including living individuals, witnesses, and community members) face significant privacy and safety risks if redactions are inadequate, since the bill promotes broad and prompt disclosure.
Law-enforcement personnel, informants, and national-security interests could be exposed if sensitive or sealed materials (including grand-jury or informant information) are released or if exemptions are overridden, risking operational harm.
Federal, state, and local agencies — and ultimately taxpayers — will incur substantial administrative costs and staff burdens to locate, review, redact, digitize, host, and transmit large volumes of records, and ongoing operations could require additional appropriations.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Requires federal agencies to identify, review, digitize, and make public records related to the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, establishes an independent COINTELPRO Records Review Board to adjudicate withheld material, and directs the National Archives to create a searchable COINTELPRO Records Collection. It also authorizes the President to use available discretionary funds until appropriations are made and renames the federal building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW the "Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Building."