Clinton Aide Who Avoided FOIA Insists He Didn’t Want to Avoid FOIA When He Wrote “I Want to Avoid FOIA”

J.K. Trotter, gawker.com

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Excerpt:

Former State Department official and longtime Hillary Clinton operative Philippe Reines has repeatedly stated that his email practices at State were aboveboard—even though he was caught lying about using a personal email address to conduct official government business.  ...

[E]mails revealed another curious exchange involving Reines and an influential reporter—in this case, Elise Labott of CNN. You may remember Labott as the foreign correspondent CNN suspended last month after she publicly criticized a Republican-backed bill to limit the settlement of Syrian immigrants in the United States. She also recently came under (much more limited) fire after Gawker published an exchange between her and Reines in late November, which showed him pressing Labott to publish certain tweets—at least one of which explicitly sides with Secretary Hillary Clinton—during a 2013 Congressional hearing about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

The newest set of emails suggests that Reines and Labott have indeed maintained a close working relationship, one in which both members feel comfortable joking around at the other’s expense. For reporters, this is known as working a source, and it’s part of the gig. But it sometimes results in jokey exchanges that, after the fact, can look a bit unseemly.

Like this one from March 2009, when Labott was serving as CNN’s State Department producer. In it, Reines offers Labott a job (in jest, one assumes) at the State Department’s public affairs office, and Labott responds by demanding (in jest, one assumes) that she be named an undersecretary:

From: PIR [Philippe Reines] ██████████
To: Labott, Elise
Sent: Wed Mar 04 01:25 20 2009
Subject: Re:

Any day you’d like to join PA [Public Affairs], we have a desk for you

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From: Elise Labott
To: PIR
Sent: Mar 4, 2009 11:39 AM
Subject: Re:

I want to be the undersecretary for public diplomacy. I’d be the spokesman too you know

Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer
██████ office
██████ cell
██████ fax
█████████

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From: PIR ██████████
To: Labott, Elise
Sent: Wed Mar 04:39:42 2009
Subject: Re:

And then you’d be hit with silly criticisms and you’d say to me, “now I get it”

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From: Labott, Elise
To: Philippe Reines ██████████
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 5:43 AM
Subject: Re:

Uh - they aren’t silly. YOU are silly

Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer
██████ office
██████ cell
██████ fax
█████████

(Labott and a spokesperson for CNN did not respond to a request for comment.)