The Justice Department is refusing to confirm whether President Donald Trump was or was not ever a target or subject of the ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling in the presidential campaign, despite Trump's public claims that he was repeatedly given such assurances by former FBI Director James Comey.

In a letter Tuesday responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a POLITICO reporter, a Justice Department lawyer said the agency won't hand over any records that would confirm Trump's status in any investigation.

Justice is also declining to produce any records about the debate Comey says took place over whether to tell Trump earlier this year that he wasn't a focus of the Russia probe. In fact, the agency won't even say whether such records exist.

"Please be advised that this Office can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any records responsive to your request," wrote Daniel Castellano, a senior attorney in Justice's Office of Information Policy. He said disclosing whether the records exist could interfere with ongoing enforcement proceedings, which he did not identify.

Attorney Brad Moss, who brought the FOIA suit on behalf of POLITICO and the James Madison Project, said the government's position is untenable because the president's statements amount to official acknowledgement of investigators' decision to discuss with him his status in the probe.

“The government’s response makes a mockery of the president’s repeated denials that he is under investigation. Is the government suggesting that the president doesn’t speak for the Executive Branch over which he presides?" Moss said. "The Government is apparently going to try and claim that the president’s past official statements are of no particular consequence ... What credibility can they afford to the official statements of the President of the United States when his own Justice Department says that they aren’t actually legitimate or necessarily accurate?”

In legal filings submitted to a federal court in Washington on Wednesday, government lawyers argued that only statements from the FBI or Justice Department can constitute official acknowledgment of an investigation. The Justice Department brief suggests that Trump's public statements on the topic amount to "rumors" that don't affect any of the government's legal rights to withhold records.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment on the Justice Department's actions.

The government's neither-confirm-nor-deny stance is known as a Glomar response, which takes its name from litigation in the 1970s aimed at confirming the CIA's alleged use of a salvage ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer.

Courts have upheld such responses, but judges have sometimes rejected that approach when there has been an official confirmation of the some of the events in question.

While the Justice Department appears to be withholding most records related to the Trump-Russia inquiry now being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, before Trump fired Comey in May the then-FBI chief confirmed in House testimony that such an investigation was underway.

In addition, later that month, the Justice Department released the order from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that appointed Mueller's appointment as special prosecutor to take over that investigation and related matters.