In August 2025, reporters at Mountain State Spotlight wanted to know who Gov. Patrick Morrisey was meeting with. So we sent a Freedom of Information Act request for his visitors log.
In the logs, we found a meeting that took place on March 12, 2025, between the governor and representatives of the gun industry, including Marty Daniel, the founder of Daniel Defense LLC. From there, we cross-referenced the date with when bills were introduced, and discovered that the next day Morrisey asked lawmakers to introduce a bill that would punish banks for divesting themselves from the gun industry.
But how did Daniel get to Charleston? Looking through the legislative history, we identified another bill that passed that made it harder for victims to sue gun companies. Listening to testimony, we discovered Marty Daniel was invited to speak on that bill. Subsequent interviews revealed how that transpired.
But stories like this will be harder to get in the future.
We asked for the governor’s visitor log again in October, and the governor’s office responded that it had stopped keeping a visitors log.
At a press conference, we asked the governor about this decision. Morrisey complained that reporters were abusing the FOIA system, creating too much work for his staff.
“Sometimes people go on fishing expeditions, and that takes a lot of our time,” Morrisey said. “We’d rather just answer your questions, but we’re always going to follow through, follow in accordance with the law, but we’re not going to make a lot of extra time and work for our office when some people are trying to abuse the system.”