[G]ov. Peter Shumlin’s administration says it may release tens of thousands of internal staff emails by Friday in response to public records requests filed by several news organizations.

The emails are from five top staffers who left in 2013 or earlier: Bill Lofy, former chief of staff; Alex MacLean, former secretary of civil and military affairs; Bianca Slota, a former press secretary; Ariel Wengroff, a former scheduler; and Elizabeth Bankowski, the head of Shumlin’s 2010 transition team.

Scott Coriell, the spokesperson for Shumlin, said the administration has been preparing to release the emails for all five former staffers in response to requests filed under the Vermont Public Records Act.

Vermont Public Radio first reported that the emails would be released, and the original records request came from the Vermont Press Bureau. The Burlington Free Press, Seven Days and VTDigger have requested copies of the same emails.

“There are tens of thousands of emails, and we have to review each one for personal information, etc.,” Coriell said in an email. “We hope to release as many as we can by Friday.”

The administration has already released some of MacLean’s correspondence — about 58 pages of emails that were sent from her account almost immediately after she left her job to go work for Jay Peak Resort, where she marketed projects that are now part of a massive fraud case.

That batch of MacLean emails is from Jan. 14, 2013. Coriell said the administration made them available relatively quickly because the scope of VTDigger’s request was small. Nearly all of the emails from that date are related to legislative priorities from when she was the secretary of civil and military affairs.

“I am very pleased that my old emails were released,” MacLean said Monday. “These documents are part of the public record, and Vermonters have a right to read them.”

Additional emails were scheduled to be deleted

The administration first sought to delete the emails from these five former staffers April 1. The administration then repeated its request April 8, causing a dustup with staff at the secretary of state’s office, who said deleting them would not be in compliance with state law.

Additionally, the Shumlin administration said it found out April 7 — the day before the dustup with the secretary of state’s office — that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission would file fraud charges against the two developers who control Jay Peak Resort, alleging misuse of money invested by foreigners through the federal EB-5 visa program.

VTDigger reported on the timing of the April 7 knowledge and the April 8 incidents, prompting suspicion among members of the public that the Shumlin administration was hiding emails relevant to the EB-5 state lawsuit.

However, the administration told VTDigger at the time that any emails it was trying to delete were “transitory” and that anything related to the EB-5 case has been placed on hold by the attorney general’s office.

Days later, the administration held a news conference to emphasize that the emails it sought to delete were not related to EB-5, and that any emails related to EB-5 were under a litigation hold.

Under Vermont law, a litigation hold prevents the custodian of a document from deleting it. Once the state filed suit in the Jay Peak case, the records became “relevant to litigation” and therefore exempt under the Public Records Act, according to Attorney General William Sorrell.

Under Vermont law, there are only two ways that the public may be able to see the records again, according to Sorrell: The case would have to close, meaning that the records would no longer be subject to litigation; or someone would have to go to court and persuade a judge that the records should be made public despite the state’s lawsuit.

Sorrell did not know offhand how many pages of emails are subject to the state’s lawsuit against Ariel Quiros, Bill Stenger and Jay Peak Resort. But he said the relevant documents are not limited to emails — they include all written documents and communication that are relevant to the case, such as letters and meeting minutes.

Sorrell said documents all remain in the custody of various parts of state government — such as the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, the Department of Financial Regulation and the attorney general’s office itself. And the office has considered using documents from additional parts of state government, he said.

Sorrell said his office does not want to “prejudice” his case. He said the defense could accuse his office of unethical behavior if his staff were to release some documents to the public but not others.

“What we want to avoid is the appearance of picking and choosing,” he said.

Lawmakers push for more public records

On Friday, the House considered a resolution from Rep. Chris Pearson, P-Burlington, urging the attorney general’s office to allow the Shumlin administration to turn over any emails from former aides that were not subject to litigation hold.

The House decided to delay the vote on the resolution, H.R.21, until Tuesday in order to allow members to observe Passover. But, at around 5 p.m. Friday, the administration released 58 pages of MacLean’s emails to VTDigger and other news organizations.

On Monday, Pearson said he was happy that the administration decided to release emails from all of the aides. He said he would now support a substitute resolution offered by Rep. Willem Jewett, D-Ripton, which, among other things, calls on the attorney general to release as many emails under litigation hold as possible.

Under a litigation hold, according to Pearson, the attorney general’s office decides that a large batch of emails should not be destroyed, and there is always a chance that a handful of them will not end up being used in the ongoing court case.

Jewett’s substitute resolution would require the attorney general’s office to re-evaluate any emails currently subject to the litigation hold and then to lift the hold on ones that are not relevant to the state’s case against Jay Peak Resort. That could in turn make a handful of emails not “relevant to litigation.”

“It’s not entirely moot because mine goes a bit further in requesting the attorney general to take another look at the litigation hold materials to see if that net has been thrown more broadly than is necessary,” Jewett said Monday. “If (Pearson is) supporting it, then we can achieve that fairly easily.”

Jewett’s resolution also asks the Shumlin administration to “promptly respond to all current and future public records requests, disclosing all records other than those that the Attorney General determines should be lawfully withheld.”

Pearson said his central goal has been to “restore trust” in government. “I’m sure that there’s nothing suspicious in those emails, as the administration has stated, but it doesn’t seem like it’s too much to ask that they prove that,” he said.