Daniel Metcalfe, the federal official with arguably the most knowledge on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), called Hillary Clinton's email excuses "deceptive" and a "blatant circumvention" of the FOIA, reported CBC.
Metcalfe, the founding director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy, served as an FOIA official in the executive branch for over 25 years. Along with offering FOIA advice to officials, he's helped four administrations, including the Clinton White House, interpret the FOIA, and has testified to Congress on their behalf.
But Clinton's decision as secretary of state to use a private email and server for official government business "was contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law," he told CBC.
"There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act," Metcalfe, a registered Democrat, said.
Clinton said during a Tuesday press conference on the matter that she deleted about half of the 60,000 emails from her personal account before handing the rest over to the State Department for review. According to Clinton, the only emails she deleted were personal in nature - messages about her daughter's wedding, mother's funeral and yoga schedule.
"You can't have the secretary of state do that," Metcalfe said. "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," he added.
Upon examining a transcript of Clinton's press conference, Metcalfe labelled 23 of her statements "deceptive," "grossly misleading" and impossible to verify, according to CBC.
"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," Metcalfe concluded.
