So far this is par for the course. Now, when it gets around to explaining why they not only deleted the emails, but lost the backups and scrubbed the hard drives... that's when we'll get to true farce.
So, 5 million emails over a two year period? If true, this has to go way beyond the 20 people that have dual accounts at the RNC... unless you can believe that they dealt with 342 emails per day every day including weekends and holidays for two years.
If confined to the 20, that also works out to 1 email every 2 minutes during the course of an 11 hour day with absolutely no breaks.
And these are just the White House servers. Not the RNC. Wouldn't that be in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act?
March 2003 What I find curious is March 2003 was the beginning of "losing" emails off the WH servers. Hum.... What else happened in March 2003? Oh yeah... The start of the war, the plame affair, pretty much anything that the administration wanted to hide. Two years and 5 million lost emails later. Here we are. Interesting huh?
Yes. If it is stuff on the WH system, it would mean they intentionally circumvented controls the National Archives put in place after Iran-Contra to ensure compliance with the PRA. Again, I bet they learned from Iran-Contra and wiped all the hard drives after deleting the emails. If so, there would be no accident and no excuse for why that happened. It would be overwhelming evidence of a intentional violation of the PRA.
Actually very smart move beause now you can not make serious charges against them stick. So they erased data, how much time do you get for that?
Here's the enforcement section of the PRA... not much there... Here's the Federal Records Act... of course, it has to go through Gonzo first... Congress, I'm sure, has there own ways and enforcement powers.
This email story is going to blow up. from TMP -- You can read the letter White House counsel Fred Fielding sent last night to Congress about the U.S. attorneys investigation here. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/conyers-fielding/ But here's the shorter version of the "offer": In the letter, Fielding says that the White House's offer of March 20th stands. It's a great offer, he says. And carping from Democrats and some Republicans like Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) about it fails "to credit fully the extraordinary nature of the disclosure we are prepared to provide." The offer, remember, was 1) to turn over records of all relevant communications from a White House official to a party outside the White House (but no internal communications are to be turned over) and 2) Karl Rove and other White House officials would meet with Congress privately, but there would be no transcript and no oath. The offer also restricts the range of questioning. But it gets better. Those RNC-issued email accounts belonging to White House staff are also to be covered under the deal. And Fieldings says "it was and remains our intention to collect e-mails and documents from those [RNC-controlled] accounts." In other words, whatever emails Congress gets, they'll have to get through the White House -- and they won't get anything unless they get it as part of Fielding's "unified offer," his “carefully and thoughtfully considered package of accommodations.” Democrats had asked if Fielding couldn't separately provide the White House's "external" communications, since he was offering them as part of the deal anyway. But if they want those emails, they'll have to agree to the White House's terms for interviewing Rove and others. And they'll have to resign themselves to not receiving any "internal" White House communications, even if those communications occurred via RNC-issued email addresses. The executive privilege claim with regard to all internal White House correspondence is questionable, but it's even more questionable with regard to the RNC-issued email communications. As House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) put it: “The White House position seems to be that executive privilege not only applies in the Oval Office, but to the R.N.C. as well. There is absolutely no basis in law or fact for such a claim.” That's why Conyers is trying to get the emails straight from the RNC. In his letter to the RNC chairman yesterday, he demanded that the RNC provide the emails "directly" to Congress -- instead of giving them to the White House. Not providing the emails directly to Congress, Conyers wrote, would be "an unjustified delay" and "potentially... an obstruction of our investigation." So it looks like things are about to get even nastier. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had his own summary of Fielding's offer: "‘We are stonewalling.’" http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003004.php
Four Years Worth Of Rove's E-Mail Missing A lawyer for the Republican National Committee told congressional staff members yesterday that the RNC is missing at least four years' worth of e-mail from White House senior adviser Karl Rove that is being sought as part of investigations into the Bush administration, according to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. GOP officials took issue with Rep. Henry Waxman's account of the briefing and said they still hope to find the e-mail as they conduct forensic work on their computer equipment. But they acknowledged that they took action to prevent Rove -- and Rove alone among the two dozen or so White House officials with RNC accounts -- from deleting his e-mails from the RNC server. Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was told the RNC made that move in 2005. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Waxman said the RNC lawyer, Rob Kelner, also raised the possibility that Rove had personally deleted the missing e-mails, all dating back to before 2005. GOP officials said Kelner was merely speaking hypothetically about why e-mail might be missing for any staffer and not referring to Rove in particular. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041202408_pf.html
Bumping around the news on the emails today, I keep coming back to the thought that Rove came to believe his own BS and never considered (at least in his personal actions) that the Dems would take Congress and be in a position to exercise some oversight.
Time to get those servers to the FBI and have those e-mails recovered. Past time for Rove to testify under oath to Congress about this, and much else, but you can start with this. D&D. Pigs in Space.
