Judge Tells the FBI That It Will No Longer Be Permitted to Hide Behind "We Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny" Answers, But Must Actually Answer Questions About How It Handled the Alleged Steele Dossier

No more shuck-and-jive.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta has ruled that the FBI cannot issue a Glomar response when it comes to whatever verification attempts they may have used for the contents of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier. In other words, the FBI can no longer hide behind the "we can neither confirm nor deny" response in order to stonewall records requests regarding how they may have tried to determine the validity of the synopsis of the dossier that raised concerns President Donald Trump might be compromised by Russia, pee tapes and all.

BREAKING: In light of the release of the Nunes/Schiff Memoranda, Judge Mehta has reversed his prior decision and is rejecting the FBI's refusal to confirm or deny the existence of records reflecting an attempt to verify the 2-page synopsis allegations from the Steele Dossier. https://t.co/3QUo0nhyPV

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) August 16, 2018

The judge had previously sided with the FBI and permitted them to evade answering. But, since Trump has declassified the Nunes and Schiff memos, the judge has ruled that this matter is taken out of the "can't answer for national security reasons" arena and the FBI must answer as in any other run-of-the-mill proceeding.

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss, whose tweet on the news you can see above, told Law&Crime that this is a "major crack in the Government’s legal defenses."

"[Those defenses were] designed to conceal whether the FBI has taken any steps to verify the accuracy of the 'salacious' allegations outlined in that synopsis provided to then-President-elect Trump in January 2017," Moss said. "Ironically, if it turns out that the FBI has undertaken such efforts and has verified any of the claims, thereby embarrassing President Trump politically, the president will have no one to blame for that revelation other than himself."

Always looking for the bright side, eh?

Well, I have a sneaking suspicion that if this gang of political operatives and professional sneakers and leakers had confirmed a damn thing, we'd've known about it two years ago.

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:35 PM

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