Thursday, December 8, 2016

Taking Steps: E. Randol Schoenberg Sues FBI for Email Warrant

If you saw the movie "Woman in Gold," and I strongly recommend that you do, you know that as a young lawyer and new dad, Randy Schoenberg argued before Chief Justice Rhenquist's Supreme Court and prevailed. He did this having given up his job and devoting all of his time, energy, and resources to helping Maria Altmann recover paintings stolen from her family's Vienna residence by the Nazis.

Here is his Facebook entry.
So, I filed a lawsuit today against the US Department of Justice seeking immediate disclosure of the FBI search warrant for the e-mails of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin on Anthony Weiner's laptop. As I explained in my blog http://schoenblog.com/?p=1008, I think we need to see what "probable cause" was shown for obtaining the search warrant, because whoever thought there was going to be evidence of a crime was obviously mistaken. And that mistake probably changed the outcome of the election. Journalists should contact my attorney Dave Rankin for more details.

E. Randol Schoenberg. Photo courtesy of E. Randol Schoenberg
E. Randol Schoenberg was confused when he read a New York Times article in the waning days of the presidential election reporting the FBI had obtained a warrant to seize new material in the Hillary Clinton email case.
“I thought, ‘What does that mean?’” he told the Journal. “Normally you have to show probable cause. That’s what it says in the Fourth Amendment.”
SNIP
“It’s more likely something criminal happened in the obtaining of the search warrant than… Hillary Clinton did something wrong,” he said
Read more >>>>
We thank him and applaud his effort.  In a Gothamist article, Schoenberg says this.
"I like tilting at windmills, and sometimes it turns out not to be as crazy as everybody thinks," he said. "[Maybe] I’m right that there’s some big story behind this, maybe i’m wrong...Sticking to your convictions, trying to think differently from everyone else is what I like to do."
In the movie, Ronald Lauder tells Maria Altmann that her "schoolboy" lawyer is not equal to an argument before SCOTUS to help her retrieve family treasures looted by the Nazis. Maria tells Lauder that she will stick with her schoolboy.  He succeeded. Perhaps he is right. Maybe this is a battle worth having. Maybe it indeed is not "as crazy as everybody thinks. "
Go for it, Randy!
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