The state of Alaska has finally released more than 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin emails from when she was governor. The emails were handed out to media outlets as over 600 pounds of printed photocopies for $725 each. We love the irony in this Internet age that 21 months worth of Sarah Palin emails were only provided as hard print copy.
Of course, only giving reporters a hard copy of the Sarah Palin emails makes it a lot more difficult for them to search the documents for interesting tidbits. Several media organizations have enlisted the help of regular citizens to pitch in and review the emails or assist in translating them to electronic form. Can you imagine having to go through 24,000 pages of photocopied emails? Ouch!
Although it sounds like a ton of possibly juicy source material for greedy journalists, we’re betting that in the end there won’t be anything that extremely provocative to be found in Sarah Palin’s emails. The state of Alaska redacted quite a few emails and simply refused to release others. The list of what the state of Alaska did not feel the public had the right to see was 189 pages long all by itself!
Sarah Palin emails judged not fit for public consumption include ‘privacy’ protected communications under the Alaska Constitution, attorney-client protected discussions about such issues as “legal advice on petroleum profits tax” and ‘executive/deliberative process’ emails an email about “re. potential cuts to governor’s staff” for example. Quite a few of these emails included her husband, Todd Palin, and/or attorney as one of the people in the loop.
Palin’s attorneys reportedly were allowed to review all all the emails before they were released, although they allegedly did not ask for anything additional to be redacted or withheld.
In addition, the state did not release emails from Sarah Palin’s term as governor from September 2008 until she suddenly resigned her position in the summer of 2009. The state claims it has not finished reviewing those emails and has not said when they might be released. Palin was also known to use private email accounts during her term as governor. Palin allegedly “gave the state a CD with emails from her Yahoo account” but it is unclear how much of those emails will ever make their way to the public.
Sarah Palin told Fox News that she has no problem with the mass email release because her term in office has been gone over in detail already. However, she did hedge a bit by saying “a lot of those emails obviously weren’t meant for public consumption” and some statements in them could be taken out of context.