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White House Wins Ruling On E-mail Records

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the unleash-the-shredders dept.

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."

3 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. When did this change? by Hyppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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."

  2. In case you are missing the context here by MarkusQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  3. Re:The Microsoft connection by freenix · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.