Thread by @clarkkathleen

This @nytimes article describes a 2019-09-10 email exchange between OMB official Mike Duffey & DoD official Elaine McCusker.

OMB had ignored DoD's earlier warnings that the repeated holds on Ukraine aid would cause problems,
& now OMB planned to blame DoD.

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https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/1211417544621510658

The article did not provide a copy of these documents, but it quotes from McCusker's email.
Elsewhere the article refers to an email trove obtained by @publicintegrity via a #FOIA lawsuit.

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In that lawsuit, @publicintegrity sought
all "records reflecting any communication between"
OMB officials
&
DoD official Elaine McCusker
"concerning the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative"

assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6535…

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In November, federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
granted @publicintegrity's request for a preliminary injunction & ordered DoD & OMB to turn over non-exempt responsive documents.

law.justia.com/cases/federal/…

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The government produced documents in 2 tranches:
the first on Dec. 12 (publicintegrity.org/national-secur…) &
a second on Dec. 20 (documentcloud.org/documents/6590…).

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Here's the strange thing
& something Judge Kollar-Kotelly & @publicintegrity may want to address:
As far as I can tell, the government did not produce the 2019-09-10 OMB-DoD emails that @EricLiptonNYT, @maggieNYT & @MarkMazzettiNYT used in their article
...

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... even though those emails seem to be covered by Judge Kollar-Kotelly's order.

Why didn't the government produce emails that a judge ordered it to produce?

It looks like @nytimes succeeded where a federal court did not.

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Is this part of a pattern of government misconduct -- hiding evidence of inconvenient facts?

See @hansilowang's thread on the government's disclosure failures in census lawsuit:

https://twitter.com/hansilowang/status/1207891556532969472?s=20

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@hansilowang A very astute reader (HW) emailed me that the 2 emails may actually be on pp. 59-60 of the Dec. 20 tranche of #FOIA documents

(documentcloud.org/documents/6590…)

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Almost all of text of the emails is redacted,
&
the NTY's claimed 43-minute lag time
between the emails
seems to be
4 hours & 43 minutes instead.

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Mike Duffey wrote Elaine McCusker a long (mostly redacted) email on Sept. 10, 2019 at 7:51:23pm

She replied on Sept. 11 at 12:34:50am, and the entirety of her short email is redacted

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I tried to match the typeface of McCasker's 2019-09-09 "Good morning." email,
& then used that typeface to type "You can’t be serious. I am speechless.” over the redaction of her 2019-09-11 email, and it looks like a good fit.

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So apparently the government *did* produce those 2 emails, but claimed that most of Duffey's email and all of McCusker's email was privileged.

I look forward to hearing the government's explanation for those privilege claims.

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1 more note:
The discrepancy between
the 43-minute gap claimed by the NYT &
the 4-hour, 43-minute gap on the face of these emails
might be caused by
"a duplicate email found in the inbox of a recipient in a different time zone four hours ahead"

See publicintegrity.org/national-secur…

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