It turns out that the RNC does have those emails archived after all. Well, almost all of them.
According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove’s account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.
Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove’s emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove’s ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server.
Apparently asking Karl not to violate Fitzgerald’s legal request wasn’t enough.
*** Update ***
CREW reports that the White House’s server problems might have been even worse than those at the RNC. Five million emails lost in a two year period. I’m far from an IT expert, but it surprises me that nobody noticed after the first hundred thousand or so.
Also, Glenn Greenwald.
Myrtle Parker
Can we please lock his fat turd blossum ass up now? Preferably in Gitmo…
Rome Again
Well, being the White House’s top advisor to the President means he was immune from following that rule, right? Right? That was only for those puny secretaries and people who didn’t make decision, right? NO?
Some people are just TOO important!
jg
Another issue that won’t make the news.
Tsulagi
These are RNC people. They know Karl.
Speaking of email, maybe it’s already been mentioned in the earlier posts, but in addition to lost RNC email, possibly the WH was also seeking to free up some space on their servers. This is from CREW, and I always take with grains of salt when something is attributed to unnamed “confidential sources,” but they’re saying over 5 million messages have been “lost” in the WH tubes.
Given the way they staff the rest of the government all the way down to the toilet cleaners, maybe it wasn’t intentional. Just Reign of the Bush competence in all things. Possibly some Dobsonite’s gay hooker nephew got the job of IT Decider at the WH.
Zifnab
Yeah right. I bet they’ve got a set of “special archives” for every high ranking Congressman from Specter to Foley. Like the RNC wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to collect dirt on every last one of its members.
How do you think DeLay, Hastert, Frist, et al were doing all that crazy arm-twisting in 11th Hour votes? “Hey, buddy. Remember that email you sent to the girl who’s not your wife back in ’02? Cause Exchange does.”
Rome Again
Hey, it’s not as if they haven’t tried that kind of shit before… on numerous occasions.
Gucker/Gannon and Brownie just to name 2.
Baby Jane
The Bizarro World version of this story has been infiltrated by an inordinate amount of moonbat terrorist enablers.
My favorite bit is when Thomas, one of the resident window lickers, calls salon.com a hate site. Good stuff.
Tsulagi
LOL Baby Jane, I was just reading the same thing. I’ve been going over to RedState more lately for the comedy value. Maybe this link will get closer to Thomas’ comment about Salon\Greenwald being a “hate site.”
GW Bush is a walking, incoherently-talking stupid virus. These guys at RedState have obviously caught the bug, but they see it as a feature.
Captain Avatar
The RNC, like the DNC, are exclusively dishonest political hacks. But they’re not stupid. I think the boys at RNC foresaw the possibility that their dumbass idiot President might do something which would forever destroy the GOP.
I consider this a hedging of bets strategy. The GOP hacks have realized that nothing good can come from continuing to support Bush. They’re probably getting ready to give him a guided tour of the underside of a bus.
My predicition, President John Boehner will be sworn in by Christmas.
Tim F.
I’m missing the part where Nancy Pelosi doesn’t pick up the scepter first. Let see – Cheney resigns and Bush picks up Boehner to replace him. Then Republicans open up impeachment hearings, Bush goes down and Boehner steps up. I could almost imagine it, except for the part where Bush and Cheney play along. Those two have not yet found an operation that they can’t screw up.
Captain Avatar
Well, Tim… I did call the Dems sweeping Congress back in 2005, right after the Schiavo fiasco. However, you make an excellent point. Even as shrewd as the RNC hacks are (and they are some shrewd, hackerific motherfuckers) they may have passed the event horizon of the Bush/Cheney Fuck Up Vortex and be on a runaway freight train for oblivion. So don’t bet any money on it.
But I’m an optimist. And I won’t lie to you, I would take sweet pleasure in watching Boehner (who has hacked with the best of them) spend a year or so trying to squirm his way out of his last six years of Bush falltio. I imagine that’ll be fun for the GOP nominee to deal with on the campaign trail.
