bendog
Diamond Member
I'm not sure about that. Perhaps. As you say .gov. However, transition folks are not federal employees. But, transitions do get public money. But, as Hillary shows ... err on the side of delete and crush the hard drives and them cover them with acid and incinerate what remains.Destroying them would have violated Federal Law.I dunno. I think they were legally discoverable, and don't think Mueller illegally obtained them when he didn't get a subpoena. The GAO had agreed to destroy them.... of course Team Trump was recklessly stupid in letting them go, and perhaps not destroying them themselves.I don't see it as "kicking down the door."I think they were too. But Mueller had a very good and sneaky reason to "kick down the door" without a subpoena. And He's not gonna indict a potus. His job is to uncover the truth behind Russia and Trump.Turley also mentioned " this demand does not appear to have been made in the form of a court-approved subpoena."
A subpoena was not necessary. They are gov't records, subject to law enforcement review.
See d., page 4:
d. Disclosure.
(1) Electronic messages may be treated as Agency records for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 and the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a. As such, electronic messages or portions of them may be required to be disclosed upon a proper request.
Additionally, they may be disclosed pursuant to discovery in a legal proceeding or upon request by Congress.
The contents of electronic messages, properly obtained for Federal Government purposes, may be disclosed within the Agency for an official purpose without the permission of the authorized user who created the message.
https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/CIO_2160.2B_CHGE_1_GSA_Electronic_Messaging_and_Related_Services_(Signed_on_6-17-2015).pdf
Turley uses "kicking down the door" to denote some power play. I don't think Mueller's motivation was power, despite being a very aggressive, perhaps overly so, prosecutor. I think Mueller was getting the docs in a way that kept people he was going to interview from knowing he had them. Sort of like "surprise - no knock warrant ... everybody face down on the floor hands behind your heads" LOL