Attorney E. Randol Schoenberg announced on his Facebook page on Wednesday that he has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice that seeks the “immediate disclosure of the FBI search warrant for the e-mails of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.”
He further explained the purpose behind the lawsuit as follows:
“I think we need to see what ‘probable cause’ was shown for obtaining the search warrant, because whoever thought there was going to be evidence of a crime was obviously mistaken. And that mistake probably changed the outcome of the election.”
In the Facebook post, Schoenberg also references a blog post he published last month that provides some additional information about his beliefs on this issue.
For example, he stated his belief that Comey’s actions prior to the election may suggest “like most Republicans, [Comey] believed that there was a sufficient cloud of suspicion over Hillary Clinton to justify pretty much any investigation.”
He also suggested his belief that some FBI agents were “already in open revolt over the e-mail probe three weeks prior to Comey’s surprise announcement.”
Based on these beliefs, Schoenberg suggests it is possible the FBI “never even thought much about the probable cause requirement, and perhaps the judge signed the search warrant, mindful of the intense public attention to the issue, without really considering the legal standard of whether the suspicions raised were reasonable.”
He concludes his blog post, writing:
“This is potentially very serious, something that if traced back to Donald Trump might even lead to impeachment. It deserves to be investigated fully and openly, and quickly, because if a crime was committed in the course of the FBI investigation, it is the crime of the century.”
He is now hopeful that the FOIA lawsuit will provide him with definitive answers to these issues.
[image via official FBI photo]