Indiana officials hold back emails from Pence accounts
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana officials are refusing to release an indeterminate number of emails from private Aol.com accounts Mike Pence used as governor, and they’re not saying whether the vice president’s lawyers influenced which messages should be withheld.
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office has released more than 1,300 pages of his predecessor’s emails, but most of the documents contain little substance. They consist of correspondence from staffers sharing news releases or news articles, laudatory notes from Pence’s fans and documents so heavily redacted they are barely readable.
“It’s hard to justify withholding information after a governor leaves office,” said Nate Jones, of The National Security Archive at George Washington University, which lobbies for government transparency. “It makes it look like they aren’t subscribing to good open-government practices.”
A Pence spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Associated Press has sought emails from Pence’s private AOL accounts, which he used for state business, since shortly after he was tapped to be Donald Trump’s running mate in July 2016.
The emails released to date reveal little about some of the topics that defined Pence’s term as governor, including a religious objections law he signed in 2015 that critics decried as discriminatory against gays. Amid the national backlash, Pence held a news conference to push back, hired a crisis management firm and signed a “fix” into law.
But 293 pages of recently released emails about the controversy predominantly consist of news story summaries and links.
Indiana has a weaker public records law than many states, and Holcomb’s office has said it can withhold records deemed “advisory” or “deliberative.” Those classifications are open-ended, giving state officials wide latitude to shield from disclosure documents containing internal debates, advice or speculation.
Holcomb’s office also declined to provide an accounting of the number of emails it withheld because state law doesn’t require it.