According to recently-revealed court documents, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into a case that includes then-candidate Donald Trump's public call for Russia to hack then-candidate Hillary Clinton's emails.
During a 2016 campaign press conference, Trump made a plea directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin's government.
“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said in front of supporters in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
According to court filings obtained by The Sparrow Project, those remarks are now part of an FBI investigation.
Following Trump's July statement, Buzzfeed News investigator Jason Leopold and researcher Ryan Shapiro sued the FBI to release all documents pertaining to the remarks.
In its response to the lawsuit, the FBI confirmed the existence of an ongoing investigation.
"Because of the existence of an active, ongoing investigation," the court filing says, the agency has the right to "withhold all records responsive to the Russia Request, because releasing any responsive records (or portions thereof) 'could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.'"
The court documents also state that "virtually all, if not all, of the documents responsive to the Russia Request will be exempt from disclosure in their entirety under Exemption 7(A), which applies to law-enforcement records the disclosure of which 'could be reasonable expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.'"