A whistleblower group is launching a fight against President Joe Biden's Justice Department over a situation involving the seizing of phone records that took place in 2017.

According to JustTheNews, the group, along with several others like it, "are fighting the Justice Department’s efforts in federal court to permanently hide why it spied on congressional investigators by obtaining their phone records during a leaks investigation years ago."

Empower Oversight is the whistleblower group spearheading the efforts. Founder Jason Foster was one of the top Senate staffers whose phone records were seized at the time.

Foster asked a federal judge to unseal the records that gave the DOJ permission to acquire the phone records during the 2017 investigation.

What's going on?

According to a new filing obtained by Empower Oversight, the government responded to the request by insisting that the records stay sealed and out of the public's view.

Foster and his group even suggested that the records could be unsealed with redactions or other security precautions, but the government essentially said not a chance.

"Rather than cooperate with Empower Oversight to find a way that these records may be released with appropriate redactions, DOJ’s response to Empower Oversight’s motion was to insist on continued (and permanent) secrecy—nearly seven years after the underlying events," the new filing said.

The group held nothing back in the new filing, blasting the government for the bizarre secrecy.

"The only conceivable purpose of this secrecy is to obscure key facts from Congress and the public, thereby undermining the typical presumption of good faith to which DOJ would otherwise be entitled," the filing added.

"Indeed, DOJ’s demand for total secrecy raises serious suspicions that DOJ opposed Empower Oversight’s request merely to continue concealing its previous disregard for the separation of powers and for the whistleblower protection policy implications of its subpoenas."

Background

Multiple congressional investigators, including Foster and Kash Patel, among others, had their phone records seized in 2017 via a government subpoena.

Here's the fun part: Patel, a lead investigator for the House Intelligence Committee, and Foster were "investigating Justice Department and FBI abuses during the discredited Russia collusion investigation," according to JustTheNews.

The DOJ has refused to comment on the secretive move that resulted in their phone records being acquired at the time through a subpoena.

One can draw their own conclusions on that front.