The Biden administration has been caught deleting e-mails in violation of record-keeping law, even as the Justice Department continues its prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted that it regularly destroys former employees' emails within 30 days, according to America First Legal (AFL), a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
America First Legal sued the Biden administration's archivist Colleen Shogan, who runs the National Archives (NARA), and Xavier Beccera, who runs Health and Human Services.
America First Legal filed a records request under the Freedom of Information Act for a CDC booklet titled, “LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool.”
The request led the CDC to disclose that it routinely deletes e-mails as soon as 30 days after employees leave the agency. As a result, America First Legal was unable to get the records it was seeking.
America First Legal complained to the National Archives and Records Agency (NARA), which found that CDC did not violate the Federal Records Act.
The CDC "does not require the preservation of all emails but rather preserves all records from email accounts," NARA found.
Individual CDC employees may retain or delete emails "based on the email’s content value and its applicability to a NARA-approved records schedule."
But those findings are inconsistent with NARA's records schedule, which requires all e-mails from low-level staff to be kept for at least 3 years, America First Legal said.
America First Legal accused NARA of bending the Federal Records Act to accommodate the CDC after it was caught red handed.
NARA is the same agency that triggered the classified documents probe into Donald Trump with a Justice Department referral.
"The rule of law cannot mean one set of rules for unelected bureaucrats and another for democratically-elected officials who happen to be a political challenger to the sitting President,” said Dan Epstein, America First Legal's Vice President.
The CDC exercised enormous influence over the lives of Americans during COVID, and the agency is continuing to move a radical race and gender agenda, despite the fact that no Americans ever voted for a single CDC employee.
By deleting its paper trail, the CDC is showing that it is not accountable to the people. It won't follow the same standards, the same laws, that everyone else (except them and their Washington buddies) must follow.
In a nutshell, this is why Americans continue to support Trump. The self-appointed champions of "our democracy" are nothing but bureaucratic tyrants.
