Judicial Watch Sues Obama Library for Obama White House Records about the 2016 ‘Russia Collusion Hoax’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Barak Obama Presidential Library for Obama White House records about the 2016 “Russia Collusion Hoax.”  The records, which by law were not available under FOIA until five years after President Obama left office, are held at the Library, which is part of the National Archives system (Judicial Watch, Inc. v National Archives and Records Administration (No. 1:22-cv-03310)).

The lawsuit was filed after the Library failed to respond to a March 4, 2022, FOIA request for records of former Obama White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding alleged efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and collude the Trump campaign and the alleged hacking of Democratic National Committee and/or Clinton campaign computer systems.

On March 7, 2022, Judicial Watch submitted a second FOIA request to the Obama Library for Obama White House records about the infamous January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting between President Obama and Vice President Biden, Rice, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others.

Rice oddly memorized the meeting more than two weeks later in an email written in the final hours of the Obama Administration on January 20, 2017, stating:

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book’. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates also attended the January 5, 2017, meeting.

A December 2019 report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General added to the list of attendees at meeting:  “On January 5, 2017, Clapper, then NSA Director Michael Rogers, Brennan, and Comey briefed the ICA [Intelligence Community Assessment] report to President Obama and his national security team.”

Comey also confirmed in a book that he briefed Obama at the January 5, 2017 meeting on his plan to confront President-elect Trump with the Clinton campaign “dossier:”

Obama did not appear to have any reaction to any of this—at least none he would share with us. In a level voice, he asked, “What’s the plan for that briefing?” With just the briefest of sidelong glances at me, Clapper took a breath, then said, “We have decided that Director Comey will meet alone with the president-elect to brief him on this material following the completion of the full ICA briefing.” The president did not say a word. Instead he turned his head to his left and looked directly at me. He raised and lowered both of his eyebrows with emphasis, and then looked away. I suppose you can read whatever you want into a wordless expression, but to my mind his Groucho Marx eyebrow raise was both subtle humor and an expression of concern. It was almost as if he were saying, “Good luck with that.” I began to feel a lump in my stomach….

“The records we are seeking go to the heart of the Obama administration’s efforts to undermine the incoming president, Donald J. Trump, and tie up his new administration in a phony scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And the Obama Library is part of the same National Archives system that is subjecting President Trump to unprecedented harassment about Trump White House record keeping practices.”

Judicial Watch has taken a leading role in uncovering the Obama/Deep State spying and other abuses targeting Trump world.

In August of this year, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for records ordered declassified and released by President Trump the day before he left office.  The records relate to “Crossfire Hurricane,” the controversial spy operation against President Trump, his 2016 presidential campaign, and other Trump associates, and have yet to be made public by the Biden administration.

In May 2020, Judicial Watch litigation uncovered the “electronic communication” (EC) that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation, termed “Crossfire Hurricane,” of President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The document was written by Strzok.

In March 2019 Judicial Watch released heavily redacted records from the DOJ that reveal Bruce Ohr remained in regular contact with former British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele after Steele was terminated by the FBI in November 2016 for revealing to the media his position as an FBI confidential informant.

In August 2019, Judicial Watch uncovered “302” report material from FBI interviews with Bruce Ohr, showing that in November 2016, Ohr said that “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign” and “Jon Winer at the U.S. State Department and the FBI.” The documents also showed that Ohr knew that Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson and others were “talking to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department.” (A Form 302 is used by FBI agents to summarize the interviews that they conduct and contains information from the notes taken during the interview.)

In August 2018, DOJ admitted in a court filing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants. Judicial Watch litigation also uncovered the secret FISA warrants that confirmed the FBI and DOJ misled the courts in withholding the material information that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA warrants that targeted the Trump team.

Also, in August of that year, Judicial Watch discovered FBI records about Christopher Steele, the former British spy, hired with Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee funds, who authored the infamous dossier targeting President Trump during the presidential campaign. The documents show that Steele was cut off as a “Confidential Human Source” (CHS) after he disclosed his relationship with the FBI to a third party. The documents show at least 11 FBI payments to Steele in 2016 and document that he was admonished for unspecified reasons in February 2016.

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