If you read the court documents linked into the article, the high tech, high powered F.I.Bee received a copy of the files on a CD.
F.I.Bee also stated in the court filing for reconsideration that it never opened an investigation in the case, nor even processed the information. That raises the questions - who decided to receive it in the agency, and why it accept receipt of the CD in the first place if they did not intend to process it, to decide whether to open an investigation? Despite the agency claiming it did nothing with the files, it is claiming the old “investigative methods” would be disclosed, and also that by disclosing the files it will irreparably harm the agency because local law enforcement will be hesitant to share information with them in the future.
To the first point, if FIBee did not open an investigation, nor process the information, seems that there are no investigative methods to disclose on those files. To the 2nd point, let say that is true ... that disclosure of the unprocessed, un-investigated files provided by local law enforcement would make local law enforcement not want to cooperate in similar ways in the future. WHose fault is that - the FIBee are the responsible party, not the FOIA requestor. It should have thought about that before it inexplicably said they would accept the file. They damaged themselves. Except they are lying.
Given what we just saw come out in the Deschenko trial, here is my take. Like putting Deschenko on the payroll while Trump was POTUS, they made him inaccessible to be a “witness”. By taking a copy of the Seth file in CD form into agency files, they put up a legal moat, to prevent the discovery what would be DNC criminal activity to which the agency is an active participant. There may be some of the DNC-FIBee agency data - spying on Trump and the Russia hoax on the CD too.
WHat we do know is the FIBee lied when a FOIA request was made in 2016 that they came up with nothing. But in a subsequent matter, an email with Seth Rich’s name in it that would have been easily discoverable by their computer search methods in 2016. Then they were forced to admit their lie but now claim that it would take at least 66 years to provide the requested information (500 pages per week). That means to me the agency has over 13 million pages related to this case. Kind of hard to miss 13 million pages.
Wow, you’ve given this a lot of thought. What is clear is that somebody in the agency is lying, bigly.