However, a recent court filing by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FBI in an ongoing FOIA lawsuit plainly indicates the FBI has an active investigation pertaining to Donald Trump’s actions related to actual or potential election-related hacking and espionage by Russia.

The lawsuit is filed by Ryan Shapiro, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) PhD candidate/Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University research affiliate, and Jason Leopold, Senior Investigative Journalist at BuzzFeed News.

On August 18, 2016, Shapiro and Leopold submitted a FOIA request to the FBI seeking “disclosure of any and all records, including investigative records, mentioning or referring to Donald J. Trump’s statement on 27 July, 2016 [regarding Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails], ‘Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,’ and ‘I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.’”

When the FBI did not respond in a timely manner to the FOIA request, Shapiro and Leopold sued. During the lawsuit, the FBI initially asserted that it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of documents responsive to this FOIA request.

However, the FBI subsequently withdrew this position and agreed to search for the requested documents. Again, the documents requested by Shapiro and Leopold are records, including investigative records, mentioning or referring to a public statement made personally by Donald J. Trump, not his advisors, surrogates, or campaign staff.

In a court filing in this case on April 6, 2017, a Justice Department attorney representing the FBI informed the Court that there is an “active, ongoing investigation” pertaining to this matter and claimed that disclosing the “records that are responsive to the Russia Request” could reasonably be expected to interfere with “enforcement proceedings.” (As noted elsewhere in the DOJ/FBI’s new filing, the term “Russia Request” refers explicitly to Shapiro and Leopold’s FOIA request quoted above.) The DOJ/FBI’s new court filing acknowledges the existence of records responsive to Shapiro and Leopold’s “Russia Request”, and claimed that all, or virtually all, of these documents cannot be released because of the potential to interfere with active law enforcement proceedings.

On April 7, 2017, the Court set a deadline of July 25, 2017 for the FBI to file a motion explaining the basis for its claim that release of documents responsive to “the Russia Request” would interfere with an ongoing law enforcement operation.

The lawsuit is Case 1:16-cv-01827-KBJ. It is being heard in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Documents

1. Read the Joint Status Report in 1:16-cv-01827-KBJ HERE 
2. Read Comey’s termination letter from Trump, Sessions & Rosenstein HERE

About Operation 45

Ryan Shapiro, referred to by Politico as “a FOIA guru at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”, is an historian of national security, the policing of dissent, and governmental transparency. Shapiro’s pathbreaking FOIA work has already led the FBI to declare his MIT dissertation research a threat to national security. Shapiro is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) at MIT, as well as a Research Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Shapiro is also the co-founder and president of the new transparency organization Operation 45. The Nation has described Operation 45 as “a ray of hope in these dark political times.”

Jason Leopold is an award-winning Senior Investigative Reporter at Buzzfeed News, specializing in counterterrorism and human rights. Leopold has been called a “FOIA Terrorist” by federal employees for his aggressive use of the Freedom of Information Act, which includes successfully suing the FBI to force changes to Bureau FOIA practices.

Shapiro and Leopold are represented by Washington, DC-based FOIA specialist attorney, Jeffrey Light.

You can follow Ryan Shapiro on twitter at @_rshapiro, and Jason Leopold on twitter at @JasonLeopold.

You can support Operation 45’s efforts HERE

Jason Leopold is an award-winning Senior Investigative Reporter at Vice News, specializing in counterterrorism and human rights. Leopold has been called a “FOIA Terrorist” by federal employees for his aggressive use of the Freedom of Information Act, which includes successfully suing the FBI to force changes to Bureau FOIA practices.

Ryan Shapiro, referred to by Politico as “a FOIA guru at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”, is an historian of national security, the policing of dissent, and governmental transparency. Shapiro’s pathbreaking FOIA work has already led the FBI to declare his MIT dissertation research a threat to national security. Shapiro is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) at MIT, as well as a Research Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Leopold and Shapiro are represented by Washington, DC-based FOIA specialist attorney Jeffrey Light.

