A mostly dormant FBI Twitter account suddenly started releasing information related to Trump and Clinton

A mostly dormant Twitter account operated by the FBI has in recent days started releasing files about Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, and records from a 15-year-old investigation into the Clinton Foundation that was closed in 2005.

The account, which is verified and tweets as "FBI Records Vault," drew attention after sharing files around noon Tuesday related to former President Bill Clinton's 2001 presidential pardon of hedge fund manager Marc Rich on his last day in office.

The Clinton campaign and other observers questioned whether it was appropriate for the FBI to begin releasing documents related to Bill Clinton one week before the presidential election.

Some called it a "November surprise" and suggested further evidence of FBI meddling, especially given the bureau's surprise announcement Friday that it would be examining more documents related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation that had been closed in July.

"Absent a FOIA litigation deadline, this is odd," Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon tweeted Tuesday.
"Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?"

Two days earlier, the account had shared documents related to Fred Trump, Donald's father, calling him a "real estate developer and philanthropist." That release was also condemned by some political observers who felt it unfairly omitted information about allegations of racial bias that plagued Trump's real-estate company in the 1970s.

In a statement, the FBI said the release of the documents reflected a routine release of material that had been requested three or more times under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After the third time, the FBI said, that information is then automatically made available to the public online on a "first in, first out 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," the statement read. "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."

Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, who is well-versed in FOIA requests and FBI procedure for releasing classified information, said that the tweets are neither "news nor scandalous. The account is the FOIA reading room tweeting whenever there's a new posting."

It's unclear, however, whether the documents are tweeted out automatically or manually by the bureau. The documents relating to Fred Trump, for example, were released by the bureau on October 7 but only tweeted out on October 30. 

As such, many wondered why the account had suddenly come out of relative dormancy a few weeks before the election.

"Whatever the reasoning behind it, this latest release further brands the FBI as the Federal Bureau of Intervention," David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter. "It's a head-scratcher!"