The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday released a portion of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' security clearance documents in response to a public-records lawsuit, but at a subsequent court hearing, attorneys were still quibbling over the disclosure.

American Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group that has sued numerous federal agencies for Trump-related documents, filed the Sessions-related lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in April.

The complaint sought a portion of Sessions-signed paperwork relating to any foreign contacts he had in the past seven years. The group also requested any FBI records that would address any contact between the then-U.S. senator from Alabama and Russians. The Justice Department released a single page in response Thursday, one day after a court-ordered deadline to do so. The department did not release any notes, because, lawyers said at a court hearing, the agency found no responsive records on Sessions' Russian contacts.

According to court filings, DOJ officials made the decision to disclose the document in “consultation with the attorney general.” The lawsuit shows how entangled top Trump administration lawyers have been, and could be, in litigation in the coming months.

The Justice Department, according to American Oversight, resisted revealing the document, in what American Oversight executive director Austin Evers called a “really troubling 24 hours.”

The DOJ asked American Oversight on Wednesday for a 36-hour extension to produce the documents. In its court filing Thursday, DOJ lawyers said they released the single page in consultation with the attorney general. The government, still asserting its authority to withhold the Sessions record, said it “has consented to a discretionary release” of the document.

“Reading between the lines, what happened yesterday is that what should be a cut-and-dry political FOIA decision wound up on the desk of the attorney general or the people around him and it got very complicated all of a sudden,” Evers told reporters after the hearing.

The Justice Department had confirmed in May that Sessions indeed met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last year and did not disclose the meeting on the form. A DOJ spokeswoman said an FBI employee told Sessions and his staff that he didn't need to list meetings with ambassadors that occurred in connection to his work as a senator.

The DOJ did not release the signature page of the form Thursday. In the court hearing, DOJ lawyer Anjali Motgi said the agency did not believe that was a clear part of American Oversight's request. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of the District of Columbia disagreed, and asked Motgi to consult with the DOJ about releasing the form. Motgi said she would, but that she could not at that time guarantee its release.

“Let's just be really clear what the signature says,” Evers said. “It's below the line that says, 'If I lie on this form it's perjury.' They didn't want to turn that over.”

The single page the DOJ filed is heavily redacted, but clearly shows Sessions checked “no,” that neither he nor his family members had any contact with the Russian government in the past seven years.

American Oversight's lawyers said they will consult with the DOJ about its search process for any additional, relevant records about Sessions' meetings with foreign nationals. “We're going to really pressure test whether the DOJ did its job,” Evers said.