Like a bad penny, the Justice Department attorneys who have had to defend President Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission can’t escape an interview its leader, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, gave to Breitbart on the day of the commission’s demise.

Kobach’s claims to Breitbart — which included that the commission had already produced findings and that the Department of Homeland Security, with Kobach’s consultation, was going to continue the commission’s work — have come up again and again in the litigation that continued around the commission, even after Trump dissolved it due to mounting lawsuits.

A Wednesday order from a judge demanding that the panel’s internal communications be turned over to Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap (D), one of the members of the commission, was no different. Her order came six months after a previous decision, shortly before Trump disbanded the commission, that Dunlap receive the documents.

In her opinion granting Dunlap’s request for documents, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly cited multiple comments that Kobach made to Breitbart.

First was Kobach’s boast that he would be “working closely with the White House and DHS to ensure the investigations continue.”

That and other comments made by Trump and the administration suggested to the judge that “the issue would remain on the agenda.” Despite that, she wrote, “Nowhere did Defendants indicate that they would comply” with her previous order, handed down days before the commission was terminated, that Dunlap get the documents.

The second comment in the Breitbart article that popped up in the judge’s opinion was refence “the voter fraud commission has revealed” certain findings.

The Justice Department argued that Kobach was not referring to any final commission report — which Dunlap, in bringing the lawsuit, alleged he was being denied participation in — but rather “reference material that was presented to the Commission at its meetings.”

The judge, pointing to similar comments made by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said “this suggestion of findings cannot be skirted so easily.”

She rejected the Justice Department’s attempts to walk back the comments about the commission’s findings. “[S]uch post-hoc rationalizations are not persuasive, particularly where Defendants offer no declarations from Mr. Kobach or the press secretary (or the President), nor even counsel’s own explanation of the press secretary’s statement on the part of those Defendants who indisputably remain in this case,” the judge said.

Whether the commission had in fact been working on a set of findings was key to Dunlap’s case because he had argued that he had been shut out of its work.

“A review of the records themselves will reveal whether some of them could be characterized as findings, or even a report, although they may not be captioned as such,” Kollar-Kotelly said.

Wednesday’s opinion was not the first time that this Breitbart interview and other comments Kobach made to the press after the commission’s disbandment had come back to haunt the administration — they had come up repeatedly in multiple lawsuits earlier this year.

For this lawsuit, the commission has until July 18 to turn over the documents Dunlap has requested.

Read the lawsuit below: