Sponsors (3)
The bill substantially increases public access, oversight, and preservation of COINTELPRO records—advancing historical accountability and research—while imposing measurable taxpayer costs, administrative burdens, privacy risks for named individuals, and potential politicization or operational-security trade-offs.
Researchers, historians, journalists, victims, and the general public gain broader and faster access to COINTELPRO records and related summaries, increasing transparency about past government surveillance and abuses.
An independent Review Board with subpoena and enforcement authority (plus Archivist oversight) empowers oversight bodies to compel records and testimony, improving accountability for past recordkeeping and disclosure decisions.
Researchers, students, and the public will benefit from prioritized digitization, searchable electronic formats, standardized metadata, and a published guidebook/index that make records easier to find and use.
Taxpayers will likely face meaningful new costs for staffing the Review Board, digitizing and processing large volumes of records, conducting redactions, and potential litigation related to unsealing or disclosure disputes.
Individuals named in historical files (including marginalized groups) face increased privacy and safety risks from disclosure or partial disclosure of sensitive information unless review and redaction are fully resourced and effective.
Federal, state, and local agencies will incur substantial administrative and technical burdens to locate, search, review, redact, convert, and transmit records, which could divert staff time and resources from other work.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Creates a Review Board and National Archives collection to identify, review, and release COINTELPRO records, sets disclosure deadlines and exceptions, and renames the FBI building.
Introduced January 22, 2026 by Summer Lee · Last progress January 22, 2026
Requires federal, state, and local government offices that hold records related to the FBI’s COINTELPRO program to identify, transmit, and—unless a narrow harm exception applies—make those records public, and creates a COINTELPRO Records Review Board and a dedicated collection at the National Archives to oversee review, digitization, and release. It also directs the President to use existing discretionary funds until Congress appropriates money for implementation and renames the federal building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC as the "Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Building."