A whistleblower organization has initiated a court action to force the Department of Justice to disclose why it spied on congressional staff, setting up a landmark legal battle on an issue that has rankled both Republicans and Democrats.
In the motion filed Thursday and reviewed by Just the News, Empower Oversight argued public scrutiny is necessary to determine whether the DOJ operated appropriately in securing non-disclosure orders to conceal the subpoenas from the affected parties, which included both Republican and Democratic congressional staff.
"This motion presents a narrow question-whether the public should see the explanations DOJ provided when it asked the Court to prohibit Google from informing anyone, including Congressional leadership, Mr. Foster, or the other congressional staff targeted, about the underlying subpoena for more than six years after Google had already complied," the motion reads.
"The subpoena implicated weighty constitutional issues by targeting the communications records of a broad group of congressional oversight staff, and yet the Legislative Branch appears to have had no opportunity to challenge the intrusion or even receive notice that DOJ had followed through on the Deputy Attorney General's threats," the motion reads.
Foster told Just the News he doubted the DOJ's investigation was still ongoing six years after the initial subpoena and that his retirement from working for Congress made it so that he no longer had access to the information the DOJ was supposedly pursuing.
The DOJ inspector general and the House Judiciary Committee have launched investigations into whether the surveillance of congressional staffer's communications was lawful or violated the Constitution's separation of powers clause, Just the News reported last fall.
A source directly familiar with the investigation confirmed to Just the News last October that the investigation was ongoing but faced delays from DOJ. "The DOJ OIG is reviewing the DOJ's use of subpoenas and other legal authorities to obtain communication records of Members of Congress and affiliated persons, and the news media in connection with recent investigations of alleged unauthorized disclosures of information to the media by government officials," the memo stated.
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