FBI Forced to Release Clinton Pre-Election Emails Search Warrant – Attorney Says Shows ‘No Probable Cause’

‘Nothing at All in the Search Warrant Application That Would Give Rise to Probable Cause’

A famous attorney says the search warrant the FBI used to access emails on a laptop used by former Congressman Anthony Weiner that was found to have emails his wife, Hillary Clinton top aide Huma Abedin sent or received, does not show probable cause. 

“I see nothing at all in the search warrant application that would give rise to probable cause,” says E Randol (Randy) Schoenberg, an attorney who was portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in the 2010 movie “Woman in Gold.” Schoenberg, via Twitter, posted a link to the just-released search warrant, saying the FBI and the judge “had to know that there was no probable cause. Why did they do it?” he asks.

Saying he is “appalled,” Raw Story notes, Schoenberg, a California civil litigation attorney, took to Facebook to add:

“I see nothing at all in the search warrant application that would give rise to probable cause, nothing that would make anyone suspect that there was anything on the laptop beyond what the FBI had already searched and determined not to be evidence of a crime, nothing to suggest that there would be anything other than routine correspondence between Secretary Clinton and her longtime aide Huma Abedin.”

“You will have to ask Judge Fox, or the agent in charge (whose name has been redacted), or Director Comey, why they thought they might find evidence of a crime, why they felt it necessary to inform Congress, and why they even sought this search warrant.”

Schoenberg, according to the NY Daily News, made the request to unseal the warrant.

FBI Director James Comey, in a letter to members of Congress eleven days before the November election, revealed the existence of the laptop and the emails, before even filing for the search warrant. That letter, experts, including FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, suggest, likely cost Clinton the election.

The approved search warrant itself, as The Hill transcribes, in part states:

“Because it has been determined… that many emails were exchanged between [redacted] using [redacted] and/or [redacted] accounts, and Clinton that contained classified information, there is also probably cause to believe that the correspondence between them located on the Subject Laptop contains classified information.”

Schoenberg’s bio states he “received the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year award for outstanding achievement in the field of litigation,” in 2007. “He also received the 2006 Jurisprudence Award from the Anti-Defamation League and the Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award from the American Jewish Congress.”

 

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Image by Azi Paybarah via Flickr and a CC license