FBI Delays Release of Communications With Firm That Examined DNC Servers FBI Delays Release of Communications With Firm That Examined DNC Servers The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has pushed back the estimated completion date of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents pertaining to its communications with the security firm that examined the Democratic National Committee's hacked servers to October. The Washington Free Beacon submitted the FOIA request in July 2017 with the FBI seeking all communication between the bureau and CrowdStrike, Inc., the California-based cyber security firm that examined the DNC's servers following the infiltration that led to the release of John Podesta's emails. The FBI said in December the documents should be available by March. The FBI, which was never granted access to the DNC's servers for inspection, instead relied on the third-party firm that was brought in by the DNC for information regarding the compromised network who concluded that Russia was behind the hack. Simple track requests are averaging approximately 80 days from the date of receipt for processing, the officer said. Requests in the large complex processing track are averaging 774 days for processing. The Free Beacon request falls into the complex medium processing track and was given an estimated completion date of March 2018. However, the documents were not made available in March. The Free Beacon again reached out to the records office. A public information officer later left a message saying the estimated completion date is now October, seven months after the initial completion date.