Emails obtained by The Washington Post reveal that Schlissel may not have understood the full extent of public records laws. In an email conversation with Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Schlissel suggested that Blank could delete emails to avoid potential FOIA disclosures.
“Mark and others—please note that anything that arrives in or is sent from my email can be requested as a public record. I know I’m not the only one for whom this is true,” Blank wrote in an email, according to the Post report. She was alluding to the fact that each state has different sunshine laws that dictate which records can be made publicly available.