By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
39 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system.
The attorney said Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.
The issue arose because the White House and Republican National Committee have said they may have lost e-mails from Rove and other administration officials. Democratically chaired congressional committees want those e-mails for their probe of the firings of eight federal prosecutors.
"His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived," Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said.
The prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame spy case saw and copied all of Rove's e-mails from his various accounts after searching Rove's laptop, his home computer, and the handheld computer devices he used for both the White House and Republican National Committee, Luskin said.
The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, subpoenaed the e-mails from the White House, the RNC and Bush's re-election campaign, he added.
linkSticky!
From
The Carpetbagger Report:
So, where are we with Karl Rove’s “lost” emails? Let’s turn to
Dan Froomkin for a quick overview.
<…>
Today, Rove’s lawyer added to the story by
arguing that Rove didn’t intentionally delete his emails from the RNC server.
<…>
Indeed, Rove’s understanding, “starting very, very early in the administration,” should have been the exact opposite. Why? Because he was given a
copy of the White House policy, which tells staffers to comply with the law (the Presidential Records Act).
<…>
At what point, exactly, did Rove see this and think, “I can keep using a private email account outside the White House for official business and it’ll work out fine”? Is the White House really prepared to argue that Rove has the reading comprehension of a second grader and got confused when he saw “only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication”?
The RNC doesn’t know where Rove’s emails are; the White House doesn’t know; and Rove’s lawyer doesn’t know (though he’s certain his client didn’t
intentionally delete anything). And Rove’s argument is that he was sure the private emails he wasn’t supposed to be sending were being archived, even when they weren’t, and even after his emails were given special treatment due to an ongoing White House criminal investigation.
Got all that? Nothing suspicious here at all; move along, move along.
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