WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has denied the federal government’s latest attempt to further delay disclosing its justifications for 5 years of non-disclosure orders (“NDOs” or “gag orders”) following the initial subpoena for activity logs of the personal phone and email accounts of members of Congress and committee staff members.
Early this morning, Empower Oversight was notified of the denial and was provided the revised briefing schedule.
Empower Oversight’s founder, Jason Foster, was one of more than 40 congressional staff targets of the Justice Department’s snooping and gag orders, which also included now-FBI Director Kash Patel.
To read Empower Oversight’s filing in opposition, click here.
To read a report by the DoJ’s Office of the Inspector General raising concerns about the Justice Department’s actions, click here.
Background
Foster was one of the targets of DOJ’s snooping, covertly collecting his phone and email records when he led the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Oversight and Investigations unit for then-Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA). DOJ subpoenaed activity logs of the personal phone and email accounts of members of Congress and more than 40 staff members for congressional committees. Each year for five years, DOJ secretly obtained gag orders from the court to prevent Google and other service providers from notifying their Legislative Branch customers that the providers had disclosed their records to the Executive Branch.
Empower Oversight filed an appeal in early April in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging Chief Judge James E. Boasberg’s decision to keep sealed the arguments used by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain secret gag orders blocking notifications by Google to targeted members of Congress and congressional staff, including Empower Oversight’s founder, Jason Foster.
Empower Oversight’s case is bolstered after the release of a December 2024 report from DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). After reviewing the sealed NDO applications, the OIG found that the DOJ “relied on general assertions about the need for nondisclosure rather than on case-specific justifications” as required by law and DOJ policy (OIG Report, page 9). Even more troubling, the DOJ failed to inform the court that the subpoenas targeted members of Congress and their staff—key context that could have prompted a more meaningful review by the court.
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