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JEFFERSON CITY | A day after investigators sued Gov. Matt Blunt to obtain thousands of e-mail records to and from the governor’s staff, lawyers for both sides on Tuesday provided a glimpse into their strategies.
On one side is Chet Pleban, legal counsel for the independent investigative team appointed by Attorney General Jay Nixon. Investigators are trying to determine whether Blunt and his staff violated the law by destroying public records that might document politically embarrassing activities.
Pleban sees Blunt’s refusal to provide documents as further violations of the state’s public records laws. He has asked the court to take possession of the backup computer tapes that contain many of the e-mails, or to order Blunt to turn the records over to investigators.
“We work for the same government they do,” Pleban said. “If there is a dispute whether something is a public record, the court can decide. … So far, the only thing they have shared is 2,700 pages of nonsense that include (the chief of staff’s) birthday wishes to people. They’ve given us nothing of any substance.”
On the other side is John Holstein, a former judge of the Missouri Supreme Court who was hired to defend Blunt. Holstein sees a constitutional struggle over the right of the governor to maintain control of his records, and to repel the notion that one elected official can investigate another.
The request for records of the governor’s office, Holstein said, is unprecedented. He denied that the attorney general had the power to ask another officeholder to turn over records.
“The records of the governor’s office are charged to the possession of the governor,” Holstein said. “If the governor starts turning those over to other agencies, then the ability to protect the safety, confidentiality and privacy of those documents is lost.”
Holstein’s constitutional approach has the advantage of creating long-running litigation that would likely outlast Blunt and Nixon, whose terms end next January.
The lawsuit Pleban filed this week described alleged efforts by Blunt’s staff to get state computer technicians to have backup tapes of the governor’s e-mail records overwritten with other data. Two information technology supervisors refused, citing government policy to preserve the tapes when they are subject to requests under the state Sunshine Law.
But answers to big questions remain elusive: What is in the thousands of e-mail messages sent from 43 computers in the governor’s office throughout 2007 that prompted the governor to effectively refuse to turn over the documents to the news media or to investigators?
And could the contents of those e-mail messages have had any connection to Blunt’s sudden announcement last January that he would not seek re-election after raising nearly $10 million for his campaign?
Holstein scoffed at the idea that the e-mail messages contained a smoking gun involving the governor or his staff.
“Demanding all e-mails for a year because one record might have been deleted that may or may not have been a public record is a huge waste of resources,” Holstein said. “I think 99 percent of them will be about Aunt Tilley’s pumpkin pie recipe and somebody probably told a dirty joke or two.”
Pleban said the suit was filed only after months of stonewalling by the governor’s office. State law puts no limits on the attorney general’s power to investigate violations of the law, he said.
Pleban’s suit also questions the governor’s actions. It notes that when investigators requested documents relating to the handling of public records, Holstein cited every exemption in the Sunshine Law. One response said some of the documents couldn’t be released because they might involve the purchase of real estate, the state militia or school expulsion.
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