Slashdot Mirror
Obama Admin Fights Missing White House Email Lawsuit
DesScorp writes "The AP reports that the Obama administration has picked up where the Bush administration left off on the missing White House email issue by trying to have a lawsuit dismissed that would have kept investigating whether or not email was still missing. Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President expressed disappointment with the Obama administration's actions. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government. The Justice Department 'apparently never got the message' from Obama, Blanton said."
"Obama is showing hypocrisy in record time, he's barely been in a month. It's not like he is reneging on a campaign promise, it sure makes it seem like practically his ENTIRE stated message about transparency in government was total bullshit."
Whoa whoa whoa, lets look at the actual facts before accusing Obama of "total bullshit."
The reason this is in the news right now - ie, what actually happened recently - is that the National Security Archive (the good guys who are suing for the emails) filed a response to the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the suit. So what's in the news right now isn't about a recent Obama decision.
The motion to dismiss was made on January 21st, which is right after the inauguration. Now, if Obama's absolute top priority was to change the government's position on defending against this suit, he could have ordered the justice department not to make the motion. But, what's much more likely, this motion was made by staff attorneys at the Justice Department, completing the job they were ordered to do earlier in January. It seems likely to me that they had finished drafting this motion to dismiss on the prior business day. Since the inauguration was holiday, and the day before that was MLK day, and before that the weekend... its likely the motion to dismiss was ready to be filed on January 16th, and that's when the lawyers' bosses ordered it done.
Since Obama wasn't in charge of the Justice Department until Jan 21st, the day the motion was filed, it's very likely there's nothing he could have done to stop it - he, and his staff, probably didn't know the motion was ready and ordered to be filed, and probably hadn't replaced the drafting lawyers' bosses yet anyway.
In fact, that the motion to dismiss was made the day after the inauguration makes it seem very likely that Bush holdovers were just doing everything they could, as fast as they could, to keep the cover up going.
You should hold your outrage until Obama (who's been pretty damn busy - passing a 800B stimulus package in the first month is unprecedented, but more on point is is ordering all agencies to presume in favor of disclosure when making FOIA decisions) actually has a chance to take a stance in this case.