Some good news..
Judge: Trump's release of dossier memos opens door to disclosures from FBI
By JOSH GERSTEIN
08/16/2018 09:40 PM EDT
The judge previously ruled that the president’s tweets about the dossier did not require the FBI, led by director Christopher Wray (right), to be more responsive to public records requests on the issue. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Judge: Trump's release of dossier memos opens door to disclosures from FBI
By JOSH GERSTEIN
08/16/2018 09:40 PM EDT
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.
https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2018/08/16/trump-dossier-fbi-disclosures-782237