Freedom of Information Act expert: Clinton's email system 'laughable'

A top freedom-of-information expert isn’t buying Hillary Clinton’s explanation of why she set up her own email system to conduct official State Department business, calling it “laughable.”

Daniel Metcalfe, who advised White House administrations on interpreting the Freedom of Information Act from 1981 to 2007, told The Canadian Press that the former secretary of state acted “contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law.”


“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, reviewing a transcript of Clinton’s remarks during her Tuesday news conference. Clinton told reporters she deleted approximately 30,000 personal emails from her private account that she also used as secretary of state.

The FOIA expert said if he had heard of a Cabinet member setting up a personal email system and deciding what gets deleted and what gets kept as government record, “I would’ve said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’”

“You can’t have the secretary of state do that; that’s just a prescription for the circumvention of the FOIA,” he said. “Plus, fundamentally, there’s no way the people at the archives should permit that if you tell them over there.”’

Metcalfe said that Clinton knows how the Freedom of Information Act works, based on his work with the Clinton administration in his professional capacity.

According to the Canadian Press report, Metcalfe said Clinton’s statements at the news conference were at places impossible to verify, “deceptive” and “grossly misleading.”

“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.