Illegally doing lots of government business over political party email servers

some fairly mind-boggling additional information from waxman's house oversight committee...

first of all, the practice was widespread...

In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a “handful of officials” had RNC e-mail accounts. In later statements, her estimate rose to “50 over the course of the administration.” In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President’s senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.

secondly, the volume of useage was much heavier than was initially thought...

The RNC has preserved 140,216 e-mails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these e-mails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official “.gov” e-mail accounts. Other heavy users of RNC e-mail accounts include former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 e-mails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 e-mails). These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.

third, deletion and destruction was undertaken on a wholesale basis...

Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

and, in direct contravention of the presidential records act, it appears that gonzo knew of the destruction and did not act to enforce the law...

In her deposition, Ms. Ralston testified that she searched Mr. Rove’s RNC e-mail account in response to an Enron-related investigation in 2001 and the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later in the Administration. According to Ms. Ralston, the White House Counsel’s office knew about these e-mails because “all of the documents we collected were then turned over to the White House Counsel’s office.” There is no evidence, however, that White House Counsel Gonzales initiated any action to ensure the preservation of the e-mail records that were destroyed by the RNC.

not only does it appear that the presidential records act was violated, there was complete disregard for internal white house policy set forth in 2001 that was put in place specifically to insure compliance with the act...

To implement this legal requirement, the White House Counsel issued clear written policies in February 2001 instructing White House staff to use only the official White House e-mail system for official communications and to retain any official e-mails they received on a nongovernmental account.

why are these people still in office...? why haven't we stormed the white house with rakes and hoes, buckets of tar and sacks of feathers, and run the entire lot of them out of town on a rail...?

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The NYT: "It's subpoena time" - but only if they're enforced

as i posted the other day, i don't want to see any more wishy-washy behavior on this from congress... there's still a subpoena floating around out there with condi's name on it that she is completely ignoring... if subpoenas are going to be issued, it's time to put teeth in it, and, if that provokes the long-awaited constitutional crisis, by all means, let's get on with it...

For months, senators have listened to a parade of well-coached Justice Department witnesses claiming to know nothing about how nine prosecutors were chosen for firing. This week, it was the turn of Bradley Schlozman, a former federal attorney in Missouri, to be uninformative and not credible. It is time for Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to deliver subpoenas that have been approved for Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their top aides, and to make them testify in public and under oath.

[...]

If Congress is going to get to the bottom of the scandal, it has to get the testimony of Mr. Rove, his aides Scott Jennings and Sara Taylor, Ms. Miers and her deputy, William Kelley.

[...]

This noncooperation has gone on long enough. Mr. Leahy should deliver the subpoenas for the five White House officials and make clear that if the administration resists, Congress will use all available means to get the information it needs.

hey, i'm all for it... but congress had better reach down deep inside and find the guts to go through with it to the end and call this lawless administration into account... and, as for no oath and no transcript, not only no, but HELL NO...!

The White House has offered to make them available only if they do not take an oath and there is no transcript. Those conditions are a formula for condoning perjury, and they are unacceptable.

TOTALLY unacceptable...

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What an elected representative with INTEGRITY (and a REAL recovering alcoholic) looks like

talk about bringing the issue of voter fraud suppression down to earth... here you have not only THE definitive picture of what karl rove, scott jennings, susan ralston, alberto gonzales, monica goodling, kyle sampson, paul mcnulty, and the rest of the push-for-a-one-party-state crowd have been working so diligently to achieve, but also the clearest picture yet of what kind of a person it takes to stop it...

Against his doctor's advice, a stooped and feeble state Sen. Mario Gallegos Jr. (D) arrives at the Texas Capitol each day, just to make sure his chamber does not take up a bill that would require voters to produce identification at the polls.

[...]

Gallegos is putting his health at risk to block a measure he and others say could prevent many minorities and the elderly from taking part in elections in Texas.

[...]

The Republicans pushing the voter ID bill say illegal immigrants are voting in Texas elections and must be stopped. But Democrats say thousands of legal residents would lose the right to vote because they lack proper identification. Opponents of the measure -- including Gallegos, a Mexican American -- say minorities, the elderly and the poor are less likely than others to have driver's licenses or other documents.

