Missing e-mails are moving onto center stage in an inquiry into White House political influence at the U.S. Department of Justice. It is an unexpected turn in the saga that brings Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Democrats have raised legitimate questions about Bush administration use of laptops, Blackberrys and e-mail accounts provided by the Republican National Committee.
A key question is whether White House officials improperly used RNC e-mail accounts to conduct government business. The issue emerged as members of Congress sought to determine why eight U.S. attorneys were fired.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said 50 presidential office aides over the course of the administration have used RNC accounts. They were set up for good reason – as a way for those officials to do partisan political work without violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits electioneering on government equipment and time. Perhaps, she speculated, they used the RNC e-mail system in an “abundance of caution.” The RNC had an aggressive e-mail deletion policy for years, she said, and the administration is trying to determine whether messages are retrievable.
Skeptics wonder if White House staffers were using RNC accounts to skirt government recordkeeping requirements. The Presidential Records Act requires diligent preservation and eventual disclosure.
There already is evidence in the record that staffers used RNC accounts for government business. Scott Jennings, assistant to White House political adviser Karl Rove, repeatedly used his Republican Party account for official business, including discussing the U.S. attorneys.
As Congress followed that string, investigators learned that prior to 2004, the RNC automatically deleted e-mails every 30 days, including those sent and received by White House staffers. After 2004, those individuals still could manually delete, and Rove’s account was apparently scrubbing prior to 2005. His part in the prosecutor firings has become a focus of the congressional inquiry.
The dustup over missing RNC e-mails has raised the fever in Washington, where congressional staffers have been poring over documents released by a White House that insists it has been cooperating in good faith to assist lawmakers.
Their pronouncements of full disclosure are laughable, and not just because of the missing e-mails. President Bush has refused to allow Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify under oath before Congress, saying it would violate executive privilege. Instead, he has offered they speak behind closed doors to select members of Congress, without a transcript.
And now, White House counsel Fred Fielding has made what he slyly calls a “unified offer” to Congress, saying oversight committees will get any recovered RNC e-mails only so long as they agree to White House conditions on interviews of Rove and Miers. The “offer” is ridiculous and Congress should reject it summarily.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Gonzales is to give much-anticipated testimony before Congress about the circumstances surrounding the firing of federal prosecutors.
As the inquiry continues, Gonzales and other members of the administration would do well to remember that e-mail messages are notoriously difficult to ever permanently delete. The White House should consult Congress in choosing technical experts to make a good-faith effort to retrieve the e-mails.