Six key elements of Shapiro and Leopold’s FOIA request & lawsuit:

1.) Leopold and Shapiro submitted a FOIA request to the FBI for records on a wide range of records pertaining to FBI operations involving the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This includes but is not limited to all records on:

* The FBI’s investigations of Hillary Clinton’s email & private server

* The FBI’s investigations of the Clinton Foundation

* FBI Director Comey’s communications with Congress regarding the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email & private server

* Allegations of FBI violations of the Hatch Act in the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

* Internal discontent at the FBI regarding the FBI’s Clinton investigations

* All leaks of information by the FBI to the press and political operatives about FBI investigations of Hillary Clinton

* All FBI communications with Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, Corey R. Lewandowski, Fox News, Bret Baier, Sean Hannity; & Rudy Giuliani

* Richard Spencer, the National Policy Institute, & the “alt-right”

2.) Even as J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI coordinated much of the red-baiting of the McCarthy era, the Bureau staunchly maintained it was a purely apolitical entity. Current FBI Director James Comey also insists, notwithstanding the FBI’s previous transgressions, today’s Bureau truly is outside and above politics. However, numerous leading political and news media figures from across the political spectrum explicitly assert the FBI repeatedly and with significant impact affected the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. For example, both Senate Minority leader Harry Reid and former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski openly credit Director Comey and his FBI for Donald Trump’s electoral victory over Hillary Clinton. Even prior to the election, in late October, a piece in Politico opined that a string of recent FBI actions “give the lie to Comey’s repeated insistence that the FBI is above politics, exposing that notion as both irrelevant—[…] and absurd[.]”

Shapiro and Leopold’s lawsuit seeks public disclosure of specified government records to make sense of the pivotal role of the FBI, as well as of other agencies, in perhaps the most controversial presidential election in modern U.S. history.

3.) Due to the urgency of the matter, Leopold and Shapiro requested expedited processing of their FOIA request. The FBI failed to respond. This is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

4.) Not including this new lawsuit, Shapiro and Leopold already have two FOIA lawsuits against the FBI federal agencies for records on investigations involving Donald Trump.

In the first of these lawsuits, among other things, Shapiro and Leopold are suing the FBI and Secret Service for records on Donald Trump’s thinly-veiled assassination remarks regarding Hillary Clinton, and his less than veiled campaign trail call for Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails. The FBI unlawfully failed to respond to Shapiro and Leopold’s FOIA request, and then slow-walked an initial response to Shapiro and Leopold’s lawsuit until after the election.

Notably, the FBI’s response indicates the FBI might indeed be investigating Donald Trump for these incidents. However, in stark contrast to Director Comey’s pre-election rush to inform Congress that the FBI might re-open its investigation of Hillary Clinton, in this case the FBI dragged its feet to avoid revealing the same about Donald Trump until after the election.

5.) In the second of these lawsuits, Leopold and Shapiro are suing the FBI for all FBI records on the Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, Trump Entertainment Resorts, and Trump University.

6.) Shapiro and Leopold’s lawsuit filed today is part of the work of Operation 45. Operation 45 is a new 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded by MIT/Harvard’s Shapiro, and attorney Jeffrey Light, to ensure transparency and accountability for the incoming Trump/Pence administration.

According to Shapiro

Regarding this lawsuit:
The purportedly “apolitical” FBI just played an unprecedented role in perhaps the most controversial and contested election in modern U.S. history. The public absolutely needs to know how and why the nation’s leading federal law enforcement agency came to play such a determinative role in American presidential politics.

Regarding Operation 45 (Of which this lawsuit is a part):
Given Trump’s authoritarian aspirations and overt contempt for the Constitution and a free press, American civil liberties and privacy now face a profoundly clear and present danger.
Trump must not be allowed to conduct his presidency from the shadows, and he must not be allowed to cripple the Freedom of Information act. The need is urgent for aggressive work to keep President Trump and his administration transparent and accountable.

Regarding FOIA more broadly:
Secrecy is a cancer on the body of democracy.
The democratic process cannot meaningfully function without an informed citizenry, and such a citizenry is impossible without broad public access to information about the operations of government.
The Freedom of Information Act is one of the most underappreciated elements of the entire American experiment. The notion that the records of government are the property of the people, and all we need to do to get them is to ask, is radically democratic. But FOIA is broken. Sadly, this is why we now need to sue to compel FBI compliance with federal law.

A complete copy of the complaint filed in court this morning can be viewed here

To arrange an interview with Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro, please email or text Andy Stepanian at andy@sparrowmedia.net or 631.291.3010. You can follow Jason Leopold on twitter at @JasonLeopold and Ryan Shapiro on twitter at @_rshapiro

The coalition, comprised of more than 40 diverse organizations representing millions of Americans, also urge Senators from both sides of the aisle work together to ensure that hate and division are not allowed in mainstream American politics, and block confirmations of Sen. Jeff Sessions and Rep. Mike Pompeo. The coalition will be looking for balanced coverage from the media on Trump’s inner circle that includes their bias against Americans of different races, ethnicity, faiths and sexual orientation.

