A lawsuit seeking e-mails from Governor Blunt might soon be revived.
Deputy Attorney General Karen Mitchell has written Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan, asking that Callahan appoint a Special Assistant Attorney General in the case. Callahan had dismissed the initial lawsuit filed by a special investigative team that Attorney General Jay Nixon said would operate independent of his office. Lead investigator, former State Highway Patrol Superintendent Mel Fisher, filed the suit. Callahan found that Fisher didn’t have standing to bring the suit. Callahan ordered the suit dismissed in ten days unless the Attorney General joined it or sought appointment of a Special Assistant Attorney General. A third option offered was for Fisher to re-file the suit as an aggrieved Missouri taxpayer.
In her letter to Callahan, Mitchell stated that Nixon does not intend at this time to join the lawsuit as a party.
The lawsuit was initially filed after the governor’s office refused to hand over e-mails to the investigative team unless it paid more than half a million dollars to process the information to determine which e-mails would be considered public record and which would not.