FBI Ignores Court Order, Congressional Oversight; Refuses To Respond To Questions About Clinton Emails
from the no-one-makes-the-FBI-do-ANYTHING.-got-it? dept
Well, it appears some Senate committee heads are getting a little taste of what it feels like to be Just Another Citizen. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is irritated the FBI won't apprise him of the latest developments in the Hillary Clinton email debacle.
Grassley, whose panel oversees the FBI, reacted sharply to a letter the FBI sent Monday turning aside U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan's request for information on whether investigators have been able to retrieve records from a backup thumb drive of Clinton emails or from a server turned over by a tech company Clinton hired.Grassley is right about most of this. The FBI does tend to believe it's above the law, what with its warrantless surveillance, refusal to cooperate with DOJ oversight and its general indifference to its own internal policies. But what Grassley is complaining about is standard operating procedure by the agency. When not withholding information for bogus reasons, the agency quite frequently cites "ongoing investigations" when refusing to turn over documents.
"The FBI is behaving like it’s above the law," Grassley said in a statement provided to POLITICO on Monday evening. "Simply refusing to cooperate with a court-ordered request is not an appropriate course of action. This entire case, from Secretary Clinton’s ill-advised decision to use a non-government email server, to the FBI’s investigation about classified information, needs some transparency in order to assure the American people that getting to the bottom of this controversy is a priority.”
Here's FBI general counsel James Baker's response to the court's request for a status update in the ongoing FOIA lawsuit:
"At this time, consistent with long-standing Department of Justice and FBI policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation, nor are we in a position to provide additional information at this time," Baker wrote to senior State Department attorney Mary McLeod.The fun thing about investigations (and this goes for local law enforcement just as much as it does for the FBI) is that they can be started at any time, run indefinitely and agencies are under no obligation to inform anyone when investigations are completed, abandoned, etc. That's up to the public (and senators and, apparently, even the State Department) to suss out via FOIA requests, court orders or shouty statements delivered to journalists.
Yes, the FBI is likely doing a bit of stonewalling, but as long as it has an open investigative file and someone drops something into it occasionally over the next indeterminate number of years, it will never need to turn over relevant documents. Certainly Grassley and his committee will be able to bring more pressure to bear than the average FOIA requester, but for the immediate future, the senator will have to deal with the FBI's auto-response brushoff.
Once this gets squared away, the senator may want to take a look at the specifics of our FOIA law, especially where it intersects with law enforcement's many exemptions and other FOIA escape hatches. That's where some work needs to be done. There's an FOIA Improvements Act bill that hasn't gone anywhere since February of this year that could be put back into play. Grassley was the last one who touched it, so he should know exactly where it is.
It's certainly frustrating that the FBI has so many ways of saying, "No." The agency is incredibly adept when it comes to refusals. As it has demonstrated multiple times in the past, it can still say "No" even while saying "Yes." It's a systemic problem that places the public's right to know far below these agencies' desire to keep as much information as possible to themselves.
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Filed Under: chuck grassley, court order, emails, fbi, hillary clinton
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Bravo. Now who is being arrested/severely punished for acting outside of the law? Nobody? Why are we complaining about?
The Congress has been happy to delegate their Constitutional powers to whoever pays best while simply refusing to actually put the Executive back in its place and the worst he has to say about it is "not an apropriate course of action"? Really?
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The First Commandment of Any Bureaucracy
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Not "no"
It's certainly frustrating that the FBI has so many ways of saying, "Fuck you."
FTFY
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Just cut their budget to zero
Or, less drastically, Congress can mandate that anyone who refuses to answer their question will have their salary suspended until they decide to cooperate...
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Well... yeah
When you know that no-one capable of holding you accountable actually has any desire to do so, no matter what you do, then yeah, for all intents and purposes you are above the law.
The FBI is being a bit more blunt about it than is usually considered 'acceptable', but that they are making it clear that they don't have to do anything they don't care to is hardly surprising, because let's be honest, what is congress going to do about it? Bluster a bit, issue some sternly worded statements? Oh no, what a terrible thing to have to suffer through for the FBI...
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clinton
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Correction is needed:
Wrong. Look at the FBI's response: "we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation." That's even worse than saying the investigation is "open", now they refuse to admit if there even is an investigation! So even if the case is "closed" they can STILL decide to glomar its existence.
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Puppet court
Figure heads
Megnomaniacs
....comes to mind
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Yes....whats the punishment......nothing
News at ten: "Behaviour gets worse"
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As above, so below, not!
I figure at this rate, it should take the American people about another twenty six years to realize that under war measure law, The FBI and any other agency the federal government so designates, IS above the law that governs the general riff-raff.
Actually, its not that the federal government and its agencies are ABOVE the law.
Its more like the law is simply BENEATH the important and wealthy members of the federal government and its agencies.
You know.
The law is down there where all you little unimportant people live, among the rats and cockroaches.
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