The Other Scandal Involving Destruction of Evidence = 10 million WH e-mails

[L. Coyote]

The Other Scandal Involving Destruction of Evidence
Scott Horton - Jan 9, 2008 - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002109


I just finished pouring over yet another set of written answers from a former senior Justice Department official who—extremely unconvincingly—insists over and again that he “has no present recollection” of communications between the White House and figures in the Justice Department about a series of matters which have Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over them.

However, the incessant stonewalling by the Justice Department is if anything actually exceeded in its outrageousness by the White House, which has issued a steadily lengthening series of contradictory explanations. The emails were “accidentally” deleted. Then apparently they weren’t. Then the emails were mostly on servers of the Republican National Committee. And the White House then told us, in one of a great many utterly preposterous legal claims, that information on Republican National Committee servers were subject to claims of Executive Privilege. From another perspective, however, that claim stated things just right: for the last seven years the Executive Branch has been fused with the Republican Party. It perfectly matched the vision of a totalitarian state.

However, the Associated Press’s Pete Yost, reports that a federal judge has decided to stop simply taking the parade of White House whoppers, and is demanding action:

A federal magistrate ordered the White House on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing e-mails are stored on computer backup tapes. .....

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There are just too many scandals to understand how they all keep going without our constant attention :rofl: From March 2007:

Waxman acts to preserve evidence

The Washington Post March 27 article incorrectly attributed to Susan Ralston a warning that e-mail messages by lobbyist Jack Abramoff should not be put into the White House e-mail system "because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." The author of the 2003 e-mail was Jennifer Farley, who was a deputy in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

GOP Groups Told to Keep Bush Officials' E-Mails
Democrat Cites Investigation of Firings
By R. Jeffrey Smith - Washington Post Staff Writer - Tuesday, March 27, 2007; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601979.html

A Democratic House committee chairman yesterday told the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to retain copies of all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under their control....

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said his broadly written request was based on evidence

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From: Email-Gate FACTS: Felons, georgewbush.com, gwb43.com , et. al.
Mar-28-07 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x523978

[L. Coyote]

1. Let me guess, just like the list of visitors, Abramoff, Abramoff, Abramoff, ......

Susan B. Ralston, while she was executive assistant to Rove, similarly used "georgewbush.com" and "rnchq.org" e-mail accounts to confer in 2001 and 2003 with Abramoff, her former boss, about matters of interest to Abramoff's clients.

In a related e-mail, an Abramoff aide said Ralston had warned that "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in . . . email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."

[L. Coyote]

2. Did Fitzgerald know?

Joseph Cannon: The White House, vote theft, and the email trail
March 23, 2007 - http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/03/gwb43-white-house-vote-theft-and-email.html

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The White House has its own internal email system, ending in the .gov suffix, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. As Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) notes:

CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.

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A not-unrelated question: Did Patrick Fitzgerald know about this bypass when he subpoenaed White House emails pursuant to the Plamegate investigation? I doubt that he did. If he had, Scooter might not have been the only one brought to trial. ..........