Open Records court fight still underway over Scott Pruitt’s days as Attorney General

They’re still slugging it out in court in an open records lawsuit filed by the Center for Media and Democracy against former Attorney General Scott Pruitt.

The suit was filed in 2017 and now involves a dispute even after current attorney general Mike Hunter’s office has turned over 8,000 documents to the Oklahoma County District Court judge presiding over the case. (CV-2017–223).

Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons set a show cause hearing for mid-June after she undertook an inspection and found they were on a non-functioning CD disc.  Then the show cause hearing was stricken and since then, the Center for Media, represented by an ACLU attorney and the State attorney general have issued recent responses in the continuing fight.

The AG contends his office has fully complied and provided a new disc to the judge.  Hunter’s office is also fighting the additional cost of the possible appointment of a discovery master in the case. And if one is appointed, the AG wants both sides to share the cost.

In a July filing, the attorney general also pointed out that his office has provided the actual records in their complete and unredacted form. But the current dispute is over a listing of records that were considered to be privileged or confidential and were given to the judge for her review, but not to the Center for Media and Democracy.

The Center is asking the judge to force the Attorney General to file an index of the privileged documents. The state responded by arguing such a move would have the potential to set up “greater recordkeeping obligations on every state agency which withholds any records” from disclosure.

Judge Timmons has yet to rule on the issue.