Congress Presses for Justice Docs One last chance, or the subpoenas come out. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee along with ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday to ask again for certain withheld documents relevant to the U.S. attorney firings. If Gonzales doesn't turn them over by tomorrow, the committee will issue subpoenas for them on Thursday, they write. You can read the letter here. The committee wants all the relevant documents, all the lists, all the rankings of U.S. attorneys, every scrap of paper. In particular, the committee members asked for Gonzales' cheat sheets on the firings -- The Washington Post reported last week that he was reviewing “thousands of pages of documents related to his upcoming testimony" to get ready. They also targeted documents reported on by The American Spectator last week. The mag reported that certain files in the Deputy Attorney General's office had not been turned over to Congress: "the files include overviews and evaluations of at least a dozen current and now-former U.S. Attorneys, which were prepared by DAG and EOUSA staff to brief Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and his chief of staff Michael Elston." http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002977.php
More from the Times -- Senators Press for More Files on Removing Prosecutors By DAVID JOHNSTON Published: April 10, 2007 WASHINGTON, April 9 — Four senators said Monday that they suspected that the Justice Department had failed to turn over all relevant documents related to the dismissals of eight United States attorneys. The department has released more than 3,000 pages of e-mail messages and other files. But, the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, “We are concerned that additional documents relevant to the committee’s investigations are missing or have been withheld.” The letter expressed skepticism about whether lawmakers had all the material they needed to evaluate the motives for the removals and raised questions on the scope and methods used to assemble the material. A spokesman for the department, Brian Roehrkasse, said officials would not comment until they had reviewed the letter. Justice Department officials have previously said they turned over all relevant materials, but held back sensitive personnel information about most prosecutors other than those who were removed last year. The signers of the letter were one Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and three Democrats, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee chairman; Dianne Feinstein of California; and Charles E. Schumer of New York. Among the missing documents the senators mentioned was a chart cited in a Feb. 12, 2007, e-mail message from Monica Goodling, a former aide to Mr. Gonzales, to other department officials. The senators suggested that other documents had been withheld, like biographies of each of the 93 prosecutors in briefing books provided for Mr. Gonzales in December in preparation for a meeting of United States attorneys. The meeting was held to start an initiative against child exploitation. The documents were disclosed last week in The American Spectator. A department official said briefing documents were not turned over because they did not assess prosecutors or did not relate to the removals and were to familiarize Mr. Gonzales with prosecutors’ backgrounds. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/w...rss&adxnnlx=1176218517-rWXV/HiXlrjaEW11A88Ltg
Wow, something that happened in Washington DC was politically motivated. Who would have thought......... NEWS FLASH: Everything that happens in DC is politically motivated. Everything. Congressman don't take a dump without thinking how it will affect their approval ratings. In other news, the sky is still blue..
via Josh -- Gosh, accidents do happen, don't they? Just off the AP wire ... I guess we'll just never know since the emails accidentally disappeared. Darn. -- Josh Marshall the full article http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/17062173.htm
"Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, OF COURSE my client's murders were drug related. NEWS FLASH. Lots of drug addicts go nuts and kill people. It happens. Hello. In other news, the sky is still blue...."
Your lack of understanding regarding this issue is astounding. It would be astounding had you entered this thread weeks ago and posted that. Yet after countless posts clarified and discussed the issues and unprecedented acts here, you still post this, and do so in a manner that seems as if you are lecturing the rest of the posters.
You will probably never know enough to understand this, but there are politicians who actually are in public service to serve the public. They have to be "political," because it comes with the territory, but what you said is simply not true. You couldn't find a broader brush? Look hard... I'm sure you can locate one somewhere. D&D. Space Painting.
from josh -- I feel really bad about the server problems the White House/RNC seems (no, not a typo -- they appear to be a single entity) to be having on the email front. Believe me, I run a small business that is heavily dependent on cranky servers and other gizmos. So I know how hard this can be. But I think this might be a case where that NSA 'terrorist surveillance program' may really come in handy. I'm told the NSA has some very capable data recovery tools they've developed. And even if those guys are too busy hunting al Qaida, doesn't the FBI have some pretty good forensic computer geeks? What happens when, say, a company like Enron (okay, perhaps not a great example) says some emails were 'mishandled' and now are gone forever. I guess that's just the end of it, right? Normally, it's not kosher for a government agency to offer direct assitance to a private entity or political organization. But, hey, we're pretty far down that road I guess. So let's have the FBI go down and take a look at these servers and see if these emails have really disappeared forever. -- Josh Marshall
Definitely a law breaker. IIRC, any unlawful destruction of records has to be formally reported to Congress... wonder how that will go? And I 'm betting the word "practical" has a differnt meaning for W then it does for most of us.
The destroying of e-mails and the like is definitely against Federal law. It is time to hold people who break the law accountable.
BREAKING: White House lost Over FIVE MILLION e-mails in two year period Today, CREW issued a new report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and Violations of the PRA, and made the shocking new disclosure that the Bush White House has lost over FIVE MILLION e-mails in a two year period. The report also details the legal issues behind the growing controversy over the White House e-mail scandal. Through two confidential sources, CREW learned that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over FIVE MILLION emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records. Our Executive Director, Melanie Sloan, issued the following statement after learning of the revelation: http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/27607
