WASHINGTON – The man who was the US government's top Freedom of Information Act official for a quarter-century says Hillary Clinton justification for setting up a private email system as Secretary of State is "laughable."
"What she did was contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law," said Daniel Metcalfe, who ran the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy from 1981 to 2007, a a period spanning the Reagan, Bush – and Bill Clinton — administrations.
"There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act," he said, in scalding comments to the Canadian Press.
Metcalfe said if he had learned of a cabinet officer setting up an email system like Clinton did, "I would've said, 'You've gotta be kidding me."
"You can't have the secretary of state do that. 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.
Clinton told a packed press conference at the UN Tuesday that she deleted about half her cache of 60,000 emails, turning over to the State Department those messages she and her counsel deemed official.
Clinton insisted she followed all the federal rules in effect at the time.
After reviewing a transcript of Clinton's remarks, Metcalfe cited 23 instances he said were "deceptive," "grossly misleading," or impossible to verify.
"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, laughable," he concluded.
Metcalfe now teaches government information law and policy at American University in Washington, D.C.
Other experts also weren't buying Clinton's explanation that she used a private email strictly for convenience to avoid carrying more than one mobile device.
"I do not believe it was for convenience. I just have to believe that it was because she didn't want anybody to have access to the info," Richard Schaffer, who directed the office of information assurance at the National Security Agency, told The Post.
If Clinton were ever to decide she needed to turn over remaining emails, Schaeffer is confident they could be retrieved.
"They might have been deleted from the server but in any sort of backup situation, they're on backup tape somewhere or they're on a backup system. The emails exist."
Schaeffer, who now does cyber and intelligence consulting, added: "Having a third-party mutually acceptable to Congress and the secretary, who is able to do a second review of that material would be a useful thing. I quite frankly find it very unlikely that there was never a sensitive discussion conducted via email."
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