Judge: Drive to recover Colin Powell's emails could be fruitful

[DonViejo]

Source: Politico




By JOSH GERSTEIN 01/09/2018 07:57 PM EST Updated 01/09/2018 11:44 PM EST

A federal judge has rejected the federal government's bid to toss out a lawsuit demanding official action to recover emails former Secretary of State Colin Powell sent during his four years as America's top diplomat more than a decade ago.

In a ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden called "anemic" the efforts the State Department and National Archives have made to obtain the messages, which Powell sent via an America Online account.

McFadden didn't immediately order State or the Archives to take further action, but he said that a conservative watchdog group — Cause of Action Institute — can proceed with its suit despite the Justice Department's arguments that the litigation is fruitless.

Lawyers for the State Department noted that Powell's representative told the agency that there were no emails left from the period in Powell's AOL account, which had been closed for several years. AOL's general counsel told a House committee that AOL's system had no emails from Powell's tenure as secretary from 2001 to 2005.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2018/01/09/colin-powell-emails-lawsuit-332145

[mainer]

1. The truth is, AOL doesn't seem to have email caches from those early years

I've had an active AOL account since the 90's and I can't access anything prior to around 2003 -- even the emails that I never deleted from the server.

[riversedge]

2. This classifying information after they have been stored or inactive

or even deleted and recovered in nonsense in my book--no matter what political party is involved.


...

By JOSH GERSTEIN

01/09/2018 07:57 PM EST

Updated 01/09/2018 11:44 PM EST

...........................
In an interview with POLITICO two years ago, Powell dismissed the classification claims.



"They’re fairly innocuous and very benign, and neither ambassador classified them at the time. They were merely information memos sent to State.gov," Powell said. "Now, 11 or 12 years later, as part of a whole process of reviewing things, somebody in the department says, 'Well, they're classified.' My response to that is, no they were not. ... You can say your judgment is they should have been classified, but at the time they were not classified."

An official with the Cause of Action Institute welcomed McFadden's ruling.

"Agencies must take their responsibility to secure federal records seriously," said John Vecchione, the group's president and CEO. "For too long, agencies have allowed federal employees to use personal email accounts without ensuring those records are recovered and maintained in accordance with the law. We are encouraged that the court recognized that agencies must do more to recover lost records."

[Hortensis]

3. What is this conservative watchdog group looking for?

At least that it'll admit to?

[Bayard]

4. BUT--

His emails!!!

Seriously, why in the world do they want these?

[lagomorph777]

5. AOL HQ is a 10-minute bicycle ride from my house.

Maybe I'll stop by and ask them to hand them over.

I interviewed there a few times. Lovely facility but they were desperately trying to keep everybody happy as the company spiraled down. Beer cart rolling around every Friday, Nerf guns, etc. Sad. I went elsewhere.