Thread by @JasonLeopold

A story/update about a #FOIA lawsuit against FBI @_rshapiro & I have been battling for yrs

In 1997, The Smoking Gun (remember them?) posted an FBI memo from 1981, along w/file #, that said Donald Trump wanted to build a casino in AC & offered to be an informant for the bureau 1/

I wrote about this document after @NatSecGeek resurfaced it a day before Trump was inaugurated in January 2017

2/

buzzfeednews.com/article/jasona…

.@_rshapiro & I then filed #FOIA requests with FBI for all documents the FBI had on Trump from 1946 through June 15, 2015, a day before he announced his candidacy for president. We cited the file number from that 1981 FBI memo, which turned out to be someone's informant file

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The FBI issued a Glomar, refusing to confirm or deny whether the bureau maintained records mentioning or referring to Trump.

In June 2017, we sued. A year later, the judge presiding over our case said FBI had not met the burden of justifying its "sweeping Glomar response..."

4/

Still, the FBI continued to fight our efforts.

NOW, in a new declaration, FBI says that 1981 FBI memo posted by The Smoking Gun, which we cited in our #FOIA lawsuit as one of the files we wanted to pry loose, was leaked and there aren't any segregable docs from the files

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Here's the full declaration from FBI if anyone's interested in reading it. We're still battling this out. Thanks so much to our attorney @_LightLaw for leading the charge.

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documentcloud.org/documents/2107…