Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon sued the Justice Department and National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday, alleging they have wrongly kept from public inspection hundreds of pages of documents chronicling the FBI's bungled Russia collusion probe that were declassified by former President Donald Trump.
"This is a case about two government agencies apparently colluding to evade the Presidential Records Act," the lawsuit said, asking the court to "Recover the records wrongfully withheld and to force the defendants to comply with the law." The suit included contemporaneous emails from a top Archives official last August acknowledging that the declassified records should be returned by DOJ "As quickly as possible, so that we can all have a fully releasable set of records." You can read the full lawsuit here.
Stephen Miller, the president of America First Legal and a former Trump adviser, said a court-ordered return of the declassified records to the Archives was necessary for public transparency and accountability.
"America First Legal is truly proud to lead the legal battle to restore true democracy and government accountability in America." After multiple congressional and Justice Department investigations concluded that the FBI engaged in misconduct and mistakes by seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant targeting the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, Trump signed an order in his final hours in office in January 2021 declassifying hundreds of pages of previously redacted or secret records.
Solomon asked for permission in June 2022 from Trump to access his presidential documents at the Archives as a journalist to look for the declassified Russia records.
One issue in those investigations - which led to an FBI raid of Trump's Mar-A-Lago estate and consensual searches of multiple Biden properties - is whether the storage of those documents outside the Archives violated the Presidential Records Act, officials have said.
On Aug. 17, 2022, NARA General Counsel Gary Stern told Solomon that he "asked DOJ to complete its review" of the declassified documents "As quickly as possible, so that we can all have a fully releasable set of records." "To date, the National Archives has not indicated that the records have been returned," according to the lawsuit.
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