FIVE MILLION e-mails were lost by the White House according to a just released report from CREW called "WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act." FIVE MILLION...that's insane.
As I explained in the post below, Bush staffers have been already been using separate RNC e-mail accounts to conduct official business in order to avoid the law and hide evidence. How? Because White House officials are supposed to use White House email accounts and White House Blackberrys to conduct official business (this is required under federal law and under the White House's own explicit rules). That's because under federal law every single electronic communication of a White House official must be recorded and kept in the federal archives. That makes such communications subpoenable if and when those employees break the law. By using the RNC email system and the RNC Blackberrys the White House thought they were hiding their potential crimes, and in so doing were violating federal law. We learned only yesterday that the White House admitted that their employees destroyed countless emails. Now we know that by countless they meant 5 fricking million.
While nothing should shock us about the Bush administration anymore, this is shocking.
No wonder the Bush people can't run the country and can't come up with a plan for the war. They can't even figure out their own e-mail system (of course, they knew darn well what they were doing, they were destroying the evidence). They even knew it was a problem, but didn't bother to fix it. You know that a lot of those missing e-mails are things they don't want us to ever see. What a coincidence that they started losing those e-mails in March of 2003, right when the Iraq war was starting.
FIVE MILLION. He is truly the worst, and now most corrupt, president ever. He's even worse than any of us could have dreamed up.
Nixon had nothing on these guys. They've deleted countless emails to and from senior White House staff in order to hide the evidence of any wrongdoing, and in clear violation of federal law. But as we learned during another great Republican scandal, Iran-Contra, emails aren't always really deleted after you hit the delete button. The Hill needs to subpoena the Republican National Committee computer systems, now (it was the RNC that provided the senior White House staff with the emails and blackberrys they used to skirt the law). And then the Congress ought to hit any outside email services used by senior White House staff, in clear violation of White House police and federal law, with more subpoenas. Again, delete does not always mean delete.
Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas -- due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.
The leading culprit appears to be President Bush's enormously influential political adviser Karl Rove, who reportedly used his Republican National Committee-provided Blackberry and e-mail accounts for most of his electronic communication.
Then to add insult to injury, the White House lied today about the entire scandal:
Said [White House spokesman Scott] Stanzel: "I guess the bottom line is that our policy at the White House was not clear enough for employees."
But when I asked Stanzel to read out loud the White House e-mail policy, it seemed clear enough to me: "Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff," says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.
"As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."
The handbook further explains: "The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."
And if that wasn't clear enough, the handbook notes -- as was the case in the Clinton administration -- that "commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements."
