A US federal judge, Reggie B. Walton, has ordered that the Department of Justice confer with the White House as to the official position regarding the declassification of documents related to the investigation of US President Donald Trump's alleged "collusion" with Russia.
The order followed a request by BuzzFeed News that the documents be released before the presidential election, particularly seeking access to the full text of the special report by Robert Mueller, who led a 2-year investigation into the matter and found nothing that directly connected Trump's campaign to the Kremlin.
Earlier, Trump announced "total declassification" of information on the "Russia hoax" and the scandal involving e-mail correspondence of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also accused of being behind a plot "tying" Trump to the Kremlin in order to distract the public's attention from the scandal.
This is remarkable — a federal judge has ordered DOJ to confer with the WH about its official position on declassification of Russia docs in response to Trump’s tweets.
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) October 9, 2020
BuzzFeed is seeking access to the *entire* Mueller report based on Trump’s declassification order via tweet. pic.twitter.com/1MoLMZucQ2
Before Trump revealed his "total declassification", documents emerged suggesting that Hillary Clinton had plotted what POTUS characterised as a "Russia Hoax", only to draw attention away from the scandal with her e-mail correspondence dating back to 2015 when she was the US Secretary of State.
At the time, Clinton used a privately-owned server for much of her email correspondence, instead of a government server - a practice that drew condemnation and concern that she had possibly broken a federal law. She detailed her preference as a "matter of convenience", assuring that she had been redirecting her working correspondence to the government.
In 2016, when Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee, former CIA Director James Comey said that the investigation results did not provide grounds for her prosecution, adding, however, that she had been "extremely careless".
Trump has faced accusations of colluding with Moscow in both of his election campaigns, even after it was revealed that the Mueller Report had found no direct evidence to support the 2016 allegations.
As the 2020 election date approaches, Democrats are claiming that Trump is downplaying alleged threats of Russian interference or, according to some pundits, even encouraging it.
The move by Trump to declassify the "Russia Hoax" documents, experts believe, will certainly "not help" Democratic rival Joe Biden, who was vice president in 2016 when Trump first faced the accusations.
