A federal judge has ordered that the FBI must release some records related to its investigation of President Donald Trump's handling of presidential records that have been sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In a memorandum opinion issued Monday, Judge Beryl Howell wrote, "Given the current circumstances and legal landscape—including that President Trump now enjoys absolute and presumptive immunity from criminal liability, the government has dismissed criminal charges against President Trump and ... and no pending or even contemplated criminal enforcement action within the applicable statute of limitations on the topics of responsive records is at all likely," the exemptions the FBI cited to block the release of information no longer apply.

Exactly three years ago, on Feb. 10, 2022, Axios reported that New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman's then-upcoming book, "Confidence Man," included a claim that White House staff "periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging" the presidential toilet.

Trump issued a statement calling the story "another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book." (A footnote in Howell's opinion notes, "In August of 2022, Haberman released photos of notes at the bottom of two toilets, and, according to her sources, one photo was allegedly of a White House toilet while the other toilet was overseas.")

Eight days later, on Feb. 18, 2022, a letter from the National Archives described how President Trump allegedly brought classified records to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after losing the 2020 election.

This kicked off a high-stakes legal fight to return the records to government control and would eventually lead to an FBI search of Trump's residence. What came next were felony charges and a series of stunning legal and political victories that would propel Trump back into office and make the charges he faced effectively disappear.

But as questions swirled around the February 2022 allegations of mishandling of records by Trump, Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for six categories of documents. The first five categories pertained to documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, but the sixth category requested information about any records mentioning "Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and ... allegedly flushed down the toilet."

The FBI argued they were exempt from responding to the request about the Mar-a-Lago investigation citing possible harm that could come to a prosecution and issued a so-called "Glomar" response to part six of the request, meaning the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of records about alleged toilet documents.

The term Glomar is a reference to a secret CIA operation during the Cold War to raise a lost Soviet submarine from the ocean floor -- when details of the operation began to leak the government provided a response that neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the operation.

Some of the information from the Mar-a-Lago investigation files was eventually released but the sixth category has remained secret.

The landmark Trump immunity case that held a president is presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for official acts and his election victory which brought a dismissal to the case had the effect of wiping away the constraints that had permitted the FBI to withhold records under FOIA.

Howell writes, "somewhat ironically, the constitutional and procedural safeguards attached to the criminal process include significant confidentiality mechanisms," but for an immune president, such protections, "may simply be unavailable, as it is here."

"The FBI's Glomar response is improper, and the categorical withholding of the responsive records contained within the Mar-a-Lago investigative file is insupportable where, as here, no pending law enforcement proceeding exists, or can be reasonably anticipated, and the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been iced," Howell writes.

No records were released immediately in the case, but the parties must submit a joint status report in 10 days to propose a schedule to conclude this case. It is unclear if the government will seek an appeal to block any further release.

The Kremlin said Monday that U.S.-Russia relations were on the brink of collapse and refused to confirm whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken with President Donald Trump, despite Trump saying so Sunday.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told a media conference Monday that relations with Washington “are balancing on the brink of a breakup” and reiterated that the war in Ukraine would last until Kyiv drops its ambitions to join NATO and withdraws from the four regions occupied by Russian forces.

In remarks suggesting Moscow is maintaining its tough negotiating stance, Ryabkov said that “we simply imperatively need to get ... the new U.S. administration to understand and acknowledge that without resolving the problems that are the root causes of the crisis in Ukraine, it will not be possible to reach an agreement.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the same day that he would “neither confirm nor deny” Trump's comments to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday that he and Putin had spoken in his first officially acknowledged contact with the Russian leader since 2022.

Referring to his contact with the Russian leader, Trump told reporters, “let’s just say I’ve had it ... and I expect to have many more conversations. We have to get that war ended.”

“I hate to see all these young people being killed. The soldiers are being killed by the hundreds of thousands,” he said, but declined to provide any more details about how many times the two had spoken, responding, “I’d better not say.”

The remarks from Trump and spokespeople for the Kremlin come at a crucial juncture for the war in Ukraine, with Kyiv and its European neighbors nervously awaiting details of Trump's peace plan to end the conflict that Russia launched with its full-scale invasion three years ago.

Between winning election in November and being inaugurated last month, Trump said he planned to end the war in a single day upon taking office.

Referring to Trump's remarks Sunday, Keir Giles, a senior fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the London think-tank Chatham House, said “it would be tempting to think that this was all part of a careful plan for not releasing information too early in order not to bridge this process.”

“Or it could simply be that, as seems to be the case with Trump’s earlier promises of immediate action to bring the conflict to an end, that there isn’t, in fact, a plan yet,” he told NBC News.

Giles added that more clarity on the situation may come later this week, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy due to attend the high-profile Munich Security Conference, which senior U.S. officials are also attending.

Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday that the U.S. officials would be “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table.”

He added that Trump would be “prepared to tax, to tariff, to sanction” Moscow to get Putin to the negotiating table, while also stripping back assistance to Ukraine to force European allies to ramp up support to Ukraine.

Ryabkov’s comments today came after Zelenskyy told the British broadcaster ITV last week that he was ready to hold talks with Russia as long as “I had an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees.”

The Ukrainian leader also told Reuters on Sunday that it was important he meets Trump before any negotiations with Putin, “otherwise, it will look like a dialogue about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

A Russian drone attack on Kyiv late Sunday injured a woman and damaged several houses in the northeastern city of Sumy, Ukrainian officials said Monday.

Astha Rajvanshi

Astha Rajvanshi is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London. Previously, she worked as a staff writer covering international news for TIME.

Kash Patel, who served in senior advisory roles in the intelligence community and State Department during the first Trump administration, is the preferred candidate of the MAGA faction of the Republican Party and has proposed drastic reforms for the nation’s premier domestic intelligence agency. Meanwhile, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and former FBI special agent, once served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and is seen as a candidate with a more centrist approach.

Other possible candidates, including former U.S. Customs and Border Protection official Mark Morgan and former U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri, were floated in a CNN report.