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Judge Amit Mehta ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump's repeated characterizations of the dossier as "fake" or "discredited" could simply be his reaction to media accounts and may not reflect any interest in the subject by the U.S. government. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Judge: Trump tweets don't require more disclosure on dossier

President Donald Trump's tweets dismissing a dossier of intelligence claims about his ties to Russia don't indicate that the FBI has explored the issue and can't be used to force federal agencies to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for records about the compilation, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled Thursday that Trump's repeated characterizations of the dossier as "fake" or "discredited" could simply be his reaction to media accounts and may not reflect any interest in the subject by the U.S. government.

"Plaintiffs point to no case law that expands the presumption to official statements such that, absent contrary evidence, courts must presume that an official statement is premised upon documents in the government’s possession," wrote Mehta, an Obama appointee.

"None of the tweets inescapably lead to the inference that the President’s statements about the Dossier are rooted in information he received from the law enforcement and intelligence communities ... The President’s statements may very well be based on media reports or his own personal knowledge, or could simply be viewed as political statements intended to counter media accounts about the Russia investigation, rather than assertions of pure fact," the judge added in a 37-page decision responding to a Freedom of Information Suit filed on behalf of this reporter.

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During the litigation, the Justice Department conceded that Trump's Twitter statements are official statements of the president. However, Mehta ruled that none of them were specific enough to preclude the FBI from refusing to confirm or deny that it has a two-page synopsis of the dossier or to keep various agencies from refusing to say whether they have reached any conclusions about the document's accuracy.

"A presidential tweet could satisfy the stringent requirements of the official acknowledgement doctrine. But it does not follow that just because a tweet is an 'official' statement of the President that its substance is necessarily grounded in information contained in government records," the judge wrote.

The so-called dossier is a collection of accurate, inaccurate and unverified claims about Trump prepared by a former British intelligence operative, Christopher Steele, at the request of a Washington-based private investigation firm, Fusion GPS. The firm commissioned the report for a law firm representing Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

A lawyer who pressed the case for release of the records, Brad Moss, said an appeal is under consideration. He also said the decision seems to suggest Trump's statement should be given less weight than public comments by other senior officials, like heads of Cabinet agencies.

"We are disappointed in the Court’s ruling and are evaluating the possibility of an appeal. Of far more concerning significance is the legal implication of this ruling, in so much as it reduces official statements by the President of the United States into little more than random musings by a proverbial carnival barker who just happens to also serve as the Chief Executive," Moss said. "It is difficult to envision a scenario in which it is in the national interest of this country for the President’s statements to be so cavalierly disregarded in this manner.”

