White House Deleted Some RNC Emails

Unabogie

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Unabogie
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Ok, so in addition to the 18 day gap in emails produced by the White House, they are now admitting to "inadvertently" deleting White House emails in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

White House officials told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that they are unable to comply with his request for records from e-mails accounts used by senior White House aides that were under the control of the Republican National Committee.
This is a big problem for the White House, and Waxman said it raised "serious legal and security concerns" about the e-mail related activities of Bush administration aides.
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Why is this so unbelievable that they would delete these emails? Because emails from the Abramoff case show that White House staffer were well aware that using these outside accounts would bypass the record keeping. Susan Ralston wrote to Abramoff:

:“I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.”
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And now they "lose" an undetermined number of them?

This stinks. Anyone want to try and stick up for the Admin on this?

ETA: Here's the AP story:

Stanzel said some e-mails have been lost because the White House lacked clear policies on complying with Presidential Records Act requirements.


Before 2004, for instance, e-mails to and from the accounts were typically automatically deleted every 30 days along with all other RNC e-mails. Even though that was changed in 2004, so that the White House staffers with those accounts were excluded from the RNC's automatic deletion policy, some of their e-mails were lost anyway when individual aides deleted their own files, Stanzel said.


He could not say what had been lost, and said the White House is working to recover as many as they can. The White House has now shut off employees' ability to delete e-mails on the separate accounts, and is briefing staffers on how to better make determinations about when — and when not — to use them, Stanzel said.
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Bush let them have e-mail accounts at the pleasure of the president. The truth is, they're all doing a heckuva job. Besides, look at that Obama staffer. Hey, these things happen sometimes.
 
Unabogie said:
Don't be so sure. Here it comes in 3....2....1....

CLINTON DID IT TOO!
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Ollie North and Fawn Hall for fifty, Alex. Reagan's memory erasure, aka "I don't recall." And so on.

It's a standard Washington ass covering ploy. I'd be shocked if they didn't do it.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
Ollie North and Fawn Hall for fifty, Alex. Reagan's memory erasure, aka "I don't recall." And so on.

It's a standard Washington ass covering ploy. I'd be shocked if they didn't do it.

DR
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Well, get a load of this update then:

In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources 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.
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This is an email system designed to redundantly copy every email that passes through it to a backup drive (or more likely a series of drives) and none of them should ever be "lost". Yet millions are just "gone"?

********.

Horse crap.

Balderdash.

This is beyond a few oversights. This is a systematic destruction of records in violation of the law.
 
And another update:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002998.php

Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC accountfor 95%o of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.
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Sorry if gross abuse of power isn't interesting to anyone here, but some of the missing emails appear to be regarding the almost fired USA in Wisconsin, Steve Biskupic.

Apparently Biskupic was on the purge list and somehow got himself removed. Right before the elections, he indicted and convicted a staff member if the incumbent Democratic Governor.

That conviction was overturned due to razor thin evidence being used in a conviction (which calls into question that trial, to be sure) but also the prosecution, especially since Biskupic had previously declined to bring such a case.

But now we find that someone has tipped off Congress that there was a series of emails regarding why Biskupic was on the list and how he got off it, but those emails have turned up "lost".

Is this picture getting clearer? The attorney purge was about abusing the power of USA's to help Republicans and hurt Democrats, and they're covering that up by lying to Congress and destroying evidence.

But here's the snippet from Congress' letter.

"We have also been advised that there may be RNC e-mail traffic relating to Republican Party concerns about the United States Attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prior to his announcing, on the eve of the hotly contested 2006 gubernatorial election, that he was indicting an official in the incumbent Democratic governor's administration. This prosecution was a topic of energetic discussion by Republicans in Wisconsin in the days leading up to the election, but was apparently so lacking in merit that the panel of judges on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reviewing the case, after a thirty-minute oral argument, immediately ordered, from the bench, that the official be released from prison and indicated it was reversing the conviction because it was unsupported by sufficient evidence."
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Unabogie said:
This is beyond a few oversights. This is a systematic destruction of records in violation of the law.
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What law?

I know that if the RNC were a government agency, there are some statutes on record handling that are federal law (laws I had to abide by while working in an acquisition office) on archiving, etc, but isn't the RNC a non governmental organization?

Is there a specific statute that you are aware of that covers that?

I ask in ignorance, having never worked for a political party.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
What law?

I know that if the RNC were a government agency, there are some statutes on record handling that are federal law (laws I had to abide by while working in an acquisition office) on archiving, etc, but isn't the RNC a non governmental organization?

Is there a specific statute that you are aware of that covers that?
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Yes. As the situation was explained on the radio, using the RNC and private emails to effectively by-pass the record keeping system of the White House email system is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
 
Darth Rotor said:
What law?

I know that if the RNC were a government agency, there are some statutes on record handling that are federal law (laws I had to abide by while working in an acquisition office) on archiving, etc, but isn't the RNC a non governmental organization?

Is there a specific statute that you are aware of that covers that?

I ask in ignorance, having never worked for a political party.

DR
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RNC email wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't being used for government business. All email used for govenment business is to be preserved. So RNC is not a government entity, but their email is the property of the government because of this very practice.

Now, why was the WH staff using RNC email from withing the WH to do government business? Looks like the RNC and our government have effectively merged.
 
And since that's the case, shouldn't the RNC be prosecuted and/or fined?
 
Darth Rotor said:
What law?

I know that if the RNC were a government agency, there are some statutes on record handling that are federal law (laws I had to abide by while working in an acquisition office) on archiving, etc, but isn't the RNC a non governmental organization?

Is there a specific statute that you are aware of that covers that?

I ask in ignorance, having never worked for a political party.

DR
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It's not a party thing, it's the Presidential Records Act of 1978. The whole point is that they used these RNC accounts when they should have been using White House accounts. White House accounts auto archive every email. Recovered docs in the Abramoff case show that they used the RNC accounts to purposely avoid that archiving.

“I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.”
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Here's the relevant law:

http://www.archives.gov/about/laws/presidential-records.html

§ 2203. Management and custody of Presidential records
(a) Through the implementation of records management controls and other necessary actions, the President shall 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.
(b) Documentary materials produced or received by the President, his staff, or units or individuals in the Executive Office of the President the function of which is to advise and assist the President, shall, to the extent practicable, be categorized as Presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt and be filed separately.
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So Bush, Cheney, and their staffs are all bound by this law to preserve everything they write and archive it fand then release all of that to the public after five years (I think that's what it says) unless they get some sort of waiver from Congress.
 
Unabogie said:
Apparently Biskupic was on the purge list and somehow got himself removed. Right before the elections, he indicted and convicted a staff member if the incumbent Democratic Governor.
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Don't worry about the Gonzales eight, worry about the Gonzales 85.

Daredelvis
 
Unabogie said:
Ok, so in addition to the 18 day gap in emails produced by the White House, they are now admitting to "inadvertently" deleting White House emails in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Why is this so unbelievable that they would delete these emails? Because emails from the Abramoff case show that White House staffer were well aware that using these outside accounts would bypass the record keeping. Susan Ralston wrote to Abramoff:

And now they "lose" an undetermined number of them?

This stinks. Anyone want to try and stick up for the Admin on this?

ETA: Here's the AP story:
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"Some" is actually:

In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005.
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http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_54645.shtml
 
Bush must be more prolific than we ever though to have had over five million emails to lose.
 
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