White House may have committed 'extensive' violations of Records Act, says Oversight Committee
 The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report Monday warning of major violations of the Presidential Records Act by White House officials who used e-mail accounts supplied by the Republican National Committee.
"The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in a manner that circumvented [Presidential Records Act] requirements," said a statement issued by the House Oversight Committee. "Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."
White House spokesman Tony Snow in his daily press briefing said that White House e-mail use was based on Clinton administration policy.
"Those e-mail accounts were set up on a model based on the prior administration which had done it the same way in order to avoid Hatch Act violations," he noted. "Any e-mails sent to or received from a White House e-mail account is automatically archived, and the RNC has had an e-mail preservation policy for White House staffers as well. We should have been through this, I'm not sure exactly when the start-date was, we'll just have to see how Counsel's office responds to Rep. Waxman's request."
Snow later suggested that Rep. Henry Waxman's committee was still engaging in fishing expeditions.
"I'm sure at the appropriate point we'll have a response," he said. "We've seen a number of times right now where people have been putting together investigations to see what sticks. They have had very little success so far. This administration is very careful about obeying the law, we take it seriously."
The House Committee found that 88 White House staffers used the RNC e-mail accounts, and the archives were destroyed for 51 of those officials. Karl Rove, currently President Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning, was among the heaviest of users.
"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," the Committee's release stated. "These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies."
Other heavy users of the 'off-the-books' e-mail accounts included Sara Taylor, Rove's deputy who was recently subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, her number two Scott Jennings, and Ken Mehlman, who at one time served as White House Director of Political Affairs.
Rep. Waxman's committee also found culpability in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who served in the first half of the Bush administration as White House Counsel to President Bush, and took no action to preserve the RNC e-mails.
"The Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales may have known that White House officials were using RNC e-mail accounts for official business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records," the committee's statement said. "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."
The report suggested that some of the 'destroyed' e-mails could be available on the servers of other government agencies.
"Preliminary responses from the agencies indicate that they may have preserved official communications that were destroyed by the RNC," it noted.
And, Waxman's office threatened to issue subpoenas to further the investigation.
"The Committee may need to issue compulsory process to obtain the cooperation of the Bush Cheney ’04 campaign. The campaign has informed the Committee that it provided e-mail accounts to 11 White House officials, but the campaign has unjustifiably refused to provide the Committee with basic information about these accounts, such as the identity of the White House officials and the number of e-mails that have been preserved," the statement suggested.
The summary and full report can be accessed at this link.
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