ABC News(WASHINGTON) — The search warrant that authorized the FBI to examine a laptop computer in connection with Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state was released Tuesday.
A federal judge in New York ordered the warrant and supporting documents to be unsealed, after attorneys opened a case requesting access.
The laptop’s hard drive, according to sources, was being researched in the unrelated investigations into alleged sexting by former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. The laptop had been used by Weiner and his estranged wife, top Clinton adviser Huma Abedin.
Identifying information in the unrelated case, as well as information about an FBI special agent who filed the affidavit in support of the search warrant, was redacted from the documents.
The FBI searched the laptop in the final days of the presidential election, months after FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau had effectively closed its investigation. In a July press conference, Comey had said that, “no charges are appropriate in this case.”
But, the possibility that emails discovered on the laptop could have been related to the Clinton email investigation led Comey to rekindle the probe and issue a letter informing Congress on Oct. 28.
The attorney who started the case to unseal these documents, E. Randol Schoenberg, pointed out that when the FBI received the search warrant, “that meant that some judge thought there was ‘probable cause’ to believe that an actual crime had been committed and that they would find evidence of the crime on the laptop.”
He told ABC in an email that that he wanted to understand what that probable cause could have been, so he hired a New York attorney to help obtain the order to unseal the documents.
Schoenberg is a Los Angeles-based attorney who has specialized in litigation related to recovering art looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Schoenberg represented Maria Altman in her efforts to return a Gustav Klimt painting know as The Woman in Gold, which was made in to a movie.
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