“As this Court has long recognized, contempt proceedings — even those arising from a grand jury investigation — are presumed to be open to the public’s scrutiny,” the unsealing motion the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed at the Supreme Court says. | Alex Wong/Getty Images mueller investigation Journalist group asks courts to loosen secrecy in Mueller subpoena fight

An organization representing journalists took legal action Wednesday to pare back the secrecy blanketing a grand jury subpoena dispute in which a foreign government-owned corporation appears to have squared off with special counsel Robert Mueller.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed motions at the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals urging the public release of more details about the legal showdown, which has been playing out in federal courts in Washington since August.


Interest in the little-noticed legal contest escalated in October when POLITICO reported that there were signs the prosecutors in the case were attached to Mueller’s office and were locked in a battle with a uncooperative witness.

In the new filings, the Reporters Committee argues that the courts can disclose much more about the standoff without compromising interests in grand jury secrecy.

“As this Court has long recognized, contempt proceedings — even those arising from a grand jury investigation — are presumed to be open to the public’s scrutiny,” the unsealing motion the journalists group filed at the Supreme Court said. “The presumption that the public has a right to access and observe appellate litigation in our nation’s courts is thus no less robust where the appeal is from a district court order of contempt.”

Little was known about the legal fight until last month, when the D.C. Circuit panel issued a three-page judgment revealing that the witness in the case was not a person, but a company owned by a foreign government. The appeals court said the company argued that as an extension of that government, the firm was immune from grand jury subpoena.

Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court rejected that argument, and the three-judge D.C. Circuit panel agreed with her. The firm then took the fight to the Supreme Court, asking for a stay of Howell’s contempt order and the financial penalty she sought to impose: $50,000 a day as long as the firm refused to provide information sought by the grand jury.

Chief Justice John Roberts granted a temporary stay to allow both sides to submit arguments to the high court, but on Tuesday the justices turned down the company’s stay request, without comment or noted dissent. Roberts also lifted the administrative stay he’d imposed.

The company still has a pending petition asking the Supreme Court to dig into the legal merits of the dispute, but all of the court filings on the stay issue were submitted under seal. A copy of a motion related to the petition for certiorari was made public by the court, but nearly every word was blacked out.

There has been no public indication whether the court intends to grant motions to keep the filings sealed. Typically, such submissions are treated as sealed until the court rules on whether sealing is appropriate.

The Reporters Committee motion argues that wholesale or near-complete sealing is unwarranted, particularly in light of the D.C. Circuit judgment from last month and a redacted opinion that court made public Tuesday, shortly after the Supreme Court turned down the stay request.

“The D.C. Circuit’s public filings make clear that a blanket seal of these proceedings cannot be justified,” the organization argued in its motion, filed by Ted Boutrous and other lawyers from law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. “Where a court can file a fully reasoned, unredacted judgment deciding an appeal, followed by a more detailed redacted version of its opinion, the briefs can be similarly accessible.”

Some of the measures taken to preserve secrecy in the case have only fueled suspicions of Mueller’s involvement. When a panel of three appeals court judges heard closed-door arguments in the dispute last month, reporters gathered to see who was coming and going, but court personnel took the unusual step of ousting the media from the normally public hallways near the courtroom.

The identity of the company and the foreign country involved in the subpoena fight remain a mystery, but CNN reported Wednesday that some of the lawyers involved in the case are from Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based law firm that has represented various Russian interests.

Josh Gerstein is a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee.