Campbell says she will let DiZoglio hire outside lawyer in audit lawsuit fight

Politics admin May 13, 2026 0 Comments

Campbell says she will let DiZoglio hire outside lawyer in audit lawsuit fight

Attorney General Andrea Campbell said Tuesday she intends to let state Auditor Diana DiZoglio hire an outside attorney to represent her officein her lawsuit against the Massachusetts Legislature, potentially clearing the way for DiZoglio to pursue her bid to compel lawmakers to comply with her effort to audit their chambers.

Campbell won’t represent DiZoglio or legislative leaders in court, she said during a radio appearance, but she will not stand in the way of allowing the auditor to hire an outside attorney to plead her case.

The development, compelled by an order from the state’s highest court, came with a caveat. Campbell said she first wants DiZoglio to throw out her existing lawsuit and refile a version that explicitly narrows the scope of what she might seek to audit to align with an order from the Supreme Judicial Court.

In a letter Tuesday, M. Patrick Moore Jr., Campbell’s first assistant attorney general, asked lawyers for DiZoglio to agree todismiss the lawsuit they filed earlier this year without Campbell’s authorization and file a new, more limited complaint by Monday.

Attorney’s for DiZoglio laid out the scope of her audit during a hearing before the state’s highest court last week and in a letter in January 2025, in which she requested the House and Senate budgets, copies of other official audits, and a list of all “monetary” agreements with current and former employees since fiscal year 2021. Campbell’s lawyers said Tuesday she wants DiZoglio to file a new lawsuit limited to those specifications.

Attorneys for Campbell and DiZoglio appeared before the Supreme Judicial Court last week, which ordered Campbell to file a “status report” within 30 days with her decision about whether she would represent the auditor in court, as well as a statement about whether she wants to continue her bid to strike the lawsuit DiZoglio filed.

A spokesperson for Campbell on Tuesday did not give a timeline for when she might file that report.

Campbell first announced that she would let DiZoglio hire an outside attorney during an interview on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” on Tuesday.

In a statement sent out before Campbell made her letter public, a spokesperson for DiZoglio said her office was “pleased that the AG has now publicly committed to allowing our office to appoint an attorney of our choosing.”

“We are cautiously optimistic that this also means the AG will be withdrawing her motion to strike on behalf of the Speaker and Senate President,” the spokesperson, Alysha Palumbo Garvin, said.

DiZoglio tapped Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who lost to Campbell in the 2022 Democratic primary for attorney general, to represent her in court last week, and her office indicated Tuesday the auditor intended to have her continue to argue the case on behalf of the auditor’s office. Moore said in the letter that the attorney general’s office is already coordinating with Liss-Riordan, “to receive the information necessary to appoint” a special assistant attorney general.

Campbell’s request adds one more small procedural hurdle to the already drawn-out battle between DiZoglio and legislative leaders that began after voters approved a 2024 ballot question giving her the authority to probe the chambers.

Lawmakers have so far resisted DiZoglio’s effort to audit the chambers, in part by casting doubt on the constitutionality of the audit.

Their opposition seems to have only emboldened DiZoglio, who has effectively been campaigning on her quest to audit the Legislature since she entered the race for the relatively obscure statewide seat she won in 2022.

Justices appeared eager to weigh in on the long-running legal dispute between DiZoglio, Campbell, and lawmakers over DiZoglio’s audit.

“People have an interest in having that resolved, and this court ultimately decides whether that’s constitutional,” Justice Scott Kafker said during last week’s arguments.