White House officials caught out with lobbyists

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27. White house response, Eric Schultz:

Republicans stunningly conceded this is purely political. The very House Republicans pursuing this have acknowledged it is a nakedly political, taxpayer-funded crusade to hurt the President’s re-election campaign. The White House is committed to compliance with the Presidential Records Act. All emails on the White House email system are archived; access to personal email and social networks from the White House network is blocked; and staff is instructed to use official accounts for official communications. Of course, it shouldn’t be surprising that when people have pre-existing professional or personal relationships with White House staff, they may periodically use personal email accounts and receive into them emails they must then preserve for official records. While on the White House staff, Mr. Messina occasionally received and sent email on a long standing personal account. When some of those emails contained information relating to official communications, he took steps to preserve such emails by forwarding them to his White House email account, or copying his White House email account as a recipient. The steps taken by Mr. Messina demonstrate good faith efforts to comply with the Presidential Records Act.