Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson snared in growing pursuit of personal Email

The Washington Times reports on CEI’s FOIA case against White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren. 

In that case, President Obama’s top science adviser, John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, had worked on global warming documents on his personal account at the Woods Hole Research Center. The Competitive Enterprise Institute tried to get a look at the documents, but Mr. Holdren and the Obama administration resisted.

Eventually, a federal court demanded that Mr. Holdren preserve his account to make sure the court could access his emails.

Since the ruling in July, the Competitive Enterprise Institute case been cited in six other lawsuits.

Sam Kazman, general counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the use of personal email for government business has been an issue. After the federal court’s ruling last summer, an increasing number of agencies are conducting searches of personal email accounts without having to be pushed to do them.

“It was viewed as somewhat precedent-setting in not only how people make FOIA requests, but also in how agencies respond to them,” said Mr. Kazman. “Under the Obama administration, the use of these somewhat new technologies to avoid FOIA became much more widespread.”

Read the full article at The Washington Times