The FBI has unexpectedly released documents concerning ex-president Bill Clinton's pardon of the husband of a wealthy Democratic donor, ...
The FBI has unexpectedly released documents concerning ex-president Bill Clinton's pardon of the husband of a wealthy Democratic donor, in a surprise move just days before the election in which his wife is seeking to become America's first female president.
The release of the heavily redacted 129-page report over the pardon of trader Marc Rich -- an investigation that closed in 2005 without charges -- triggered questions from Democrats already angered by the FBI's probe into hundreds of thousands of newly uncovered emails possibly linked to Hillary Clinton.
While the Rich documents were published online Monday, they received little notice until they were posted on Tuesday on a Twitter account for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's division managing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that had had no posts since a year ago, except for a small handful released simultaneously on Sunday.
"Absent a FOIA litigation deadline, this is odd," said Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon.
"Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?" he added, referring to Clinton's Republican rival Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate magnate.
The FBI said the documents were posted shortly after they were processed, as with FOIA materials requested three or more times.
"Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI's public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures," the statement said.
The FBI indicated that this was only a "preliminary" release that could therefore be followed by more.
