Extensive
Jun 25th, 2007 • Posted in: What They're Saying“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.”
– Excerpt from an interim report released last week by the House Oversight Committee, which found that at least 88 White House officials have been using email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC) during the presidency of George W. Bush. The White House previously said only about 50 officials had such accounts.
The House Oversight Committee found that the RNC has not preserved the emails sent and received by 51 of these officials, some of whom may have used the RNC accounts to bypass security measures and to “conduct overtly political, and perhaps improper, activities such as planning which U.S. prosecutors to fire and preparing partisan briefings for employees in federal agencies,” reports the Associated Press.
RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt told the AP that there is “no basis for an assumption that any e-mail not already found would be of an official nature.”
A commentary in Slate notes that “the oversight committee’s investigation into convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s contacts with the White House unearthed the following e-mail exchange between Rove’s then-executive assistant Susan Ralston and Abramoff’s associate Todd Boulanger: ‘I now have an RNC BlackBerry, which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH e-mail.’ ” Ralston resigned in 2006 and Abramoff is now in prison.
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