DAR
This should actually be a very big deal:
White House Use of Outside Email Accounts Questioned
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 26 March 2007
Emails released by the Department of Justice over the past two weeks in conjunction with a Congressional investigation into the firings of eight US attorneys show that White House officials have communicated with DOJ staffers about the attorney purge, using email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee in possible violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Using alternative email accounts also creates the appearance of impropriety, lawmakers charged Monday, because it allows White House officials to avoid the usual archival process and the automatic paper trail that is established when they use White House email servers to conduct business. Emails sent through the RNC server can be destroyed.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 states that the records of a president, his immediate staff, and specific areas of the Executive Office of the President belong to the United States, not to the individual president or his staff. The act further states that the president must "take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as presidential records pursuant to the requirements of this section and other provisions of law."
In letters sent Monday to the RNC and the Bush/Cheney 2004 Campaign, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, urged the two groups to preserve all emails sent by White House officials from their servers because of their relevance to Congressional probes, including the US attorney scandal.
Waxman added that his committee "has questions about who has access to these email records and how the campaign protects them from destruction or tampering," according to the letters he sent to the RNC and the Bush/Cheney 2004 Campaign.
"Such emails written in the conduct of White House business would appear to be governmental records subject to preservation and eventual public disclosure," Waxman wrote.
Jennings' immediate boss is Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff, who, according to a report Friday in the National Journal, conducts 95 percent of White House business using an email account maintained by the RNC.
...
Waxman said the Oversight Committee first discovered administration officials were using nongovernmental email accounts during its investigation into disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his contacts with the White House.
"That investigation found that many of the email exchanges between Jack Abramoff and White House officials were conducted via nongovernmental email accounts," Waxman said in his letters to the RNC and the Bush/Cheney 2004 Campaign.... The Abramoff investigation found that in multiple instances, Susan Ralston, Karl Rove's executive assistant, exchanged emails with Jack Abramoff regarding official government business while using accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee and the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign."
...
Waxman said that in certain cases White House officials were using alternative email accounts to avoid creating an automatic paper trail of their communications about hot-button political issues.
The rest
White House Avoiding Email Archivial Process
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LaWood
As much as Mark Pryor has walked hand in hand in with Bushco "some" can be forgiven with his outing of Attorneygate.
Rove obviously was hatching a plan to stack political hacks into key
U.S. attorney roles while BYPASSING the Senate confirmations via
a new provision in Patriot Act. That enabling clause in Patriot Act
was inserted by Arlen Spectre (R, PA) at Bush-Rove's urging.
Why would Rove stack political hacks like Timothy Griffin into U.S attorney
offices around the nation only for the remaining 18 months? To begin "investigations" just before the '08 elections and sabotage Demo candidates and those up for re election. They could bring charges against candidates which they know will never stick but would ruin election prospects anyways.
So this E-mail abuse is only part of a larger scheme and like so many will fail as Bushco must now recognize the other branch of gubbermint. It may intrude into party politics in ways we haven't seen since Watergate days.
So be it. They hatched many of their plans via RNC during WaterGate. Nothing new there.
_
Rove obviously was hatching a plan to stack political hacks into key
U.S. attorney roles while BYPASSING the Senate confirmations via
a new provision in Patriot Act. That enabling clause in Patriot Act
was inserted by Arlen Spectre (R, PA) at Bush-Rove's urging.
Why would Rove stack political hacks like Timothy Griffin into U.S attorney
offices around the nation only for the remaining 18 months? To begin "investigations" just before the '08 elections and sabotage Demo candidates and those up for re election. They could bring charges against candidates which they know will never stick but would ruin election prospects anyways.
So this E-mail abuse is only part of a larger scheme and like so many will fail as Bushco must now recognize the other branch of gubbermint. It may intrude into party politics in ways we haven't seen since Watergate days.
So be it. They hatched many of their plans via RNC during WaterGate. Nothing new there.
_
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Dardedar
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DAR
And now, seems the GOP email plan is working as expected...
***
Officials' E-mail May Be Missing, White House Says
By Tom Hamburger
The Los Angeles Times
Thursday 12 April 2007
The messages, on a private system, are wanted by Congress in a probe of the firings of eight US attorneys.
Washington - The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.
The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business. --Link
And now, seems the GOP email plan is working as expected...
***
Officials' E-mail May Be Missing, White House Says
By Tom Hamburger
The Los Angeles Times
Thursday 12 April 2007
The messages, on a private system, are wanted by Congress in a probe of the firings of eight US attorneys.
Washington - The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.
The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business. --Link
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Dardedar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 8193
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DAR
So now this illegal attempt to get around proper archival of White House doings may lead back to Rove and the Plame incident:
***
Now CREW is asking Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen the Rove case because of his missing emails…
"Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said today, "It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Sloan continued, "Special Counsel Fitzgerald should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."
link
So now this illegal attempt to get around proper archival of White House doings may lead back to Rove and the Plame incident:
***
Now CREW is asking Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen the Rove case because of his missing emails…
"Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said today, "It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Sloan continued, "Special Counsel Fitzgerald should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."
link