FBI offers curious reason for refusing to turn over Clinton emails

And here I bet you thought that the Hillary Clinton email scandal was over, didn’t you? No such luck.

The Daily Caller has a report on a puzzling development this month in the ongoing investigation. New York Attorney Ty Clevenger filed a Freedom of Information Act request in March of last year for a number of the Clinton emails which were under scrutiny. Now, seventeen months later, he’s finally gotten his answer. Nope. The FBI is refusing to turn them over. The reason? Because the petitioner failed to demonstrate a sufficient public interest in making the documents public. I’ll give you all a moment here to pick your collective jaws up off the floor.

Advertisement

The FBI refused to turn over documents related to its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, citing a “lack of public interest” to justify denying a FOIA request for the records.

The head of the FBI Records Management Division wrote Ty Clevenger, a New York Attorney who filed the FOIA request in March 2016, to inform him that his request was being denied in late August.

“You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject,” the letter, obtained by Fox News, reads. “Therefore, records regarding your subject are withheld pursuant to FOIA exemptions.”

First of all, Clevenger wasn’t seeking the entire library of emails from the secret bathroom server. He specifically requested any emails relating to House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz’s Sept. 6, 2016 referral to the Department of Justice. He described his reaction as one of being “stunned” when he received a letter earlier this month asking him to explain why the public had an interest in seeing the emails. That’s understandable. He wasn’t looking to sort through all of the information about hot yoga classes or Chelsea’s wedding plans or whatever else Hillary claimed were in the deleted files. This was part of an active investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents. And if there was any sensitive information in the communications, those portions could have easily been redacted at some point over the past year and a half.

Advertisement

Needless to say, Clevenger smells some political bias in the refusal. (Emphasis added)

“I’m just stunned. This is exactly what I would have expected had Mrs. Clinton won the election, but she didn’t. It looks like the Obama Administration is still running the FBI,” Clevenger told The Washington Times.

If there’s another explanation aside from a desire to provide political cover to the Democrats I’d seriously like to hear it. And the question of precisely who is running the FBI these days is a valid one as well. Pretty much every scrap of largely irrelevant information the bureau has dug up pertaining to the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation has not only been obtained by the FBI but immediately leaked out to the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN. But Clinton’s emails are off limits?

You might as well laugh about this. Otherwise you’d likely end up crying.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement