Mike Pence: My emails are secret, Hillary's aren't

Mike Pence's legal team argued Monday in an Indiana appellate court that the governor's emails should be secret from the public in a case involving his decision to hire outside counsel for a lawsuit blocking President Obama’s immigration actions.

During the campaign, Pence spent a lot of time stumping about releasing Hillary Clinton's emails and the need for transparency, but his emails are apparently a different matter entirely. His attorneys said the white paper received by Pence and more than two dozen other Republicans about a legal challenge to Obama's deportation relief program was protected by attorney-client privilege. One judge on the three-judge panel expressed skepticism on that point, writes Fatima Hussein:

Chief Judge [Nancy] Vaidik took issue with the fact that individuals outside the attorney-client relationship saw the paper.

"A white paper is being sent, and it's not a legal paper, it's a white paper, which is a government position paper, all right, number one," Vaidik said. "That concerns me."

Another judge also rejected the notion that the courts didn't have jurisdiction over executive branch redactions, though the Indiana Supreme Court did rule that legislative redactions are nonjusticiable. 

"Isn't that the whole purpose of APRA, to see who is soliciting our governor?" Judge Edward Najam asked, referring to the state’s Access to Public Records Act.

As governor, Pence happened to veto House Enrolled Act 1022, which would have limited the transparency required of university police departments.

"Limiting access to police records in a situation where private university police departments perform a government function is a disservice to the public and an unnecessary barrier to transparency," Pence said.

Pence must be adjusting nicely to Donald Trump's No. 1 rule—that rules only apply to everyone else.