What is Missouri’s Eric Schmitt trying to hide? A tale of two open records requests

I recently sent an open records request to Colorado. I wanted a police report from a few years ago.

I sent an email around 10 a.m. After some brief correspondence, and a payment of $17, I had the requested documents by 3 p.m. It was quick, easy, professional.

Let’s contrast that approach with an open records request I sent to the office of Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

I emailed the request on Feb. 2, more than 90 days ago. I asked for memos, emails, texts and other correspondence related to the 2020 presidential election, the count of electoral votes, and the certification of those votes on Jan. 6.

No one seriously doubts Schmitt’s critical role in encouraging the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. I wanted a better understanding of Schmitt’s connections to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the perpetuation of the Big Lie that persists, even now.

Just this week, we learned Schmitt has taken over as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, whose policy arm encouraged the violent march on the Capitol that day. Another link.

I was told the requested documents would be available in March at the earliest. As March came and went, I was told to expect the records in late April, at the earliest. As I write, in May, I’ve received nothing.

This week I wrote to the office, asking for an explanation. Crickets.

There is a difference, of course, between a four-page police report and hundreds of pages of communications in the attorney general’s office. Some delay in Missouri’s response is understandable, and acceptable.

But the failure to provide the requested material in a timely way, and similar problems for other reporters and interested citizens, reflect a disturbing truth: Eric Schmitt simply doesn’t believe the public has a right to know how his office does its work.

“It is absolutely ridiculous,” said Elad Gross, a former candidate for attorney general now engaged in a legal battle over Schmitt documents.

“Attorneys general throughout the country used to tout how important this law was … for a functioning democracy,” he said. “And now here’s this guy saying ‘maybe I’ll get back to you.’“

Resistance to Sunshine Law disclosures is deeply cynical. It ignores a crucial reality: Public documents belong to the public who paid for them. They don’t belong to the public servants who created them.

The belief that the people’s business should be kept secret from the public — an idea ingrained in Jefferson City — is deceitful and wrong, not to mention illegal.

There’s another possibility. It could be that Schmitt is hiding documents related to the election because he and his staff were entangled in the Jan. 6 riot, and don’t want Missourians to know about it. The Republican’s lead role in challenging results from other states is unmistakable on the current record, but additional correspondence could help fill in the blanks of his behavior.

The documents might exonerate him, too. Either way, the public has a right to know what Schmitt’s office and staff said and did last year, and in January. He must produce the material, full stop, as quickly as possible.

Missouri, like much of the nation, must come to grips with the extraordinary threat some state Republicans posed after last year’s presidential election. Schmitt and his comrade Sen. Josh Hawley openly flirted with seditionists, enabling their behavior. They’re now trying to evade their role in the Capitol’s destruction.

They cannot be allowed to rewrite history so easily. We must know what they did, and why, or it will happen again, and self-government will fade away.