“This is a bipartisan call to action. History will remember who stood against hate and bigotry, and who looked the other way,” stated National Hispanic Media Coalition’s president & CEO and Coalition Against Hate member, Alex Nogales. “We must fight to protect the safety of all Americans. We call on everyone from the grassroots to the U.S. Senate to peacefully but forcefully oppose this dangerous return to mainstream racism. We call on the media, in particular, to expose the fake news phenomenon and avoid normalizing racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

“Biased individuals will result in biased policy. It is that simple,” said Corey Saylor, director of the Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “No realistic vision of a united America includes Presidential appointees who favor racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

“At a time when our country is in need of healing, the President-elect’s appointees so far indicate that he intends to turn the divisive and hateful rhetoric of his campaign into policy,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “We will not stand for a government that seeks to disenfranchise aspiring Americans, women, the LGBTQ community, and communities of color.”

“Hate is anti-American,” said Heidi Beirich, intelligence project director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “With his appointments, the Trump campaign has made manifest the terrible ideas that he campaigned on–—nativism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim hatred and others. If our President Elect doesn’t change course, then the hate he has unleashed in the last year will continue to flourish and at the highest levels of American politics. We call on all elected officials to pushback against hate in the mainstream and to forcefully oppose any Trump appointees who represent these anti-American values.”

Read their records below:

Senator Jeff Sessions

Donald Trump has selected Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next U.S. Attorney General. In 1986, the U.S. Senate blocked Sessions’ appointment to a federal judgeship due to testimony from his former colleague about his persistent racist rhetoric.According to that testimony, Sessions used the N-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.” He has acknowledged that he concurred that a white civil rights lawyer was a “disgrace to his race” and reportedly called a Black attorney “boy” and told him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” We urge the Senate to block his confirmation. In 2006, Sen. Sessions gave a speech on the Senate floor stating “almost no one” from the Dominican Republic coming to the U.S. had skills that would benefit the country.

Representative Mike Pompeo

Trump has tapped Kansas Representative Mike Pompeo as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Pompeo has an inconsistent record with Islamophobic remarks and must be scrutinized closely. He broadly accused American Muslim leaders of “silence” in response to terror attacks hundreds of them have actually condemned; this so-called silence, he said, makes “Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit in these acts.” Yet he urged people in one speech last year to differentiate terrorists from regular Muslims, saying “there are many Muslims of good will.” He has described the Guantanamo Bay prison as a “perfect facility” for interrogating terrorists, and he has called CIA torture “within the law.” We urge the Senate to reject Mike Pompeo.

Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn

Trump has chosen retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn to serve as his national security advisor. On Twitter, Flynn has spread anti-Semitism and Islamophobia by, for instance, retweeting that “fear of Islam is rational.” He has also promoted the work of an author who writes that “diversity is white genocide” and stated that Islam is a “political ideology,” not a religion, and is “like cancer.” The national security advisor does not require Senate confirmation, but we call on Donald Trump to rethink his decision.

Steve Bannon

Other Trump insiders with deep ties to racist movements must also go. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was the chief executive of a website he called “the platform for the alt-right,” a white supremacist movement, and he led an anti-Muslim smear campaign against the founder of Chobani yogurt. He has received praise from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Chairman of the American Nazi Party, Rocky J. Suhayda.

Laura Ingraham

Trump’s short-list for press secretary reportedly includes Laura Ingraham, who has a long history of hate profiteering. Ingraham infamously stated that Mexican immigrants “have come here to rape and murder our people.” She has compared same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest, suggested that people should wear diapers instead of sharing restrooms with transgender people, and that the U.S. should only accept Christian refugees.

Kansas Secretary General Kris Kobach

Kris Kobach, Trump’s immigration advisor, has made waves for his recent plans to build a Muslim registry. Kobach’s history in extremism extends well beyond Islamophobic sentiment. He has worked for a racist hate group whose stated purpose is to reduce the number of people of color in the U.S., was behind Arizona’s racial profiling bill, SB 1070, has likened LGBT people to pedophiles, and is a birther.

