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Court: Governor's Office Must Release Katie McGinty Emails

Katie McGinty
Katie McGinty / AP
October 14, 2016

A Pennsylvania court ruled on Friday that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's office must release emails sent by Katie McGinty that it has kept from the state Republican Party.

McGinty served six months as Wolf's chief of staff before resigning to launch her campaign for U.S. Senate last summer. The Pennsylvania Republican Party issued an open records request for McGinty's emails as chief of staff almost immediately on July 7, 2015. The request produced over 15,000 pages worth of emails but only 71 of them have been handed over to the state party.

The court's decision gave the governor's office thirty days to release the emails, which means that it could wait until after election day to comply.

Megan Sweeney, a spokesperson for the state Republicans, said Wolf should release the emails immediately.

"The time has come for Governor Tom Wolf to stop hiding Katie McGinty’s emails from the public," Sweeney said. "For the past sixteen months, Katie McGinty has been able to hide her email behind a taxpayer-funded group of government lawyers.

"Every trick in the book has been used by the Wolf Administration to hide Katie McGinty’s emails," she said. "The Office of Open Records now the Commonwealth Court agree that it’s time for the Wolf administration to stop using taxpayer funds to delay the inevitable release of Katie McGinty’s emails."

A spokesman for McGinty's campaign told PennLive that "Katie is always on the side of transparency."