Rove/RNC Email Controversy Deepens
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Law
The Oversight Committee has been digging into the email scandal, and so far they’ve uncovered…
There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. [...]There is evidence that the Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales may have known that White House officials were using RNC e-mail accounts for official business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records.
The conclusions of this initial evidence?
The Presidential Records Act requires the President to “take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented … and maintained as Presidential records.� To implement this legal requirement, the White House Counsel issued clear written policies in February 2001 instructing White House staff to use only the official White House e-mail system for official communications and to retain any official e-mails they received on a nongovernmental account.The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements. At this point in the investigation, it is not possible to determine precisely how many presidential records may have been destroyed by the RNC. Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.
That couldn’t be any clearer, and yet hundreds of thousands of emails were deleted. Why? We may never know.
So tell me again…why isn’t this guy fired yet?
This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 18th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Surely you jest…why isn’t what guy fired?
Rove? Gonzales? Bush? Firing someone requires accountability and this administration practices non-accountability in every facet of its governing.
I’m still struggling with the idea that these people were hired (elected) in the first place.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I think the why of it is quite obvious. The faint hope was deniability of the destruction of official documents since it would be RNC accounts, not White House accounts. We can only hope that the attempted obfuscation fails.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
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June 18th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Why don’t they get the emails from the other side?
Diebold
Ken Blackwell
Katheryn Harris
those in charge of national security on September 10th 2001 etc.
June 18th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
If a substantial number of the e-mails sent on their RNC accounts went to other government officials, shouldn’t it be possible to track them down there? (Or have the various government departments been deleting lots of e-mails — including from their back-ups?) A lot harder than if they were done legally, of course, but it should be possible. And probably long before all of them were tracked down, I suspect that a pattern would emerge.
June 18th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Information about the missing e-mails can be found here:
http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/index.asp
I’m thinking Waxman is attempting to have someone come forward on their own merit before he begins to issue the subpoenas.
June 18th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Where have we heard of this before from the GOP? Hmm, let see, Watergate ring a bell? Same thing different technology? Hmm, de-ja-vue! Wonder if one or two of those e-mails were to the President Nixon; oops, my bad, President Bush.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:28 am
George was not much of a student, or soldier, or businessman of a businessman, and clearly has not been much of a president….,no leadership, relies stickly on the lackies around him, he has no historic compass of any kind to guide him.
Given his past, how can his presidency surprise anyone?