Most of Gallegos's Houston-area constituents are black or Hispanic, and about a quarter of them live in poverty. About one in five speak little or no English.

Doctors say the senator, a recovering alcoholic, should be resting and should be within 100 miles of the hospital where he received the transplant. Austin is about 160 miles from the hospital in Houston.

Under what is known as the Luna Precedent, named for a lawmaker who was hospitalized in the 1990s, legislators can ask for 24 hours' notice that a bill is about to come up. Gallegos was given such notice early this month. But lawmakers can invoke the Luna Precedent only once during a session.

this is not only what a REAL recovering alcoholic looks like (as opposed to you-know-who), THIS is also what an elected representative of REAL integrity looks like, someone who will uphold the constitutional right to vote and never stop doing the job his constituents put him in office to do even if it means putting his own recovery from a liver transplant at risk... gallegos is not only a true hero but an authentic leader... we need lots more like him...

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Subpoena the attendance lists for the political briefings

and let's see who was REALLY there and if it was REALLY only political appointees... and, while we're at it, let's see if attendance was voluntary or mandatory...

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said briefings were held at other federal agencies besides the GSA, for a total of about 20 - most in 2006 and a couple in 2007. They were conducted by White House political director Sara Taylor or Jennings, her deputy. It had been known that other briefings had been held, but not how many. Others were held in previous years as well, but Stanzel said the White House hasn't kept a count of how many.

Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said no laws were broken and that the White House counsel's office signed off on the effort. "It's not unlawful and it wasn't unusual for informational briefings to be given," Perino said. "There is no prohibition under the Hatch Act of allowing political appointees to talk to other political appointees about the political landscape in which they are trying to advance the president's agenda."

She added: "These briefings were not inappropriate, they were not unlawful, they were not unethical."

oh, dana, you can say whatever you want (or were instructed to say)... pointing out that the white house counsel signed off, given what's come out in recent weeks, might be persuasive if the white house counsel had any credibility whatsoever... but, dana, nobody believes a goddam thing at this point... skip the carefully crafted responses, skip the reassurances, skip the protestations of innocence and appropriateness... the only things that matter now are concrete, provable FACTS, nothing more and nothing less...

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Pulling in the RNC along with DOJ and the White House

this is good... this is very, very good...

Today, oversight committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued a letter to the Republican National Committee requesting it turn over all email communications by White House officials relating to the presentation.

In communicating with GSA about the presentation, Mr. Jennings and his assistant used “gwb43.com” e-mail accounts maintained by the RNC rather than their official White House e-mail accounts. In their e-mails, they described the presentation as a “close hold” and said that “we’re not supposed to be emailing it around.”

To assist the Committee in its investigation of these issues, I request that you provide any electronic messages sent or received by Karl Rove, J. Scott Jennings, or any other White House officials using accounts maintained by the RNC that relate to (1) the January 26, 2007, PowerPoint presentation at GSA, (2) the presentation of any similar political briefings at other federal agencies or to other federal employees, or (3) the use of federal agencies or resources to help Republican candidates.

since kyle sampson 'splained it all for us, that politics and performance are the same thing, it's only fair that the republican party is now a target of the congressional investigation... i don't think the rnc will be able to use "executive privilege" to get out of this one...

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Business as usual for the political party that calls itself a presidential administration

and the hits just keep on comin', right here on all scandal, all the time...

Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could "help 'our candidates' in the next elections," according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using "targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country."

this "oversight" thing sure turns up some interesting stuff...

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Subpoena time

heh-heh...

According to a release, "The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law (CAL) will meet TOMORROW, March 21st at 10:15 am in 2141 Rayburn House Office Building to consider subpoenas for Kyle Sampson, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, William Kelley, and Scott Jennings, as well as White House and Justice Department documents, which have not been provided to date."

glad to see they're not letting any grass grow under their feet... i'm assuming that conyers is proceeding with this because he knows he has enough votes to authorize the subpoenas being issued... then we wait to see the white house response, which will undoubtedly be less than accommodating...

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