Judge rules for White House in e-mail controversy

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - A federal judge says a White House office that has records about millions of possibly missing e-mails does not have to make them public.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly says the Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, enabling the White House to maintain the secrecy of a lengthy internal paper trail about its problem-plagued e-mail system.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080616/ap_on_go_pr_wh/whit... ;_

[slinkerwink]

1. WTF?

[atreides1]

5. She's A Clinton Appointee

In 1984, Kollar-Kotelly was appointed as an associate judge of the D.C. Superior Court. She served as deputy presiding judge from 1995 until her appointment to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton was confirmed in March 1997. In May 2002, Chief Justice William Rehnquist appointed Judge Kollar-Kotelly to serve as the presiding judge of the FISC.

In August 2001, Kollar-Kotelly received national attention when she was assigned the United States v. Microsoft anti-trust case after Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson was removed from the case. The decision was reversed in part and upheld in part.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly has recently received attention via a Washington Post article describing her administration of the FISC and in particular what weight evidence taken from warrantless searches should be given to issuing subsequent search warrants for suspects of terrorism and espionage.

Kollar-Kotelly recently denied a last-minute appeal by Saddam Hussein's legal team, stating that the United States has no right to interfere with the judicial processes of another nation's courts. In August 2007, in a rare move, Judge Kollar-Kotelly ordered the administration of George W. Bush to give its views regarding records requests by the ACLU on the National Security Agency's wiretapping program.

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.

[wtmusic]

2. The judge who happens to be the presiding judge for FISA.

Wonderful.

[loveable liberal]

4. hopefully it wont end there...

keep on keepin on.

[Supersedeas]

10. the type of Judge who might make a Mukasey style AG in a McCain Administration

[loveable liberal]

3. Our Democracy cannot afford McCain...

He will continue these ridiculous policies and continue to appoint fraud's and partisans to the bench.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

6. Joke's on them!

Bush is crazed about his own legacy. His presidential library, at this point, consists of a single copy of "My Pet Goat".

With all the obfuscation BushCo. has enjoyed, his legacy is going to be nothing more than a fat question mark.

[Tutonic]

7. This is a poor ruling.

I would think that since this office provides assistance to the Office of the President, it cannot hide beneath a cloak of secrecy from sharing information that was produced or reviewed by the Office of the President. What this judge has effectively sought to do is run the clock on this issue of obtaining the emails--since an appeal would extend beyond the length of G.W.s term. Kucinich is correct, these folks need impeachment!

[onenote]

9. the documents in question were not the missing emails themselves

by way of clarification, the documents at issue were documents relating to the Office of Administration's analysis of the "problem" that led to Executive Office of the President e-mails not being retained.

If you would like to read the ruling (which I'm guessing you haven't actually done yet), it is available at https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?20...

According to the judge, the case presented a close question of law. She came out one way, that upon reading, is not completlely unreasonable, as much as I would've preferred her to come out the other way.

[OnyxCollie]

8. I can understand this ruling.

I don't like it, but I understand not releasing the emails through FOIA. That said, there is still the Presidential Records Act and the RNC servers that held the GWB43.com emails that have yet to be fully pursued.

Of course, issuing subpoenas that aren't enforced doesn't help.

[tbyg52]

11. White House May Keep Documents in E-Mail Flap Private, Judge Rules

Source: Washington Post

The White House does not have to make public internal documents examining the potential disappearance of e-mails sent during some of the Bush administration's biggest controversies, a U.S. district judge ruled yesterday.

In a 39-page opinion, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that the White House's Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), even though its top officials had complied with the public records law for more than two decades.

The Office of Administration, which performs a variety of services for the Executive Office of the President, announced it would no longer comply with the FOIA last August, three months after an independent watchdog group filed a lawsuit seeking to discover what happened to the e-mails, which may have vanished from White House computer archives.

Acknowledging that the issue "is a close one, and is not easily resolved," Kollar-Kotelly wrote that the Office of Administration "lacks the type of substantial independent authority" necessary for it to fall under the FOIA. She added that the office performs mostly administrative functions, which also exempts it, and that past compliance with the FOIA was "insufficient by itself" to subject it to the law's requirements.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[DS1]

12. Here they are in their entirety

A: WTF LOL!
B: I know
C: We can run a Quake server with all this new disk space
D: pwnt

[TrogL]

13. White House office wins ruling on e-mail records

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/16/wh.emails/index....

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.

The decision means the White House does not have to disclose documents relating to its troubled e-mail system. That system developed problems that may have caused millions of White House e-mails to be unaccounted for.