(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the United States Supreme Court has been accused of shielding a Clinton State Department aide who used a personal email to conduct government business, according to a report in the Washington Free Beacon.
In 2015, Gawker made a FOIA request seeking communications between former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines and any media outlets with which he communicated in his official capacity.
“Like Clinton, Reines often communicated with the press via a personal email account. That meant his communiqués were not preserved on State Department systems,” the Free Beacon reported.
In its suit, Gawker alleged that Reines did not fully disclose the methodology used to search his private email for government documents — and therefore had not complied with the request.
U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — now Biden’s nominee to serve on the US Supreme Court — rejected Gawker’s motion for discovery.
“The Court concludes that the FOIA imposes no obligation on an agency to solicit or produce documents held solely by a former agency official, at least in the absence of evidence indicating . . . [an] attempt to thwart FOIA obligations,” the judge wrote in her opinion.
The Free Beacon reported that “Jackson’s opinion parted ways with a colleague on the Washington federal trial court, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, [who] required Clinton herself and two of her top aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, to submit affidavits along the lines Gawker sought.”
President Biden appointed Jackson, a former Breyer clerk, to fill Justice Breyer’s forthcoming vacancy on Feb. 25 after promising in January that his nominee would be “the first black woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court.”
The person I nominate to replace Justice Breyer will be someone with extraordinary qualifications. Character, experience, and integrity.
And they will be the first Black woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 27, 2022