The Coalition Against Hate is comprised of faith groups, civil rights organizations and other non-profits that represent millions of Americans. Its mission is to #breakhate by elevating the voices of the impacted and holding purveyors of hate speech accountable, and its members include:

[lgc_column grid=”33″ tablet_grid=”50″ mobile_grid=”100″ last=”false”]18 Million Rising Alianza Americas American Indians in Film and TV Arab American Chamber of Commerce Asian American Advancing Justice Asian Pacific American Media Coalition Brotherhood Crusade Center for American Progress Center for Media Justice CHIRLA Color of Change Common Cause Council on American-Islamic Relations Free Press Future of Music Coalition GLAAD HACU Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) HITN Honduran & Central American Bronx Day Parade Inc. Intersections International Islamic Shura Council[/lgc_column]

[lgc_column grid=”33″ tablet_grid=”50″ mobile_grid=”100″ last=”false”]Jewish Labor Committee Western Region Latino Justice PRLDEF League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) LGBT Center OC Los Angeles Housing Community Investment Department Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Media Matters Media Mobilizing Project The National Hispanic Media Coalition National Immigration Law Center (NILC) National Institute for Latino Policy (NILP)[/lgc_column]

[lgc_column grid=”33″ tablet_grid=”50″ mobile_grid=”100″ last=”true”]New York Immigration Coalition O.C. Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD) OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates Public Knowledge Sikh American Legal Defense & Education Fund (SALDEF) Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) United Church of Christ OC Inc. Wind of the Spirit[/lgc_column]

The statement reads:

A Message from MIT Faculty Reaffirming our Shared Values

The President-elect has appointed individuals to positions of power who have endorsed racism, misogyny and religious bigotry, and denied the widespread scientific consensus on climate change. Regardless of our political views, these endorsements violate principles at the core of MIT’s mission. At this time, it is important to reaffirm the values we hold in common.

We, the undersigned faculty at MIT, thus affirm the following principles:

• We unconditionally reject every form of bigotry, discrimination, hateful rhetoric, and hateful action, whether directed towards one’s race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, disability, citizenship, political views, socioeconomic status, veteran status, or immigration status.
• We endorse MIT’s values of open, respectful discourse and exchange of ideas from the widest variety of intellectual, religious, class, cultural, and political perspectives.
• We uphold the principles of the scientific method, of fact- and reason-based objective inquiry. Science is not a special interest; it is not optional. Science is a foundational ingredient in how we as a society analyze, understand, and solve the most difficult challenges that we face.

For any member of our community who may feel fear or oppression, our doors are open and we are ready to help. We pledge to work with all members of the community – students, faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers, and administrators – to defend these principles today and in the times ahead.

MIT faculty signers share their thoughts about the statement:

Director of the MIT Media Lab Joi Ito: “Academic institutions have historically been havens to protect diversity of opinions and the freedom to express those opinions when the political climate has impinged on this freedom. It appears that we are entering a period where the political climate requires us to assert our leadership to protect and foster diversity and scientific inquiry itself.”

Professor of Physics Max Tegmark, author of ‘Our Mathematical Universe’, and founder of The Future of Life Institute: “If we share the values of our community, it’s important not merely to be thankful for them, but also to defend them.”

Professor of Economics Jonathan Gruber: “Public policy discussions have moved away from facts to conjecture and opinion.  The only way to reverse this dangerous trend is to reaffirm the scientific method and its sound application to the important policy issues of the day.”

Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Nancy Kanwisher: “It is important to draw the line between the very wide range of legitimate political debate that we encourage at MIT, and the deliberate denial of scientific fact. Many of those appointed by the new administration are not conducting business as usual, but sharply departing from respectful public discourse and from scientific consensus.”

Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences Ed Boyden, Co-Director of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering and recent recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences: “In uncertain times, it’s important to take a stand. At MIT, we stand against bigotry and hateful action, and for science and facts.  I’m excited to see hundreds of my fellow faculty take this stand together.”

This effort was initiated by a small group of MIT faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers (including Nancy Kanwisher, Roger Levy, Sarah Schwettmann, and Rosa Lafer-Sousa), who joined together to conceive a public message to the campus community and the world at large. In a grassroots effort, they invited members of the MIT community to participate in the national dialogue through this statement affirming values central to MIT’s mission of commitment “to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges.”

For the complete list of signatories and more information, visit www.mitvalues.org