Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
The Department of Justice complained in early 2018 that nonprofit good-government groups were weaponizing federal open-records laws, according to a memo obtained, appropriately enough, through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“A host of government watchdog groups now essentially seek to use FOIA requests and related litigation as a weapon in the political and advocacy process,” reads the memo, authored by the DOJ’s civil division, which is charged with defending the government in FOIA lawsuits.