Department used last-minute privacy concerns to halt release, then ignored direct order from president to make memos public.
In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents.
The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours before Trump left office on noon of Jan. 20, 2021.
Meadows' memo confirmed prior reporting by Just the News that Trump on Jan. 19, 2021 declassified a binder of hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents that show how the bureau used informants and FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and misled both a federal court and Congress about flaws in the evidence they offered to get approval for the investigation.
The declassified documents included transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
In the end, multiple investigations found there was no such collusion and that the FBI violated rules and misled the FISA court in an effort to keep the probe going.
The documents that Trump declassified never saw the light of day, even though they were lawfully declassified by Trump and the DOJ was instructed by the president though Meadows to expeditiously release them after redacting private information as necessary.
"I am returning the bulk of the binder of declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have a potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied," Meadows wrote in the memo.
Just the News obtained the memo after going to the Trump collection at the National Archives and asking it to look for the binder of documents Trump had declassified. The Archives said it did not possess the documents, the Justice Department did and provided a copy of Meadows' memo.
In an interview Tuesday night on the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show, Meadows said he was dismayed that DOJ ignored a lawful instruction from a sitting president and said it was part of a larger...
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Foxes guarding the henhouse, and you expect justice? Not until you shoot the fox!
ReplyDeleteWhy did he wait till the last minute to release them. The dog and pony show continues.
ReplyDeleteSome of the FB discussions I’ve been in about the Trump administration and why he did some things the way he did, I can’t help but wonder sometimes if Trump was just following his script. Much like a professional wrestling encounter.
DeleteHow he responded to the FISA bs and how long it took to declassify and then allow release to be slow-walked, you have to wonder if that was the plan. Always keep both sides fully energized so they are ready to be played off each other.