Judicial Watch: Secret Email Addresses Make Mockery of Transparency

Judicial Watch: Secret Email Addresses Make Mockery of Transparency

In the aftermath of reports that many of President Obama’s political appointees use secret government email accounts, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton is sounding off, explaining how such accounts thwart transparency laws. On Tuesday, the White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the secret government email accounts were no big deal. “There’s nothing secret,” he said.

Fitton begs to differ. “Unless we know about the alias accounts, we can’t accurately analyze Freedom of Information responses. This revelation could impact dozens of our Freedom of Information lawsuits. If we know an email has the address of a senior official, we will look at it carefully. If we don’t, it might be overlooked or, more importantly, we might not go to court over it. With this administration, transparency is a game of ‘catch me if you can’ — even with the courts.”

Judicial Watch has filed over 1,100 Freedom of Information Act requests with the Obama administration and over 100 FOIA lawsuits against it, making it the top public interest FOIA requestor and litigator in the country. 

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

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