1.  FBI , After being Caught in a Lie, “Reopening” ACLJ FOIA Request on Clinton-Lynch Meeting.  2. & 3. FBI says lack of public interest in Hillary emails justifies withholding documents

This is not a hoax.  You just can't make this stuff up. 

After the FBI was  caught red-handed in a cover-up/lie, AND   was   ordered by a Federal judge to produce documents [which are known to exist], the FBI has elected to continue its practice of circling the wagons, stonewalling and when finally  forced  to produce documents ,redacting incriminating information [using various guises such as security ].[#1]

 In this Hillary Clinton case, the FBI pretext is [according to the FBI’s practice of creating imaginative reasons  to grant itself exceptions to the rules which require the release of documents and then creating their own self-determined criteria for justifying their refusal to release  the requested information] : "lack of public interest”.[32; #3 ]

1.     FBI , After being Caught in a Lie, “Reopening” ACLJ FOIA Request on Clinton-Lynch Meeting

The ACLJ just received a letter from the FBI bureaucracy informing us that it has “reopened” our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into the clandestine meeting between former Obama Attorney General Lynch and former President Clinton while the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI were conducting a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton.

The FBI’s letter – dated one week after we publicly excoriated the FBI for lying to us when the Comey-led FBI told us last October that it had “no” records responsive to our request – now states that “records potentially responsive to your request may exist.”

It is unbelievable that the FBI bureaucracy still only admits that some documents “may exist.”

We know they exist. As we explained more than a week ago, here are several FBI documents we already know the then Comey-led FBI was hiding from the public:

The documents we received . . . from the Department of Justice include several emails from the FBI to DOJ officials concerning the meeting.  One with the subject line “FLAG” was correspondence between FBI officials (Richard Quinn, FBI Media/Investigative Publicity, and Michael Kortan) and DOJ officials concerning “flag[ing] a story . . . about a casual, unscheduled meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the AG.” The DOJ official instructs the FBI to “let me know if you get any questions about this” and provides “[o]ur talkers [DOJ talking points] on this”. The talking points, however are redacted.

Another email to the FBI contains the subject line “security details coordinate between Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton?”

On July 1, 2016 – just days before our FOIA request – a DOJ email chain under the subject line, “FBI just called,” indicates that the “FBI . . . is looking for guidance” in responding to media inquiries about news reports that the FBI had prevented the press from taking pictures of the Clinton Lynch meeting. The discussion then went off email to several phone calls (of which we are not able to obtain records). An hour later, Carolyn Pokomy of the Office of the Attorney General stated, “I will let Rybicki know.” Jim Rybicki was the Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to FBI Director Jim Comey. The information that was to be provided to Rybicki is redacted.

Also of note several of the documents contain redactions that are requested “per FBI.”

What else was the FBI hiding?

*****

We have also posted a timeline and the full documents that we have received, which show evidence of:

Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s secret email alias;

Numerous redactions, including main “talking points,” in circumvention of FOIA;

Comey-led FBI lies on the existence of requested documents;

DOJ-Media collusion;

A White House connection; and

Revelations that Obama-loyalists are now investigating themselves.

2.     FBI Withholding Clinton Emails Over 'Lack of Interest'

The lack of public interest in Hillary Clinton's emails justifies withholding the documents, the FBI said this week, according to a report in The Washington Times.

The bureau rejected an open-records request by Texas attorney Ty Clevenger, with FBI records management section chief David M. Hardy stating in a letter Clevenger had not "sufficiently demonstrated that the public's interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject."

"It is incumbent upon the requester to provide documentation regarding the public's interest in the operations and activities of the government before records can be processed pursuant to the FOIA," added Harvey.

Clinton was dogged with the email controversy throughout the presidential campaign last year, and to some extent cost her the election. The Democratic nominee set up a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state and was later the subject of an FBI investigation regarding the origin and handling of classified emails on the server.

The FBI concluded Clinton was "extremely careless" in handling her emails but recommended no charges be filed against her.

Clevenger is pushing to have Clinton and her attorneys disbarred over their mishandling of classified information.

"I'm just stunned," Clevenger told the Times of the FBI's response. "This is exactly what I would have expected had Mrs. Clinton won the election, but she didn't. It looks like the Obama administration is still running the FBI."

"How can a story receive national news coverage and not be a matter of public interest? If this is the new standard, then there's no such thing as a public interest exception," he added.

3.     FBI says lack of public interest in Hillary emails justifies withholding documents

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Hillary Clinton’s case isn’t interesting enough to the public to justify releasing the FBI’s files on her, the bureau said this week in rejecting an open-records request by a lawyer seeking to have the former secretary of state punished for perjury.

Ty Clevenger has been trying to get Mrs. Clinton and her personal attorneys disbarred for their handling of her official emails during her time as secretary of state. He’s met with resistance among lawyers, and now his request for information from the FBI’s files has been shot down.

“You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject,” FBI records management section chief David M. Hardy told Mr. Clevenger in a letter Monday.

“It is incumbent upon the requester to provide documentation regarding the public’s interest in the operations and activities of the government before records can be processed pursuant to the FOIA,” Mr. Hardy wrote.

Mrs. Clinton, is the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, former chief diplomat, former U.S. senator, and former first lady of both the U.S. and Arkansas.

Her use of a secret email account to conduct government business while leading the State Department was front-page news for much of 2015 and 2016, and was so striking that the then-FBI director broke with procedure and made both a public statement and appearances before Congress to talk about the bureau’s probe.

In the end, the FBI didn’t recommend charges against Mrs. Clinton, concluding that while she risked national security, she was too technologically inept to know the dangers she was running, so no case could be made against her.

The FBI says it will only release records from its files if a subject consents, is dead, or is of such public interest that it overrides privacy concerns.

Mr. Clevenger said he thought it would have been clear why Mrs. Clinton’s case was of public interest, but he sent documentation anyway, pointing to a request by members of Congress for an investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton perjured herself in testimony to Capitol Hill.

“I’m just stunned. This is exactly what I would have expected had Mrs. Clinton won the election, but she didn’t. It looks like the Obama administration is still running the FBI,” Mr. Clevenger told The Washington Times.

“How can a story receive national news coverage and not be a matter of public interest? If this is the new standard, then there’s no such thing as a public interest exception,” he said.

The FBI didn’t return a message seeking comment Tuesday on how it balances public interest versus privacy in open-records requests.

Seeking to clear up any confusion over the level of public interest, one person forwarded to The Washington Times a petition started on the White House website to demand release of the documents.

“The assumption made by Mr. Hardy that such a release is not in the public interest is invalid and the FBI should immediately release these documents,” said the petition, started by user “C.S.”