David Grusch — public litigation records (EDVA FOIA suit + Loudoun County records suit)
What: docket/record facts for the two lawsuits David Grusch has described as his post-disclosure “lawfare” — a federal FOIA suit in the Eastern District of Virginia, and a Virginia state suit (now on appeal) against the Loudoun County Sheriff over the release of his mental-health incident report. Why captured: Grusch references both in his May-2026 Judicial Watch interview (judicial-watch-grusch-2026-05-05, ~35:32 and ~43:24). Sourcing: federal docket facts from the U.S. Courts PACER system via CourtListener (docket 72351349; retrieved 2026-06-05); state-case facts from contemporaneous reporting (Virginia Mercury, Loudoun Times-Mirror) and from court-hearing reporting by @SignalsIntelUFO on X. Captured: 2026-06-05. Primary court-record data is marked as such; journalist-reported holdings are attributed. Analysis: grusch-career-and-claims.
1. Federal FOIA suit — Grusch v. United States Department of Defense (E.D. Va.)
Primary court-record data (PACER via CourtListener):
- Case: David Charles Grusch v. United States Department of Defense
- Court: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria Division)
- Docket number: 1:26-cv-00607 · PACER case id: 591669
- Date filed: 2026-03-02 (active; not terminated as of the 2026-03-18 record timestamp)
- Cause of action (verbatim): “05:552 Freedom of Information Act” · Nature of suit: 895 (Freedom of Information Act) · Jurisdiction: U.S. Government Defendant
- Assigned judge: Hon. Leonie M. Brinkema · Referred to (magistrate): William E. Fitzpatrick
- Parties: David Charles Grusch (plaintiff) v. United States Department of Defense (defendant)
- Plaintiff’s counsel: Anthony Shin (Shin Law Office, PLC) and Basil Munzer Al-Qaneh (Martin & Jones, PLLC) · Defense: Huntington MacCallum Willis and Matthew J. Mezger (U.S. Attorney’s Office, E.D. Va.)
- Early entries on the docket: Complaint (entry 2, 2026-03-02) and proposed summonses (entries 5–7).
What Grusch says the suit is for (his own account, Judicial Watch ~35:42, verbatim from judicial-watch-grusch-2026-05-05):
“the main one is, you know, I have a [FOIA] lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia because it’s come to my attention that when I went public in June 2023, … the Department of the Air Force filed an unauthorized disclosure Espionage Act … complaint against me. … went to a particular office in the Pentagon that’s in the pleadings that are public record. And … I’d like to see that paper trail, that evidentiary trail … to see why they felt compelled to come after me … luckily … that complaint was denied because of the legal preparatory work that I did.”
He emphasizes he held a TS clearance for 21 years and went through DoD prepublication/security review, and frames the alleged Air Force referral as a “fear-based knee-jerk reaction” by officials “silhouetting themselves.” (His characterization; the underlying Air Force complaint is not in the public record — the FOIA suit seeks exactly that paper trail.)
2. Virginia state suit — Grusch v. Chapman (Loudoun County Sheriff)
The underlying release. After Grusch’s July 26, 2023 congressional testimony, The Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein obtained, via a Virginia FOIA request to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, a police incident report documenting an October 2018 episode: Grusch’s wife called the Sheriff’s Office to report he was drunk and “suicidal.” Grusch was detained under an Emergency Custody Order (~8 hours), then a Temporary Detention Order was sought (72-hour), and he was released. The Intercept published a redacted version; Grusch’s name was redacted but he was identifiable from other details. He retained his security clearance after the incident and has attributed the episode to combat-related PTSD. (Reporting: Virginia Mercury, 2023-08-11 and 2024-08-02, citing the Loudoun Times-Mirror.)
The suit. Grusch sued Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman (and a staff member), seeking **~2.5M), alleging the office unlawfully released records he argued were exempt from FOIA as relating to “involuntary admissions.” The Sheriff’s Office said it acted “in accordance with the law.”
Dismissal (2025-08-06/07, reported via @SignalsIntelUFO court-hearing coverage). The court heard Sheriff Chapman’s demurrer, arguing Grusch’s remaining counts (gross and willful negligence) failed as a matter of law even assuming all alleged facts true. The judge held:
- the release of the redacted incident report was authorized under Virginia’s FOIA law;
- the Sheriff “showed some level of care” in the release — and any showing of care defeats gross negligence, while willful negligence requires conscious disregard;
- accordingly both remaining claims were dismissed with prejudice (cannot be refiled).
Appeal. On 2025-08-22, Grusch formally noticed an appeal to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, seeking to reverse the circuit court’s dismissal. In the Judicial Watch interview he notes the appeal turns on Virginia law being “silent on … records release policy” (~35:32) and ties the original release to a “preparatory whispering campaign” — within nine days of his July-2023 testimony, an Intercept reporter ran what he calls a “hit piece” on his PTSD history, and he asserts (citing a Breaking Points admission) that “DoD and IC officers went to [the reporter] and tipped him off” from his “multi-agency security file” (~43:24–44:09).
(The exact Loudoun County Circuit Court and Court of Appeals case numbers are not captured here — Virginia’s online case system is interactive-only — but the parties, claims, dismissal holding, and appeal-notice date are as above.)