The original draft of this email was sent to Washington Post Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes and his court-reporting colleague Ann E. Marimow, and was copied to several additional Post reporters and editors, Wall Street Journal court reporter Brent Kendall, D.C. and Maryland attorneys general Karl Racine and Brian Frosh, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and three relevant members of the D.C. Council.
Dear Robert and Ann,
In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s dismissal of the never-had-a-chance emoluments lawsuits, this longtime Post reader urges you and your Metro colleagues to make FOIA requests for information from both the D.C. and Maryland attorneys general in order to calculate and report a rough tally of tax-dollars spent by Karl Racine and Brian Frosh on their dozens of largely political and often shamelessly self-promoting anti-Trump litigation during the past four years [“Supreme court ends Trump emoluments lawsuits,” A2, Jan. 26].
Hoping to use it in a Local Opinions piece for The Post, this District citizen and taxpayer tried many times, albeit not with formal FOIA requests, to get information about staff hours and court costs from Mr. Racine’s office but was repeatedly rebuffed or ignored. Of course, I don’t have the juice or FOIA lawyers that The Post has, and taxpayers still have a right to know, don’t they?
So please consider a detailed story that accounts for all the thumb-in-Trump’s-eye lawsuits: the successes and failures, their real costs, and an admittedly more subjective analysis of opportunity costs, specifying what the money might have otherwise paid for. And please include an accounting of the wholly predictable instances when the Trump administration was slow, or refused altogether, to help D.C. and Maryland in their hours of need as a means of political payback.
In fact, if you really want to be industrious, you could make FOIA requests of all relevant state AGs and even various District Attorneys (e.g., New York County’s Cyrus Vance Jr.) and report in a series of detailed stories what their offices spent suing the Trump administration, the Trump Organization and other related entities and individuals. The Resistance had a price tag. And regardless of their politics or those of their billionaire bosses, journalists shouldn’t shirk from reporting it.
Looking forward to your coverage,
Darren McKinney
Washington, D.C.