A federal judge has denied a motion by the Department of Justice and the National Archives and Records Administration to dismiss a suit filed by Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon seeking to obtain records related to the FBI's investigation of alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.
Gene Hamilton, executive director of the America First Legal public interest law firm that represented Solomon, hailed the decision "The Court knows the law gives our client an explicit right to access presidential records. The Archives wrongly believes that because the DOJ received records from the President-that no expert would disagree were presidential records-those records were transformed into DOJ records. That is not how the law works," he said.
Solomon sued the DOJ and NARA in March of last year, alleging that the agencies had wrongly withheld materials related to the FBI's probe of alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign that former President Donald Trump declassified and ordered be released.
"This is a case about two government agencies apparently colluding to evade the Presidential Records Act," the suit stated, highlighting that "[t]he Act mandates that a former President's records 'shall' be made available to him or to his designated representative.
Under 44 U.S.C. 2205(3), the records must be released," the suit contended.
Among the documents were records of the FBI's dealings with Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Steele Dossier that featured prominently in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
Trump designated Solomon and former advisor Kash Patel as his representatives to NARA in June of 2022, authorizing them to access the records.
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