Blunt Team Offers Up "Technical Documents" But No Real Answers

From Christopher Leonard comes the Associated Press version of the story about the Blunt administration's prying into the personal email account of Scott Eckersley.  This story again notes that Eckersley's email service provider confirms that none of Eckersley's personal emails were auto-forwarded to his state account after September 25th.

In response to queries from the press about these very inconvenient facts, the Governor's office could have provided information about the identity of the actual person in the Governor's office responsible for monitoring Eckersley's official email account as well as details of whether that individual (or individuals) also had access to the log-in and password information for Eckersley's private email account.  Instead, the Blunt administration provided "technical documents" and an IT guy to share information of minimal relevance:

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Chrismer provided a technical document that showed the mid-October
e-mails were forwarded in exactly the same manner as e-mails forwarded
in late September, before the auto-forwarding feature was shut off.

Chrismer offered an Information Technology expert from Blunt’s office to explain the technical document.

­­Yet again, we have the responsibility for answering crucial questions about Blunt administration malfeasance left in the hands of people who have next to no relevant knowledge to share on the matter.  Just as with Team Blunt's reliance upon Office of Administration lawyer Rich Aubuchon to answer questions about the nature of firings during which he was not present, we are now expected to be satisfied with testimony from an IT staffer about access to email accounts that was clearly gained by other Blunt staffers.

Someone who didn't know any better might suspect that --gasp!-- Team Blunt doesn't want the media or the public to have the facts about what has gone on behind closed doors in the administration.  Perish the thought.

Of course as Tony Messenger notes today, it does nothing to improve the Governor's reputation for candor when his staff continues to tell the press that they'll "check into" certain facts, and then spend days and days not checking into them

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