Keep an eye out for "Prohibited Access"
A declassified memo shows the FBI hid items in its document management system under "Prohibited Access"
Prohibited Access. Put it in your lexicon now.
Near the end of May, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a press release that outlined in detail the severity to which Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr lied under oath to Congress about the Russia Collusion hoax.
Nellie Ohr is married to Bruce Ohr, a former deputy attorney general who handled a lot of the Russia Collusion hoax — and who it turns out had direct communications from his wife and Christopher Steele during the case.
Fun fact: Nellie Ohr claimed marital privilege during some of her 2018 testimony.
The press release includes a detailed list of the ways in which Ohr lied based on a newly declassified internal FBI analysis document. One key item that stuck out to me is that Ohr likely authored portions of the Steele Dossier.
Ohr not only lied to Congress under oath, but the internal FBI analysis implies that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team hid key information from Congress, as well as other FBI agents and the Trump team.
Mueller, and those working with him, achieved this by marking certain files with "Prohibited Access" in the FBI's Sentinel case management system, per the internal analysis document.
"Prohibited Access" status which, unlike "Restricted Access" status,
precludes investigators from detecting the existence of potentially
relevant serials. In other words, when search terms that exist in the
Prohibited Access-status cases are searched in Sentinel, the particular
search will receive a false-negative Sentinel search response.
Small wonder Democrats lost their minds when President Trump nominated Kash Patel to head up the FBI; he'd gain access to everything.
So many questions…
How long has Prohibited Access existed?
How many files were marked with that access? How many still are?
How many FOIA requests were impacted?
How many investigations and legal cases may be affected?
Over at the Federalist, Margot Cleveland has written about this internal analysis document, noting that many former prosecutors and FBI agents were reportedly unaware of the "Prohibited Access" functionality and highlights the legal violations and Constitutional issues raised by the "Prohibited Access" classification.
In criminal cases the government must provide defendants with all exculpatory evidence (Brady/Giglio requirements), but it can't provide what it doesn't know exists because it's being hidden by Prohibited Access. The same situation is true for discovery in civil cases.
It's clear from the internal analysis that Mueller's team hid materials requested by Congress, but also the Prohibited Access impacts FOIA requests by the media and the public.
Additionally, Cleveland raises the questions of whether Special Counsel John Durham and his team received all the Crossfire Hurricane information they asked for as well as other investigations, like the Inspector General's inquiry into FISA abuses by the FBI and investigations into the Clinton Foundation and Biden family's business dealings.
There are quite a few topics to add to that list like Hillary Clinton's campaign involvement in the Steele Dossier, Hillary Clinton's server scandal, as well as testimony by Peter Strzok/Lisa Page, Hunter Biden's laptop, and January 6.
It's also a good bet there are "Prohibited Access" materials related to Attorney General Merrick Garland's memo for the FBI to investigate parents, COVID censorship, and both assassination attempts on President Trump.
More To The Story
But this isn't all Cleveland has to say on the topic and she's dropped two more related stories, one of which says the U.S. Attorney looking into Hunter Biden's Burisma dealings did not know about "Prohibited Access."
Senior DOJ Officials Didn’t Know Database Allowed FBI To Bury Existence Of Russiagate Documents (June 2)
U.S. Attorney Vetting Evidence Of Biden Corruption Did Not Know Of FBI’s Ability To Hide Documents (June 3)
Grassley isn't done either and is outright accusing former FBI Director Chris Wray of lying to Congress and the Biden FBI of hiding documents responsive to Congressional requests. In other words, it looks like Prohibited Access was likely employed.
Here's the letter he sent to FBI Director Kash Patel, which details Wray's obstruction on the investigation into the Biden administration's targeting of Catholics as "radical extremists."
Grassley's letter focuses on Wray's testimony to Congress about the anti-Catholic “Domain Perspective” memo (also called the Richmond memo) that was circulated to multiple FBI offices around the country. The letter also points out how Wray used the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source to construct the memo.
Key quote from the letter:
"Director Wray’s testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo’s production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second, draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI."
“I’m determined to get to the bottom of the Richmond memo, and of the FBI’s contempt for oversight in the last administration,” Grassley in the letter to Patel . “I look forward to continuing to work with you to restore the FBI to excellence and prove once again that justice can and must be fairly and evenly administered, blind to whether we are Democrats or Republicans, believers or nonbelievers.”
Read the press release on the letter, which includes links to the history of the Richmond memo investigation.