At least five times since last fall’s bankruptcy filing and FBI raid of the California solar company, the White House and other agencies have chosen to release embarrassing emails and other materials late in the afternoon as the workweek ends — a time almost guaranteed to garner the least media attention possible…
In the past year, the Justice Department has sent up Fast and Furious documents on Friday afternoons at least twice and the White House Counsel’s office has done so at least once. Reporters often get the records at about the same time.
The practice has irked some lawmakers.
“You dump them on us on Friday night so that the staff here can’t do anything with them unless they stay over the weekend and work 10, 12, 14 hours. I’ve been down that road, too,” former House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said during a hearing last week with Attorney General Eric Holder. (Burton led the committee during its tussles with the Clinton administration in the 1990s.)
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