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The FBI’s electronic case management system, Sentinel, allows agents to hide the existence of relevant investigative reports from other authorized users of the federal database. And during the Russia collusion hoax, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team used that functionality to keep potentially relevant documents hidden from other FBI agents investigating whether a Fusion GPS contractor lied to Congress.
The significance of these two facts cannot be overstated: Now in question is whether the federal government complies with the constitutional mandate in criminal cases to provide defendants all material exculpatory and impeachment evidence as well as its discovery obligations in civil litigation; whether Special Counsel Durham’s office, the inspector general, and agents investigating the members of the Crossfire Hurricane team had access to all relevant information; whether the DOJ and FBI provided congressional oversight committees with requested (or subpoenaed) documents; and whether FOIA responses included all relevant documents to the press and public.
Last Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released a recently declassified FBI “Electronic Communication,” or EC, dating from September 2019, which the Iowa Republican maintains “Proves Fusion GPS Contractor Nellie Ohr Lied To Congress About Contributions To Crossfire Hurricane.” That 43-page document, drafted by a FBI Washington Field Office agent, detailed extensive evidence indicating Nellie Ohr lied multiple times during her congressional testimony concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign.
The catalogue of evidence against Nellie Ohr, who is married to Bruce Ohr — one of the key FBI Russia-collusion hoaxers — raises the question of why the DOJ never pursued criminal charges against the Fusion GPS contractor. The EC also suggests that Nellie Ohr’s open-source research may have made its way into the Steele dossier and the fraudulent Alfa Bank materials provided to the FBI.
Those details, however, pale in comparison to two explosive facts the EC revealed by way of background. First, the EC explained the FBI’s Sentinel case management system allows investigative material to be coded “Prohibited Access,” which renders the files not merely inaccessible to other agents — but invisible to them. And second, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team designated the Trump/Russia-collusion investigations “Prohibited Access” in Sentinel, meaning any agents running keyword search in Sentinel would wrongly believe there were no responsive documents.
Here’s how the FBI Washington Field Office agent put it in the EC: “On May 3, 2019, relevant FBI/DOJ information related to this assessment [of Nellie Ohr] was inaccessible to FBI investigators given that the Trump/Russia-collusion investigations were in FBI systems under ‘Prohibited Access’ status which, unlike ‘Restricted Access’ status, precludes investigators from detecting the existence of potentially relevant serials.”
“In other words,” the EC continued, “when search terms that exist in the Prohibited Access-status cases are searched in Sentinel, the particular search will receive a false-negative Sentinel search response.”
The existence of the “Prohibited Access” classification came as a surprise to several former career prosecutors and FBI agents. Jay Town, a former career prosecutor and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under Trump 1.0, told The Federalist he was not aware of the “Prohibited Access” classification and shared that many of his colleagues likewise had never heard of it. “This is a staggering revelation for nearly all of us,” Town said.
At least one former assistant U.S. attorney, however, indicated he knew of the “Prohibited Access” coding, and clearly the FBI Washington Field Office agents who drafted and approved the EC were familiar with its use as well. But how many DOJ and FBI agents knew of the “Prohibited Access” functionality is unknown.
There is also scant public information about the coding and when or why it is used. For instance, the redacted public version of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide does not appear to discuss the use of “Prohibited Access” in Sentinel. An inspector general’s report from 2021, however, confirms Sentinel offers a “Prohibited Access” coding and that that coding renders the files invisible to other FBI agents, with a footnote in that report explaining:
Documents and data uploaded into Sentinel are assigned one of three access levels: unrestricted, restricted, or prohibited. The extent to which information appears in search results depends on the data’s access level and the searcher’s permissions. Prohibited data is visible only to users with permission to view the underlying case; all other users receive no search results and would not know that information relevant to their search exists in a prohibited case.
That the FBI’s case management system allows documents, including witness statements and other evidence, to be rendered invisible to other agents searching Sentinel for relevant documents is horrifying because the federal government is legally obligated in a variety of circumstances to produce such information — but it cannot produce something that it does not know exists. (Read more: The Federalist, 6/2/2025) (Archive)