Posted on 08/17/2018 9:53:40 AM PDT by cotton1706
President Donald Trump’s decision to declassify competing congressional memos about the validity of the so-called Steele dossier means the FBI has lost its authority to rebuff Freedom of Information Act requests about the bureau’s efforts to verify the report’s intelligence linking Trump to Russia during the 2016 campaign, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta previously blessed the FBI’s decision to refuse such FOIA requests by declining to confirm whether any records exist about aspects of its handling of the hotly contested dossier, prepared by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The judge ruled in January that Trump’s tweets about the dossier did not require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to be more responsive to public records requests on the issue.
However, Mehta said Trump’s actions in February to greenlight the release of one memo from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a separate memo from the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, left untenable the FBI’s position of resisting disclosure.
“It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents” related to attempts to verify information in the dossier, Mehta wrote in a 13-page opinion.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
When all else fails, do the right thing, and speak the whole truth.
This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
Go get ‘em Judicial Watch!..................
Well! Well! it appears that at least one judge has seen the light of truth.
It took six months.
The Judge sees the Obstruction and wants no part of it.
Anything the FBI Swamp is forced to release will help President Trump, they have already leaked or redacted anything that would hurt him.
No one else will.
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U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta previously blessed the FBI’s decision to refuse such FOIA requests by declining to confirm whether any records exist about aspects of its handling of the hotly contested dossier, prepared by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
Thanks cotton1706.
bmk
Zubin Mehta is an Indian Conductor who has lived in many countries around the world, while Judge Amit Mehta was raised, schooled, and remains in the DC area. Mehta means "chief" and seems to be a popular Indian name.
I wonder if he’s Parsi (Zoroastrian) like Zubin Mehta?
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