White House says Gonzales emails disappeared

I have been watching this story off and on for days -- but today it took a strange turn.  For some time, the Democrats have been requesting White House emails that pertained to the Justice Department firings.  Administration officials now claim that some of the lost emails may have been ones sent by White House Adviser Karl Rove (of course!).

This morning, Pat Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary, asked how emails can just disappear?:

"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too manyservers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don'twant to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

There is even more to this story.  Some of the emails were sent through Republican National Committee accounts.  From the very beginning, the White House has threatened to claim Executive privilege and not release the email information.  But because these emails came from the RNC and not the White House, Bush has no constitutional basis for declaring Executive privilege. 

On the other hand, the White House may have used the RNC accounts because they are not bound by presidential record-keeping requirements, according to Politico:

Waxman’s staff are supposed to meet with RNC officials on Thursdayabout the “rnchq” and “gwb.43″ e-mail accounts, which some White Houseofficials, like Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, use for authorizedpolitical work. Waxman suspects that White House aides were using theaccounts to evade presidential record-keeping requirements.

This email mess is on the verge of exploding into an even larger story.

Comments

[Tony]

The ole' "they disappeared" routine...

I wonder how many of the computer illiterate and technology challenged Republicans soiled themselves after this

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy