White House makes its Office of Administration ineligible to FOIA requests

Formalizing a practice begun by the Bush II administration, the "most transparent administration in history" officially sealed the activities of the White House Office of Administration from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As USA Today reports, the office "handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails."

The timing of the decision has struck critics as curious in light of the recent tumult over presumed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email habits, as well as fact that this week is Sunshine Week, an annual promotion of transparency in government.

"This is an office that operated under the FOIA for 30 years," said Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a conservative transparency organization. "And when it became politically inconvenient, they decided they weren't subject to the Freedom of Information Act any more."

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