Watchdog Gets Attorney Fees From Justice
By Mike Heuer, Courthouse News Service, Oct. 30, 2015
The Department of Justice must pay $32,865 in attorney's fees for its delayed response to a FOIA request for documents on a closed criminal investigation of former Nevada Senator Jim Ensign's affair with a staffer, a federal judge ruled.
U.S. District Judge John Bates granted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's request for attorney's fees incurred during its lengthy but successful court fight for records of a closed investigation into Ensign and money he paid to his former chief of staff and wife, with whom Ensign had an affair.
CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in September 2012, claiming the DOJ's Criminal Division, the FBI and the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys improperly withheld records of to the Ensign investigation that had concluded with no charges filed .
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