White House Wins Ruling On E-mail Records

An anonymous reader writes "The White House Office of Administration is not required to turn over records about a trove of possibly missing e-mails, a federal judge ruled Monday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the agency does not have 'substantial independent authority,' so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act."

Comments

When did this change?

[Hyppy]

IANAL, but I'm still surprised to hear that the FOIA only applies to government offices which have "substantial independent authority."

From everything I've heard, it applies to all government agencies. Does this mean if a government office can make itself appear harmless enough, it doesn't have to cooperate?

"Sorry, I'm only the FBI director's SECRETARY. I don't have substantial independent authority."

In case you are missing the context here

[MarkusQ]

In case you are missing the context here, the emails in question are interesting for a whole slew of reasons. The probably contain evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors (most likely by Cheney, but who knows) and pretty much have to contain evidence of perjury (with the morass of statements that have been made under oath, someone is surely lying, we just don't know who). And them there's the Hacth act violations, the Abrimoff issues, the election tampering, and on and on.

These are the missing 18 minutes gone gonzo,

--MarkusQ

Re:The Microsoft connection

[freenix]

Select, Right-Click, Wikipedia search. She did screw up Penfield's work on the M$ trial. She should have refused because Penfield was the only person who could have know enough to judge the case. More to the point, she just reversed an October 2007 ruling about Presidential documents.

On October 1, 2007, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly reversed George W. Bush on archive secrecy, (38-page) ruling that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law." National Security Archives, at George Washington University alleged that the Bush order severely slowed or prevented the release of historic presidential papers.

Involvement with FISA should disbar anyone - the court violates the 4th amendment by being a secret court.

Re:Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a Fascist

[Doc Ruby]

I am. Almost as mad as I am for his appointing Republican senator William Cohen as his Defense Secretary (1997-2001), who dismissed Wesley Clark from commanding NATO (apparently for winning the Kosovo War without any US casualties). Which gave us the Pentagon that backed Bush every step of the way lying us into the Iraq War, while letting Binladen go (despite Clinton forcing Cohen's Pentagon to bomb Binladen's bases).

Aren't you mad about all that too?

Publicise this in KY and wreck his career.

[plasmacutter]

Publicise this despicable action and watch bunning struggle to find a job mopping floors in his local elementary school.