The FBI posted 129 pages of documents concerning former President Bill Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. | AP Photo Clinton camp questions FBI release of Marc Rich pardon files The bureau published heavily redacted records of former President Clinton's pardon of a fugitive financier.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is raising questions about the timing of the FBI’s release Tuesday of records on a 15-year-old investigation into President Bill Clinton’s pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich.

The FBI posted the 129 pages of records in its online Freedom of Information Act reading room in apparent response to a FOIA request seeking information on FBI inquiries into the Clinton Foundation.


The release was dated Monday, but an FBI Twitter account flagged the new posting Tuesday.

The Clinton campaign, which is already at odds with FBI Director James Comey over his disclosure of new evidence in the Clinton email probe, immediately questioned why Clinton-related records were being released just a week before the election.

“Absent a FOIA litigation deadline, this is odd. Will FBI be posting docs on Trump’s housing discrimination in ’70s?” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon asked on Twitter.

There was no immediate indication of any lawsuits seeking the newly posted material or that a judge had set a deadline for its disclosure.

An FBI spokesperson said the requests for the Clinton Foundation information were handled on a routine basis and the online posting was in accordance with federal law governing frequently requested records.

"The FBI's Records Management Division receives thousands of FOIA requests annually which are processed on a first in, first out (FIFO) basis. By law, FOIA materials that have been requested three or more times are posted electronically to the FBI’s public reading room shortly after they are processed," an FBI spokesperson said. "Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures.”

The records are heavily redacted and don’t appear to shed significant new light on the pardon-related probe. It was widely reported at the time that Mary Jo White, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, launched a grand jury investigation into whether Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, procured the pardon by making donations to Democratic Party accounts and the Clinton Foundation.

Despite the lack of major revelations in the documents, which constitute only a part of the FBI’s files on the inquiry, the atmospherics in the records are unhelpful to the Clinton campaign. The records repeatedly refer to the probe being handled by the “Public Corruption Unit” and make clear that the FBI was examining claims that Denise Rich’s Democratic Party “donations may have been intended to influence the fugitive’s pardon.”

“It appears that the required pardon standards and procedures were not followed,” the internal FBI memos said.

Indeed, the request for a pardon for Marc Rich and his business partner, Pincus Green, did not go through normal channels at the Justice Department but was sent directly to the White House. However, presidents are free to grant executive clemency outside the Justice Department channel and many presidents have done so.

The investigation was eventually handed off to Comey, who was White's successor as U.S. attorney. Comey elected not to seek any charges in the case.

Suspicion about the Clinton-related release was also fueled by a Tweet sent out by on an "FBI Records Vault" account that was dormant for about a year before suddenly springing to life on Oct. 30.

A law enforcement official who asked not to be named said that the account was dormant due to issues with the FBI's content management system and that a series of stored-up Tweets went out Sunday after patches to the system were completed. "They are automatic tweets," the official said.

Curiously, the first Tweet to emerge after the hiatus linked to a small set of records the FBI released early last month about Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump Jr.