Dems sue Missouri attorney general’s office for access to Josh Hawley’s records
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee filed suit Thursday to force the Missouri attorney general’s office to release records about Josh Hawley.
The DSCC had filed Missouri Sunshine Law requests for information about Hawley’s homes in Jefferson City and Columbia and for internal communication relating to a public corruption team and to Democrats’ public records requests.
The attorney general’s office denied their requests, saying the records were exempt from disclosure.
Additional Sunshine Law requests have been filed related to Hawley’s job performance and his commitment to transparency, a DSCC aide said.
The Missouri Sunshine Law requires all votes, meetings and records — including internal emails and memos for government agencies — to be available to the public if a request is made, unless the records are exempted. Exemptions include ongoing criminal investigations, personal academic or medical records and legal counsel.
Democrats say in the lawsuit that the reasons given by the attorney general’s office to not disclose the record were spurious and went against the spirit and letter of the law. Custodians considering Sunshine Law requests are supposed to “construe exemptions narrowly and in favor of disclosure,” the suit says, and it alleges that the attorney general’s office failed to do so.
The office could have redacted parts of documents the Democrats asked for, the suit says, but instead refused to provide any records.
Mary Compton, spokesperson for Hawley’s office, said he “is a champion of government transparency.”
“This is a meritless lawsuit and we look forward to vigorously fighting it in court,” Compton said in a statement. “This office has turned over tens of thousands of pages in public records to this group and their Democratic allies.”
Hawley has cast himself as a fighter for government transparency in his time as attorney general and on the campaign trail as he seeks the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in the fall.
He has called for the Sunshine Law to be expanded and strengthened, and last month he said that an agreement between former Gov. Eric Greitens and prosecutor Kim Gardner that led to Greitens’ resignation should be made public under the law.
“These are records of taxpayer-funded work done by taxpayer-funded employees, and the public has a right to them,” said DSCC spokesman David Bergstein.
“Josh Hawley acts like a champion of transparency but that’s only when it serves his own interests, and by keeping these public records hidden, Hawley has shown Missouri he’s just another hypocrite.”
Hawley campaign manager Kyle Plotkin called the lawsuit “the latest frivolous attempt by the national Democrats to attack Josh.”
First they tried to attack Hawley with a residency lawsuit, then they tried over the public corruption team issue and then they tried with a campaign finance issue, he said.
“The national Democrats — Claire McCaskill’s allies — are oh-for-three on attacks against Josh,” Plotkin said.
During his 2016 campaign for attorney general, Hawley was sued for emails and documents from his time as a professor at the University of Missouri Law School. He personally fought against giving up the records, and he was then represented pro bono by Cooper & Kirk PLLC, a Washington law firm. The suit was dismissed in September 2016.
A St. Louis attorney filed a Missouri Ethics Commission complaint against Hawley for his use of the pro bono legal services, but it was dismissed last month.
When the MU documents were finally ordered to be made public, Hawley took the unusual step of spending thousands of dollars from his campaign chest on lawyers to review them first.
This story was originally published July 26, 2018 at 4:52 PM.