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'Somebody Should Go to the Slammer for This'...
‘Somebody Should Go to the Slammer for This’: Legal Experts Shocked and Appalled by DOJ’s Ukraine Redactions
by Colin Kalmbacher | 2:31 pm, January 2nd, 2020
The Department of Justice (DOJ) redacted a series of emails previously provided to a government transparency group. The subject matter of those emails touched upon the issue at the heart of the current national impeachment drama: President Donald Trump’s withholding of congressionally-appropriated military aid to Ukraine.
Redactions in government-provided documentation, of course, come with the territory. They are typical, expected and typically rife. And such knowledge, once blacked-out with the federal censor’s pen, almost always stays walled off. But at least some of those redactions have now been uncovered.
Centrist legal blog Just Security revealed that many of those redactions, inserted at the behest of Attorney General Bill Barr’s DOJ, contained evidence that at least two executive branch agencies–the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)–and numerous officials were deeply aware of concerns that Trump’s aid withholding scheme violated the Impoundment Control Act.
News of those significant redactions broke early Thursday morning and Law&Crime has a lengthy write-up of the overall story here. The amount of information released, however, is somewhat dizzying and part of an increasingly complex story line. We turned to the experts for the upshot of this groundbreaking release.
Federal defense attorney and computer law expert Tor Ekeland was appalled.
In an email, Ekeland rubbished DOJ’s decision-making:
This is a mess. Did they provide a redaction log listing the basis for their redactions, e.g., privilege or word product or what not? You just don’t get to redact things willy nilly because you don’t want information that looks bad coming to public view. There might be cognizable privilege claims for redaction here, but when you try to ascertain what, you quickly get mired in the confusion and chaos of this administration. In order to claim privilege for redactions, you first need to be clear on who is claiming the privilege, and what privilege is being claimed. It’s not immediately clear from this romper room mess.
more...
https://lawandcrime.com/impeachment/somebody-should-go-to-the-slammer-for-this-legal-experts-shocked-and-appalled-by-dojs-ukraine-redactions/?fbclid=IwAR3Ee_NDPQJG8YDv4rHTK-sJsmCVge-G3KSjEl49EwOviZLNnrHR5hsJZrY
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