Attorneys for the New York Times will head to federal court Tuesday to begin proceedings in a lawsuit against the Justice Department aiming to force the Pentagon to release Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s emails sent and received from his private account.
The lawsuit, filed in May, demands that defense officials hand over more than a thousand pages of Carter’s work-related emails.
Politico reported:
Carter’s case has received little publicity in comparison to [Hillary] Clinton’s, but it also raises questions about the security procedures in place at the top rungs of the executive branch—and whether officials are attempting to use their personal email accounts to skirt the Freedom of Information Act, the press and the public’s main tool for forcing the release of government records short of the courts.
Carter conceded in December that he had used a personal email account to conduct official government business during his first several months at the Pentagon. Carter continued using the private account in violation of Defense Department rules for months after news broke early last year that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had used an unsecured private email server as secretary of state.
Peter Cook, a spokesman for Carter, told the New York Times at the time that the private account was a "mistake."
"As a result, he stopped such use of his personal email and further limited his use of email altogether," Cook said in December.
The Pentagon released more than 1,300 pages of work-related emails from Carter’s personal account in March in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the New York Times.
The Times argued in its latest lawsuit that the emails were excessively redacted and is demanding that the Pentagon release the emails with fewer redactions. The new lawsuit is challenging the department in a district court in New York.
The Justice Department said FOIA exemptions, including trade secrets, "privileged communications within or between agencies," and information that "if disclosed, would invade another individual’s personal privacy," justified the redactions.
Pentagon spokesman Gordon Trowbridge said there was no classified information in Carter’s private emails.
An attorney for the Times, David McCraw, told Politico that public officials who use a personal email account "should not expect that to be a way to get around FOIA."