| For Immediate Release Nov 27, 2002 |
Contact: Press Office 202-646-5188 |
December Deadline Looms for Administration to Hand Over Documents (Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, scored another legal victory today in its quest to release the documents from the super-secretive Cheney Energy Task Force. The Honorable Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled early Wednesday morning that the Bush/Cheney Administration’s request for appeal of the court’s repeated orders to produce documents was denied. The Judge stated that the“Defendants have fallen far short of demonstrating that the questions of law presented by the challenged orders arise under such exceptional circumstances as to warrant disruption of the favored process of appellate’s review following final judgment.” The Bush/Cheney Administration’s request for an appeal before the case is finally decided was unorthodox, to say the least. Rarely, if ever, is a request for an appeal granted prior to the conclusion of the litigation. The Administration filed three identical motions over the past several months to prevent the handing over of documents and was denied all three times. Judicial Watch has asked that the Administration be sanctioned or held in contempt of court for requiring plaintiff’s to waste resources responding to their frivolous filings. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit last year under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, an open meetings law, after it was rebuffed in its requests for information on the Task Force by Vice President Cheney. Several months later, the Energy Task Force was also sued by the Sierra Club, which is now a co-plaintiff in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit. The court has ordered that the Administration review the documents (In October, Judge Sullivan was shocked to learn that the government had not yet examined all the documents, “This is a startling revelation,” he said.) and turn them over to Judicial Watch on Monday, December 9th. To view the order click here. | |