Palin Emails Set For Friday Release
After a two-year delay, news outlets will get a look at thousands of pages of records from her time as governor.
| Posted Tuesday, June 7, 2011, at 10:11 AM
UPDATED: Looks like Friday is the day that those 275 pounds worth of Sarah Palin emails will be shipping out to media outlets and others who requested them.
The Anchorage Daily News reports that state officials will release the records from Palin's time as governor at the end of the week in Juneau.
Turns out the reason that the emails were printed out instead of being sent electronically is because state lawyers needed to black out the portions that they deemed privileged, and the state says it doesn't have the needed technology to do that digitally.
Original Post Wednesday, June 1: Reporters staking out Sarah Palin’s “One Nation” bus may soon have some reading material to help them kill some time.
Alaska state officials are preparing to release more than 24,000 pages of Palin’s emails from her time as governor, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
But officials say they are withholding 2,415 pages that are privileged, personal, or otherwise exempt from the state’s disclosure laws. As the Daily News notes, it also “remains to be seen how many of the released emails are going to be at least partially blacked out.”
A host of media organizations requested the records during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Palin was named as a the Republican VP nominee. But at the time, state officials said they weren’t prepared to handle the requests for a number of reasons, including an antiquated electronic database system and the fact that Palin commonly used a personal Yahoo account to conduct official state business.
State officials say that they have now finally finished sifting through the email accounts of more than 50 state employees to round up those emails Palin sent or received from her Yahoo account. The records are now on their way to a commercial printer and are expected to be shipped to media outlets in the coming days.
Among the news organizations that requested the emails: the Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press, MSNBC, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and CNN.
Those outlets will need to pay $725.97 in copying fees and likely hundreds of dollars more in shipping costs. All told, the records are expected to fill five boxes weighing 55 pounds each.
