CEI Sues DOJ Over Former AG Lynch Alias Email Account Records

The Competitive Enterprise Institute today sued the Department of Justice for emails from former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s alias email address that used the name “Elizabeth Carlisle.” In yet another example of a high ranking official in the Obama administration using an alias email address, CEI sought emails from the Carlisle account which were to or from Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. To date the DOJ has failed to provide any response to CEI’s August, 2017, Freedom of Information Act request for these emails, so CEI is suing the department.

This is a next step in CEI’s investigation into Sen. Whitehouse’s call for federal racketeering investigations of opponents of the political agenda pushed in the name of climate change. In previous document productions under state open records requests​, CEI encountered the Senator corresponding (via his Cox.net account) with a Senate aide, a Judiciary Committee lawyer and various college faculty activists. Subsequently, Sen. Whitehouse engaged in a colloquy at a Judiciary Committee hearing with then-AG Lynch about using the DOJ for this purpose. Lynch stated indeed it was a matter her Department had considered.

CEI’s Chris Horner, who sent the request and also discovered former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s false-identity account in the name of “Richard Windsor”, said “Given open records productions revealing Sen. Whitehouse’s own previous organizing efforts with green activists pushing DOJ to pursue their mutual political opponents, CEI looks forward to the DOJ letting the public see whatever discussions between AG Lynch and Sen. Whitehouse contained discussion of racketeering investigations.” 

See more about the case here.