Federal law (the Presidential Records Act) requires that all official White House communications must be archived and preserved. If they are deleted, that’s right, it’s a felony crime. Even if you work for the cops at DOJ.
And if you are using a *private* email account for official business, well, guess what? That’s illegal too, and it appears that’s exactly what happened here. Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, and Alberto Gonzales were figuring out how to get lawyers who would prosecute Democrats right before the election (and exonerate Republicans) and they were doing it on domain names like gwb43.com and rnchq.org (Republican National Committee Headquarters). The CREW Report on Friday makes it clear that the folks in the Oval Office have “willfully dismantled” the email archiving system put in place by the Clinton Administration.
Why? So their nasty little notes about breaking the law couldn’t be traced and could easily be erased.
One bright spot: Since the missing emails were not on official White House servers (we’re told), that means that the felons cannot hide behind the skirt of “Executive Privilege.” When Senator Patrick Leahy offered the assistance of “a teenage kid in my neighborhood” who could go find the lost data, Perino snapped back: “I didn’t know Senator Leahy is also an IT expert. ” Meee-ow!
So far, the mercenary oil merchants running our country have turned over some 3000 pages of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. And they were “selective, incomplete, and highly redacted.” (Blacked out with a Magic Marker.) Oh, and get this:
The White House says that it may not be able to comply with turning over all the documents requested due to “privacy issues.”
Well.
It’s nice to know that the government that has been tapping our phones and reading our email is now worried about “privacy issues!”
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
