[baryphonic]

If people were avoiding FOIA by having candid discussions on private servers and deliberately misspelling words all while telling the public a contradictory story, that is strong evidence of lying.

If the private communications matched the public ones and there were no efforts to obfuscate, then the best conclusion would be they just called it wrong.

[llamaimperative]

I agree hiding from FOIA looks bad, degrades trust in general, and the responsible parties should be punished, but it is definitely not dispositive of lying.

I didn't see any emails where they were showing agreement with a different set of facts than what they were communicating to the public? Open to seeing sources behind that claim though.

[tbrownaw]

It doesn't prove (but, uh, is rather strongly suggestive) that their earlier statements were lies or contradicted by the records they're hiding, but it is itself a lie.