DOJ wants to hide why it spied on congressional staff, whistleblower groups fight back

This article features Government Accountability Project Legal Director, Tom Devine, and was originally published here.

Several major whistleblower groups are fighting the Justice Department’s efforts in federal court to permanently hide why it spied on congressional investigators by obtaining their phone records during a leaks investigation years ago.

The whistleblower group, Empower Oversight, whose founder Jason Foster was one of the investigators whose phone records were taken when he was still in a top Senate staffer, had asked a federal judge to unseal the underlying documents that allowed DOJ to acquire the records in 2017.

But the government responded recently by saying the records should be permanently sealed and kept from public disclosure, according to a new filing from Empower Oversight.

“Rather than cooperate with Empower Oversight to find a way that these records may be released with appropriate redactions, DOJ’s response to Empower Oversight’s motion was to insist on continued (and permanent) secrecy—nearly seven years after the underlying events,” the new filing said.

“The only conceivable purpose of this secrecy is to obscure key facts from Congress and the public, thereby undermining the typical presumption of good faith to which DOJ would otherwise be entitled,” it added. “Indeed, DOJ’s demand for total secrecy raises serious suspicions that DOJ opposed Empower...

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