Since President Obama's EPA administrator, HHS Secretary, and nominee for Labor Secretary have all been exposed for using pseudonymous email accounts as an end-run around transparency efforts, have any officials inside the White House employed the same trick? Sorry, the spokesman for the "most transparent administration in history" won't comment on that:
Carney wants you to remember that White House internal correspondence isn't subject to FOIA requests (which isn't the case re: Jackson/Sebelius/Perez), so it's a moot question. Fox's Ed Henry follows up anyway, and Carney declines to answer. Why? If White House honchos are immune from truth-seeking FOIA requests, shouldn't they have no use for secret emails identities, and shouldn't Carney's lay-up answer be "no"? Plus, if worst comes to worst, the president could always toss the executive privilege blanket over any potential fire on this front, as he did to thwart the Fast & Furious investigation. Nevertheless, Carney wouldn't or couldn't answer the direct question -- which might lead a cynic to conclude that actually yes, some White House officials are using secret email accounts for reasons they believe to be useful to their interests. What might those interests be? Frustrating and side-stepping Congressional investigations or the work of a special counsel, perhaps? It's all so very transparent. I'll leave you with this, from today's AP report:
"There's nothing secret," Carney said. The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of government emails released under the federal open records law and couldn't independently find instances when material from any of the secret accounts it identified was turned over. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the few nonpublic government addresses that AP identified so far, including one for Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Health and Human Services Department.
There's nothing secret, you silly paranoiacs. Except, of course, the secret emails that weren't turned over for scrutiny under open records law requests, which is the whole point of "Richard Windsor" existing -- and winning awards for ethical behavior.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member