It’s Not The Crime, It’s The Coverup
Mar 15th, 2007 at 8:42 pm by Susie
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling Watergate-ish these days:
Washington, DC – In light of e-mails released by the House Judiciary Committee this week in response to the on-going U.S. Attorney firing scandal, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter today to Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), asking for an investigation into whether the White House has violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
One email, sent to Justice Department Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson from J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, uses an email account, SJennings@gwb43.com, on a server owned by the Republican National Committee. This raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure.
A number of other emails from Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s former assistant Susan Ralston to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff document Ms. Ralston’s use of three outside domains: rnchq.com (used for the headquarters of the Republican National Committee), georgebush.com and aol.com. In many of these emails Ms. Ralston is communicating inside White House information to Mr. Abramoff in response to Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to broker deals for his clients and place specified individuals in positions within the administration.
CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.
I wonder if Patrick Fitzgerald had access to these alternative email addresses and messages during his investigation of the Plame leak??? Probably not–or we would have read about them during his investigation.
You know, Susie, I wrote about Ralston using a campaign email address for WH work over a year ago in my Abramoff posts.
Disabling auto recording devices -15 minutes of erased taped - ring a bell. Sounding like bush is becoming the next Nixon REAL SOON. The only difference will be that bush will be impeached - he does not deserve the privilged of resigning.