UPDATE: Judge wants to review search warrant related to Hillary's FBI investigation. [View all]

[pnwmom]

Last edited Wed Dec 14, 2016, 05:00 AM - Edit history (3)

The attorney who filed the petition, after previously filing an unmet FOIA request, says that the judge who signed the search warrant to look into Weiner's computer for documents pertinent to the Clinton investigation should have done so on the basis of "probable cause." The search turned up nothing, so the attorney wants to know what the "probable cause" was -- and to see who might have been lying to the FBI to get them to ask for this search.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-judge-wants-to-see-clinton-emails-search-warrant/2016/12/13/30effe78-c16e-11e6-92e8-c07f4f671da4_story.html?postshare=8911481696183237&tid=ss_fb-bottom&utm_term=.d3c11a0e2f62

Justice Department lawyer Jennie Kneedler told Castel that the government opposes Schoenberg’s request and noted that Schoenberg had not demonstrated that a need for secrecy that existed before was no longer relevant. She said the government wants to show why the unrelated ongoing criminal investigation is relevant to whether the public has a right to access any search warrant application materials related to Clinton.

“There are things we would like to make your honor aware of,” Kneedler said.

The judge said the case is different, in part, because FBI Director James Comey announced Oct. 28 that the FBI had learned about the emails and that they appeared relevant to its already-completed investigation of Clinton’s personal email server. He noted that Comey two days before the election updated Congress by saying the FBI’s review of the new emails had not changed its conclusions that she should not face charges.

Castel said he plans to rule quickly. He rejected a government request to delay its submission of materials by a day. He also told Schoenberg’s lawyer to notify attorneys for Clinton, Abedin and Weiner about the request to make documents public.

http://gothamist.com/2016/12/13/doj_clinton_documents.php

A federal judge this afternoon indicated that he is inclined to unseal documents related to FBI Director James Comey's protocol-breaching announcement of a new angle on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server 11 days before the election. The judge's statements in court came in response to a records-access lawsuit filed in parallel with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the search warrant and supporting documents that the FBI and Justice Department used to review the Clinton-related emails of aide Huma Abedin. The emails were found on Anthony Weiner's computer, during a separate investigation into his reported sexual online messages to a teenage girl in North Carolina.

Instead of demanding that the FBI produce the documents, lawyer Abraham Hassen explained, the suit heard today asks the court to turn them over. Hassen's client, E. Randol Schoenberg, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in the recovery of Nazi loot, believes that because the FBI investigation into Clinton was again shelved two days before the election, the documents that the FBI prepared to get a judge to sign off on the search warrant for Abedin's computer may show some funny business, by overly zealous conservative FBI agents, Trump surrogates feeding the FBI bad information, or even the Clinton camp.

SNIP

Judge P. Kevin Castel gave the government, as well as Weiner, Abedin, Clinton until Thursday to make arguments as to why he should not unseal the documents, or what should be redacted. Castel made the decision over the objections of federal lawyers who traveled up from Washington, D.C. to argue at the hearing, according to Hassen.

SNIP

"I think this one is a little bit more urgent," he said. "If—and this is obviously a huge leap—if there was some illegal activity that led to this failed search warrant and that traces back to the Trump campaign, that could have huge ramifications with Congress and the electoral college."