The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.These accounts, which were apparently used by about 20 top aides to the President, were used at times to coordinate the firings of the US attorneys and were also used by the convicted felon Jack Abramoff to conduct some of the business for which he was convicted and is now serving time in federal prison. Since those email accounts were not subject to the archive requirements mandated by law for all White House communications after Nixon resigned, for some odd reason the aides at the white House tended to send sensitive emails over the private accounts rather than the official White House accounts.
Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.
Democrats also have been asking if White House officials are purposely conducting sensitive official presidential business via nongovernmental accounts to get around a law requiring preservation - and eventual disclosure - of presidential records. The announcement of the lost e-mails - a rare admission of error from the Bush White House at a delicate time for the administration's relations with Democratically controlled Capitol Hill - gave new fodder for inquiry on this front.
"This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information."
Keep in mind, Federal law requires that all White House documents by archived and preserved. That makes those communications available for review if, oh, say the Congress wanted to review them to see if something criminal had been coordinated. But these Republican National Committee accounts used by people such as Karl Rove (See? A surprise there, no?) have been mishandled and many of them have been improperly deleted so that they will not be available to the Waxman Committee as was anticipated.
Karl Rove learned a lot from Richard M. Nixon. Nixon himself once said that his biggest mistake was to have not destroyed the White House tapes before they were released. Anyone who does not know that the RNC emails were used to avoid scrutiny and were purposely disposed of simply does not understand the nature of the Republican occupation of the White House.
Addendum 10:31PM CDT
Too good not to include. Kagro X says the name for this scandal should be "DogAte."
This is the best comment in the post on the subject by EmptyWheel at the Next Hurrah. Emptywheel thinks this report is just a trial baloon by the Bushies to see how much flack they'll get if they try it seriously. The techies who commented don't think anything is likely to be missing, just hard to find. Hope they are right.
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