Appeal Filed in the Case of Sarah Palin’s Secret Emails

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Days ago, Mother Jones reported that Governor Sarah Palin’s office withheld about 1100 emails in response to an open records act request filed in June and claimed that these emails to and from Palin aides and the governor herself covered confidential and official policy deliberations between Palin and her staffers. But the list (PDF) of the undisclosed emails indicates that many had subject lines suggesting they were not about policy matters. (A series of emails referred to one of Palin’s political foes, another set to a well-known Alaskan journalist.) And many of the emails were CC’ed to Todd Palin, the governor’s husband, who holds no official position in her administration. On Tuesday, Andrée McLeod, the independent watchdog who filed the original request, submitted an appeal (PDF), asking Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, to review the decision to keep these emails secret. Here is the statement McLeod issued afterward:

September 9, 2008, Anchorage, Alaska—Andrée McLeod, a registered Republican and well-known citizen watchdog filed an administrative appeal in which Ms. McLeod requested Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to review the decision to withhold or redact over 1,100 public records in violation of the Alaska Public Records Act. The records document the day-to-day operation of the Governor’s Office and members of her administration during Sarah Palin’s tenure as governor.

“The people of Alaska have a right to know the inner workings of their government. They have a right to know how the individuals they elect to public office are discharging the public trust,” McLeod said. “The decision to hide documents to which state law allows citizens to have access suggests that Governor Palin’s promise to have a transparent administration is bogus.”

“Equally troubling,” said Donald Mitchell, the Anchorage attorney who is representing Ms. McLeod, “is the fact that the records that have been provided to Ms. McLeod document that for the past two years Governor Palin has allowed her husband, Todd Palin, to compromise governmental decision-making by inserting himself whenever he chooses to do so into the day-to-day operations of the Office of the Governor.”

Documents received in response to a public records request by McLeod contained logs of undisclosed emails and thousands of e-mails assigned to Palin administration appointees Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. The logs and redacted e-mails are the basis of this administrative appeal.

“Keeping government communications secret is not being a ‘champion of transparent government’ and fails to meet Governor Palin’s promises that she established and ran on,” McLeod says. “What is Sarah Palin hiding?”

Will Palin get to this review before Election Day—if at all?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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