10 May 2017 3:37 pm
In his letter firing James Comey, 45 said that Comey had informed him on three separate occasions that he was NOT under investigation.Court Filing Indicates FBI Has Active Investigation Pertaining to Donald Trump’s Call for Russian Hacking and Espionage
President Trump’s May 9, 2017 letter firing now-former FBI Director James Comey in part reads, “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation[.]”
However, a recent court filing by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FBI in an ongoing FOIA lawsuit plainly indicates the FBI has an active investigation pertaining to Donald Trump’s actions related to actual or potential election-related hacking and espionage by Russia.
The lawsuit is filed by Ryan Shapiro, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) PhD candidate/Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University research affiliate, and Jason Leopold, Senior Investigative Journalist at BuzzFeed News.
On August 18, 2016, Shapiro and Leopold submitted a FOIA request to the FBI seeking “disclosure of any and all records, including investigative records, mentioning or referring to Donald J. Trump’s statement on 27 July, 2016 [regarding Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails], ‘Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,’ and ‘I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.’”
When the FBI did not respond in a timely manner to the FOIA request, Shapiro and Leopold sued.
During the lawsuit, the FBI initially asserted that it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of documents responsive to this FOIA request.
However, the FBI subsequently withdrew this position and agreed to search for the requested documents.
Again, the documents requested by Shapiro and Leopold are records, including investigative records, mentioning or referring to a public statement made
personally by Donald J. Trump, not his advisors, surrogates, or campaign staff.
In a court filing in this case on April 6, 2017, a Justice Department attorney representing the FBI informed the Court that there is an “active, ongoing investigation” pertaining to this matter and claimed that disclosing the “records that are responsive to the Russia Request” could reasonably be expected to interfere with “enforcement proceedings.”
(As noted elsewhere in the DOJ/FBI’s new filing, the term “Russia Request” refers explicitly to Shapiro and Leopold’s FOIA request quoted above.)
The DOJ/FBI’s new court filing acknowledges the existence of records responsive to Shapiro and Leopold’s “Russia Request”, and claimed that all, or virtually all, of these documents cannot be released because of the potential to interfere with active law enforcement proceedings.
First of all, it doesn't pass the smell test that Comey would have done that, and secondly like most of what 45 says, it's probably not true.
The FOIA request was specifically for any records pertaining to the statement made by 45 himself asking Russia to find HRC's emails, and the FBI informed the court that there is an 'active, ongoing investigation' pertaining to that statement.
(there is a link to these court documents in the second sentence of the story)