So I’ve been following the Clinton email scandal, concerning whether or not she should have been using a personal account, and hearing how the FBI is releasing umpteen thousand pages of security redacted correspondence, with highlights being reported in the media, and presumably with her opponents going through them with a fine toothed comb looking for anything that they can use against her. However it recently struck me that I didn’t recall what it was that made it so that the FBI had to publish everything.
I think it originally came from an FIA request, but this is the first time in my memory that such forced public disclosure of personal correspondence. Given the treasure trove of potential dirt that such a release makes available, I would imagine that FIA requests would be made of every single office holder and political appointee in every branch of government just to see what you could dig up. Yet it seems only to have happened to Clinton.
I assume that there is some legal reason that makes Clinton’s situation unique. Can someone help me understand why all of her emails are published but not everything that Marco Rubio or Condaliza Rice ever wrote?
I don’t think you could use a FIA request to get Bill Clinton’s personal emails, but since Hillary used the same email account for both personal and official government emails I don’t think she has the same protections as Bill does.
None of the emails released were personal emails. All of them were work-related. She used a personal email server to handle all her emails-personal and work-related. While not a completely stupid idea, in retrospect not a good move. Before she turned over the emails to the state department, her lawyers went through the emails and only forwarded the work-related ones. That is what is subject to the FOIA request.
The FBI is going over all the hardware and the emails themselves, including her ISP’s server, because it has been determined that classified data was sent through the system. But that is a separate investigation from the FOIA request. Why the FBI is publishing anything is beyond me. They are investigating a case, releasing information during the investigation is unusual and I don’t see how that furthers the investigation. The FOIA releases are coming from the state department.
Maybe I shouldn’t have use the word personal, since what I really mean was work e-mails that were directed to or from her personally, as opposed to say general policy statements and press releases and other memo’s that are intended for public consumption.
I am just surprised that if a random request can get you every e-mail that a given public official wrote or received, that this wouldn’t be done constantly, on the off chance that some poor word choice could made at some point in time could be used against them.
My father was on the local school board for one term. During that time, someone sued the school district and every board member was supposed to provide any email messages to or from the district or the board. (But my father is a Luddite and I don’t believe he’s ever sent email to anyone.)
These FOIA/PRR requests happen far too much. Federal, State, public higher ed, and all the way down. Get fired: FOIA. Don’t get tenure: FOIA. Bored in prison: FOIA. Spouse is a lawyer: FOIA. “Watchdog” groups: FOIA. Newspapers: FOIA. Police get body cams: FOIA. Two coworkers get mad at each other: Two FOIA’s.
Lots of taxpayer money going to these never ending requests.
My favourite is - FOIA request denied because there is no such document - despite it having been released or referenced a few months earlier. The problem is not FOIA, it’s the various weasel ways that agencies escape FOIA requests.
…and so on.
the theory is, if a FOIA request costs a decent amount to assemble, the agency can recoup the cost by charging the cost to the requestor. However… this too has been abused by people being charged several dollars per photocopied page. The other theory is that anything other than personal and confidential information should be available to the citizens who paid the bills that it took to create that information.