Rolling Stone is suing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a component of the Department of Justice. In court documents obtained by AllHipHop, the esteemed publication filed the suit on Sunday (December 10), alleging the FBI has failed to provide records on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who died in November, in a timely manner. According to the suit, Rolling Stone requested all files that mentioned “Kissinger” on November 29 and still hasn’t obtained the information.
As explained in the docs, “Rolling Stone explained the need for this additional search, stating, ‘Given Kissinger’s prominence and the fact that he continued to interact with the highest levels of the U.S. government until his death (see, e.g., the document bates-stamped ‘FBI (19cv1278)-6667’ which was an email chain between senior Trump campaign officials obtained during the Mueller Investigation), it is highly probable that records mentioning his name would be located in these systems yet not included in the CRS because they would be unlikely to be ‘of investigatory interest.’
“Rolling Stone requested expedited processing of this request and a public interest fee waiver, citing, inter alia, “an urgent need to inform the public about actual or alleged federal government activity, namely, the activities of FBI and other agencies in which Kissinger, an extremely polarizing figure in man circles, played a direct or indirect role, or even those activities, like the Mueller Investigation, where FBI was looking into his activities.”
The docs added, “This is a matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist possible questions about the government’s integrity which affect public confidence […] As of this writing, FBI has not made a determination within ten days regarding Rolling Stone’s request for expedited processing.”
Consequently, Rolling Stone is asking the court to “order the Federal Bureau of Investigation to expeditiously process its request; order preliminary and permanent injunctive and/or declaratory relief as may be appropriate; award reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees as provided in 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(E), 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d), or any other applicable law; expedite this action in every way pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1657(a); and grant such other relief as the Court may deem just and proper.”
The Mueller investigation was an investigation into Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019.