WASHINGTON, D.C.—Government transparency activist group Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of the Treasury (DOT) seeking records related to the investigation of retired United States Army Lieutenant General Michel Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Breitbart News spoke exclusively to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who said, “We’ve been looking into this story for months now and the only crimes connected to this Russian scandal we’ve been able to find so far are the illegal leaks of information and the violations of privacy by the Obama gang.”
Judicial Watch filed a FOIA on January 25, 2017 and only filed the lawsuit after the agencies failed to respond. The FOIA request was for “Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to the investigation of retired Gen. Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak between October 1, 2016 and the present.”
The suit claims that “Defendants are violating FOIA by failing to search for and produce all records responsive to Plaintiff’s requests or demonstrate that the requested records are lawfully exempt from production.”
In a prepared statement, Tom Fitton commented:
President Trump is on to something. The Obama-connected wiretapping and illegal leaks of classified material concerning President Trump and General Flynn are a scandal. Judicial Watch aims to get to the truth about these crimes and we hope the Trump administration stands with us in the fight for transparency.
The lawsuit points out that on January 23, 2017, CNN reported that the government was investigating Flynn, former national security adviser to President Trump, and said:
The calls were captured by routine US eavesdropping targeting the Russian diplomats, according to the intelligence and law enforcement officials. But the officials said some of the content of the conversation raised enough potential concerns that investigators are still looking into the discussions, amid a broader concern about Russian intelligence-gathering activities in the United States.
The officials all stressed that so far there has been no determination of any wrongdoing.
Radio host Mark Levin has outlined a sequence of events — expanded on by Breitbart News — that shows how, starting in June 2016, the Obama administration filed requests with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications targeting Donald Trump and several advisers. Just prior’s to CNN’s report cited by Judicial Watch, theNew York Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Treasury Department were monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign.
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