Watchdog groups are pushing back against the U.S. government's motion to dismiss a case brought against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the U.S. archivist in hopes of recovering all of Clinton's email records that were "unlawfully removed."

Cause of Action Institute and Judicial Watch, both D.C.-based government watchdog groups, filed its opposition against the motion to dismiss on Friday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Cause of Action said that the government's motion to dismiss revealed that the FBI had issued grand jury subpoenas related to Clinton's Blackberry accounts during its investigation. "The subpoenas confirm that the FBI investigation of Secretary Clinton was criminal in nature, but details about the scope of the subpoenas remains unknown," Cause of Action said.

John Vecchione, president of the Cause of Action Institute, said it's the agency's duty to recover the records.

"None of the information provided by the government establishes that the federal records at issue do not exist or cannot be recovered," he said. "The government presented fundamentally the same arguments the Court of Appeals already rejected last year. It is the agencies' statutory duty to institute proceedings through the attorney general to recover these records. Why the agencies are fighting so hard to avoid this obligation is unexplained."