A lawyer who is suing the Department of Justice to gain information on whether President Donald Trump was surveilled by the Obama administration says the president's tweets will help them win their case against the government.
"OMG, are you stupid? You just blew apart two different cases your DOJ is defending against me. I'm going to take you apart, Mr. President," tweeted lawyer Bradley Moss, who specializes in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and national security litigation over a tweet Trump sent Wednesday.
Moss, who works for the James Madison Project, a government transparency group, filed a freedom of information request back in March with USA Today reporter Brad Heath after Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing President Barack Obama of having his "wires tapped" at Trump Tower.
The DOJ wrote back that it couldn't confirm or deny the existence of any surveillance orders or documents about it.
OMG, are you stupid? You just blew apart two different cases your DOJ is defending against me. I’m going to take you apart, Mr. President. https://t.co/lpeTAkBFwP
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) November 30, 2017
However, Trump tweeted Wednesday that members of Congress are looking to issue contempt citations "against the Justice Department and the FBI for withholding key documents and an FBI witness which could shed light on surveillance of associates of Donald Trump."
The president called this "big stuff" and ordered the DOJ and FBI to "Give this information NOW!"
The House of Representatives seeks contempt citations(?) against the JusticeDepartment and the FBI for withholding key documents and an FBI witness which could shed light on surveillance of associates of Donald Trump. Big stuff. Deep State. Give this information NOW! @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017
Following Trump's tweet, Moss submitted it to the court in support of his case. "The president's tweet this evening is a rather clear and concrete official acknowledgement of the existence of records responsive to the Plaintiff's FOIA requests," he wrote.
The DOJ's lawyers said earlier in November that Trump's tweets are "official statements." But in another case they say the tweets count as "personal conduct that is not an exercise of state power" and have argued that because Twitter is a private company, not a public forum, Trump's tweets are not "state actions."
Trump's tweet, Moss argued in his court filing, should be "more than sufficient to nullify" the DOJ's refusal to neither confirm nor deny whether the surveillance and documents about it exist.
Moss filed a similar document in another case he is pursuing for Politico against the DOJ concerning the release of any documents about the Christopher Steele dossier given to Trump to brief him on its contents.
The controversial dossier, released by BuzzFeed News in January, makes several allegations about potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in that country's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. The suit is pushing to also find out if the government has determined whether any parts of the dossier are accurate.
Trump's tweets potentially undermine the two cases being fought by his administration and could lead to the release of information that would be damaging to him and embarrassing to the government.
Earlier in the day, Trump made several other controversial tweets that took aim at the media, calling NBC News and CNN "fake news" and retweeting anti-Muslim posts by the U.K.-based far-right group Britain First.
"Apparently @realDonaldTrump you have excited my young partner @BradMossEsq with your latest #narcissistic tweet. So much so that he thinks we'll now clean your clock in #litigation," tweeted Mark Zaid, Moss's legal partner and founder of the James Madison Project, on Wednesday.
"That works for me," Zaid wrote, "because I'm particularly interested in the #attorney's fees!"
