Or White House staff email, anyway. At least, that’s what the Bush administration is trying to claim, now that it’s been asked to produce emails sent through Republican National Committee accounts. The accounts were supposed to be used in order to keep campaigning separate from government business, but there’s reasonable suspicion now that White House employees used the RNC accounts to conduct official business and circumvent laws that require preservation of communications.
And – surprise, surprise — the Bushies are saying that, oh, gee, we’re so sorry, but it looks like thousands of those RNC-routed emails may have been lost. What a shame! Hey, we’ll do everything we can to recover them, but don’t hold your breath.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, who apparently knows a bit more about the internets than does W, is calling bullshit, saying Bush aides are lying.
“They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) shouted from the Senate floor.
“You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers,” said Leahy, D-Vt. “Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”
The Judiciary Committee has approved, but not issued, new subpoenas for these emails. Now we’ll see if the Bush administration will cough them up or if Rove has really found a way to bury them permanently.
Depending on who actually hosts the servers, maybe the NSA has all those emails on file from its illegal wiretapping!
And you can recover data from any hard drive unless it’s been wiped by a professional using a very specific protocol. If that has happened, then it’s Nixon’s 18-minute gap all over again.
What a bunch of morons. Do they really think anyone is going to fall for this line?
I have this image in my head of federal marshals seizing computers and the characters from the various CSIs reconstructing the (supposedly) wiped hard drives. It’s a cinch that any paper copies have already been shredded and burned.
I hate it when the dog eats the homework.
Or the crooks shed the evidence. However you want to put it.
I am trying to understand this “controversy”. The U.S. Attorney’s were in politically appointed postions and were fired for political reasons. Some in the administration say it was for performance others say it was for political reasons. Democrats are mad and want someone’s head to roll because they think it was “improper”. Can anyone tell me the liberal view of what laws were broken here? Or is this another witch hunt that will only turn up a conviction on a “I forgot” vs “You lied” like the Libby debacle.
Don’t give me the old conspiracy theories that they were purposefully interfering some so called “on-going investigations”.
It’s the lying, BL. You should be able to appreciate that. Libby lied to federal investigators in an attempt to impede their investigation. Gonzales lied to Congress.
Given that you supported impeachment charges against a Democratic president who lied in a deposition about an unrelated sexual affair, why are you upset that Republican liars get in trouble?
So I guess it is ok to lie about things if you don’t think it relates to the case. I am sure that legal concept will improve our judicial system. Plus Libby said “he forgot” and they accused him of lying about that. I seem to remember Bubba saying “I don’t recall” a whole lot in his testimony. He must get some pretty good blow jobs if he forgets about one in the oval office from a young intern. But that’s besides the point. Hillary also liked to forget about a windfall crooked land deal as well. I didn’t know geniuses like those two forgot things easily. Man, those admission standards to Oxford must really be slipping.
Oh, that’s right. Clinton is TEH EVIL, but Scooter was railroaded. And that crooked land deal “windfall”? Yeah, after spending millions on investigations, it turned out to be a loss.
They got the money back during there stint writing some great fiction stories. I’m sorry those were autobiographies. My bad.
Yes but how do you “lose” 4 million emails? Accidentally on purpose.
Yeah, MWT, I’m wondering how one “shreds” servers.