The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge on January 6, 2026 granted DOJ partial summary judgment in a FOIA case over requests for records and emails collected and maintained by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office. The ruling did not hand over the material. Instead, it held that the requester’s original submission had not been properly exhausted because the agency had found the request too broad and invited the requester to narrow it. The court said that invitation mattered, and that the requester had not cured the defect by trying to narrow the request later in litigation.

The decision keeps the dispute in the procedural lane for now. The court rejected the argument that the requester could skip the administrative process simply because the agency had already told it the request was not properly framed. It also said the expedited-processing claim was moot because DOJ had already completed its response to the initial request. In the court’s view, there was nothing left to speed up on that version of the request.

The opinion also points to the practical problem at the center of the case: the request kept changing. The judge said the parties had been negotiating scope, that the request remained a moving target, and that the agency had not yet had a full chance to address a properly narrowed version in the administrative process. The court left open the possibility that the requester could refine the request and return if DOJ then refused to process it.

The substantive fight, though, is still sitting there. The opinion says the group wanted records tied to a special counsel office that has already been the subject of intense public scrutiny, but the court did not reach a final merits ruling on the broader records dispute because the threshold FOIA issues came first. For now, the case is another reminder that in FOIA litigation, scope can decide everything before the public ever sees a page.