COLLUSION: Judicial Watch files lawsuit for communications with environmental groups on Dakota Access pipeline.

Judicial Watch announced on Wednesday it filed suit against the Department of Defense and Army Corps of Engineers, seeking to obtain communications between government officials in the Obama administration and environmental groups related to protests last year opposing the Dakota Access pipeline.

The conservative watchdog group’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed June 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charges that the Obama administration and environmentalists worked “hand-in-glove” to try to stop the pipeline’s construction and asks to review communications between the two camps to prove it.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said his group issued a FOIA with the Defense Department for the communications in May but has not received a response. The group wants communications between the Army Corps of Engineers, which had to review and sign off on the project, and Greenpeace, Sierra Club, EarthJustice and Friends of the Earth.

“Barack Obama and radical – and often violent – environmentalists worked in hand-in-glove to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline. We’re not sure why the Trump Defense Department would hide the facts about this scandal and force us to go to federal court to enforce FOIA,” Fitton said in a statement.

The suit relates to months of protests last year over the 1,172-mile pipeline, built to deliver shale oil from North Dakota to Midwestern refineries.

The reason lefties thought the Tea Party movement was astroturf is because that’s how they operate.