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DEMOCRAT FOIA EXPERT: HILLARY'S CLAIMS 'LAUGHABLE'

'What she did was contrary to ... letter and spirit of the law'

Cheryl Chumley

The executive branch’s most senior-level Freedom of Information Act official – who also happens to be a registered Democrat – said Hillary Clinton’s claims of innocence over her do-it-yourself home email system are outright laughable, and there’s no way the former secretary of state couldn’t have known better.

“What she did was contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law,” said Daniel Metcalfe, whose job for roughly 25 years was to keep four presidential administrations in line with the Freedom of Information Act and to fulfill requests for documents, the Canadian Press reported.

Part of Metcalfe’s job was also to testify before Congress on behalf of the White House on matters pertinent to FOIA. His title? The founding director of the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy, and he held that role between 1981 and 2007.

And to Metcalfe, Clinton’s professions of innocence defy logic.

“There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act,” he said, in the news outlet.

Metcalfe, a registered Democrat, said he’s not trying to take political revenge for anything, and was actually embarrassed to work with former President George W. Bush and his Republican attorney general. He now teaches government information law and policy for American University.

But wrong is wrong, he said – and Clinton is obviously in the wrong.

“I would’ve said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Metcalfe said, explaining how he would have reacted if working in the Obama administration and learning of Clinton’s home email server, he Canadian Press reported. “You can’t have the secretary of state do that. That’s just a prescription for the circumvention of the FOIA. Plus, fundamentally, there’s no way the people at the archives should permit that if you tell them over there.”

Metcalfe also said that he’s sure Clinton knows FOIA because her past includes service as secretary of state, senator, presidential hopeful, and lawyer. He went through Clinton’s news conference, point by point – the one she gave saying that she did not break any laws by creating and operating an email server in her own New York home – and said he found 23 instances of “grossly misleading” or “deceptive” claims.

“Her suggestion that government employees can unilaterally determine which of their records are personal and which are official, even in the face of a FOIA request, is laughable,” he said.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/democrat-foia-expert-hillarys-claims-laughable/#RIuqcRJFgcJ06Uts.99