E-mail boomerangs?
It's time to subpoena the hard drives. When a reporter asked White House Press Sec. Tony Snow about Karl Rove's 140,000 lost e-mail messages, he said: "That is a whole lot of e-mail."
"Bush Aides' Misuse of E-Mail Detailed by House Committee
From the Washington Post Tuesday, June 19, 2007:
"White House aides made extensive use of political e-mail accounts for official government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels, according to new evidence disclosed yesterday by congressional investigators.
From the Washington Post Tuesday, June 19, 2007:
"White House aides made extensive use of political e-mail accounts for official government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels, according to new evidence disclosed yesterday by congressional investigators.
The Republican National Committee told the investigators that White House senior political adviser Karl Rove alone sent or received more than 140,000 e-mails between 2002 and 2007, more than half of which involved individuals using official ".gov" e-mail accounts, a report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said. [..]"
From computerworld.com, on computer storage:
"Here's a side note to Congress: If the White House is telling you it lost those questionable e-mails, that means the mail client that authored the mail, the e-mail server that sent the e-mail, the e-mail server that received the e-mail and the e-mail client on the other end all lost the same e-mail -- a rather unlikely scenario.[..]"
"Here's a side note to Congress: If the White House is telling you it lost those questionable e-mails, that means the mail client that authored the mail, the e-mail server that sent the e-mail, the e-mail server that received the e-mail and the e-mail client on the other end all lost the same e-mail -- a rather unlikely scenario.[..]"
I'm not surprised that the Bushies would stoop so low as to hide their official communications to avoid prosecution for crimes they knew full well they were committing .. nor that the Republican Party willingly destroyed all the evidence.
To be fair, I'm sure that, over 4 years, even Karl Rove didn't actually send/receive 140k legitimate business-related e-mails .. a lot of them were probably spam.
However, if even ONE is lost, because it was done through an outside address, they broke the law. The law states that the Bush administration MUST save e-mail.
It is illegal for non-gov't e-mail accounts to be used to conduct gov't business. The Presidential Records Act was passed during the Nixon administration .. it calls for the preservation of all official records of and about the president.
So, bypassing government record-keeping regulations is the main issue here .. you have to wonder why they would rather risk possible punishment for destroying e-mail than face the consequences of making all that e-mail public.
There is plenty of evidence that RNC e-mail accounts were used intentionally to avoid proper governmental record-keeping. From CNN:
"Waxman's committee released another chain of e-mails it said illustrated the type of exchange taking place on the account. The e-mails began with a February 2003 message from Abramoff to Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.
In the chain, Abramoff advised Ralston that an upcoming Interior Department gaming compact with a Louisiana Indian tribe would be "an anathema to our supporters down there."
When an associate notified him that his e-mail had been forwarded to another White House aide, Abramoff replied, "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH (White House) system.[..]"
Why would so much government business be hidden from public view?
It's clear as day. Rove, et al were/are trying to turn to the federal government into an arm of the Republican Party. Last I heard, the fusion of Party with Government is called Fascism.
The country knows what's going on .. that's why Bush's approval rating is at 28%.
