Editorial: Obstructing open government

On the very same day that FBI Director James Comey castigated Hillary Clinton for lying and being “extremely careless” in her handling of very sensitive, highly classified information on a private email server during her time as secretary of state, there was a glimmer of good news in regard to federal officials who use private emails to try to evade public records laws.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday that federal officials are not allowed to use private accounts to shield government agency records from search or disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

The case concerned the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank seeking to obtain records of correspondence involving a top White House official.

The Obama administration argued that it had no obligation to search for or turn over records held by John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, on a private email account as part of the open records request.

In addition to official White House email, Mr. Holdren also sent and received emails at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. The government argued that documents on a nongovernmental email server are “outside the possession or control of federal agencies, and thus beyond the scope” of public records law.

Judge David Sentelle saw through the flaw in that reasoning. “If a department head can deprive the citizens of their right to know what his department is up to by the simple expedient of maintaining his departmental emails on an account in another domain, that purpose is hardly served,” he wrote.

CEI senior fellow Marlo Lewis issued a statement calling the ruling a major victory for government transparency. He also noted “it’s stunning that it takes a court decision for federal employees to be held accountable to the law.”

Indeed.

As Mr. Lewis aptly pointed out, if the ruling had gone the other way, government officials could conduct all of their business on private email accounts bypassing the peering eyes of the public and Freedom of Information Act requests.

President Obama’s supposed “most transparent administration in history” has proven repeatedly that it has no interest in actually being transparent, as this court case makes clear.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Clinton was just following the president’s example. And after getting a free pass from Mr. Comey, we can only expect more of the same if she wins the election.