Captain Avatar
And by the way Tim F.
Is it possible to change handles once you start posting (I’m a n00b) here? I mean, I like my handle. But some days I’m feeling evil and shit, so I might want to be Leader Desslok instead. Not for sockpuppeting, you understand, just as a way to accomodate my frequent moodwings.
In case you’re not a geeky gen-xer and have no idea WTF I’m talking about, this should clear things up.
Kirk Spencer
The largest problem I have with your forecast, CA, is that it requires the Senate AND the house to agree to Boehner. The relevant section of the 25th amendment goes:
Now the somewhat fuzzy part is, “what if the president makes a nomination on day 29 and that nomination is rejected?” He COULD get another 30 days. OTOH, another reading indicates that the position falls into the circumstances that require promotion along the chain of succession — in which case Speaker Pelosi becomes Vice President Pelosi.
One other thing not mentioned. Say Cheney steps out in accordance with your scenario, and in the intervening 30 days Bush is removed. That, too, triggers the auto-promotion.
All the screw-up potential lies in that, I think. Bush tries to get someone he trusts into place, and the Congress says no.
tBone
You really are new around here, aren’t you?
Yeah, you can change your handle. Just enter a comment under the new name and wait for it to be approved.
It’s so much fun, some people make it a hobby.
Zifnab
Certainly with all the bullshit Bush has pulled in the past six years, I can see Democrats saying, “Yeah, we don’t like that one, send us another” till January ’09
tBone
Fixed for Britishy-ness.
Tulkinghorn
5 million emails? How big is the white house staff anyway, and how could they rack up 5 million emails?
I would guess a lot of these were random emails and spam being sent to ‘[email protected]”. Never read, but might be covered by the law against destroying documents, and might included in an overbroad subpoena duces tecum.
Here I am coming up with an ex post facto justification for the White House because they can not even manage to coherently describe what is going on for just one day. Egads, I am feeling sorry for them!
jake
Barney or Laura?
Captain Avatar
That’s a good point, Kirk. But being a political savant, I’d thought of that. There is nothing written down anywhere that says John Boehner can’t becomw Majority Leader. In fact, GOP big shots may already have a plan to, in conjuction with Democrats, have Pelosi temporarily step down as Speaker and have Boehner elected as a replacement. Then it’s a simple matter of impeaching and removing both Bush and Cheney and, presto! The long national nightmare is over.
OK, ok. That isn’t exactly simple. But it is a way to legally an acceptable compromise that both sides could agree to. Or, rather, at least a majority of House Reps and 67 Senators could agree to anyway.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way…
Bitches!
Jon H
I certainly don’t trust the white house, but I dunno about that ‘5 million’ thing. Seems kinda high for just two years of actual human-generated emails. Perhaps they’re counting deleted spams and deleted emails from constituents suspected of voting for a Dem at some point?
Adam
You know, Bush’s insistence against using email looks a lot less stupid and Luddite with every passing day.
Barry
Some CEO did that (WorldCom?). He would have his secretary print the e-mails, and (IIRC) his secretary would compose the replies, if those replies went by e-mail. He then went into court, and plead the Sgt. Schultz defense (‘I know nuthink!’).
Kirk Spencer
um, CA?
Speaker Pelosi can’t “temporarily” step down. She can vacate the office (through death or resignation of the office).
She can be temporarily absent, but that doesn’t let Boehner (or any other representative) become the speaker. Instead, the choices for speaker pro tem are:
a) selection by order of listing on the existing list of pro tem candidates;
b) specific appointment by Speaker Pelosi.
If she vacates, the pro tem list is used till a new election is held. By custom, the majority party does a back-room fest where a single candidate is selected, and then on the floor a party-line vote makes that person the Speaker. Assuming the Republicans also created a sole selection and a party-line vote, it would take the defection of at least 16 Democrats for the Republican candidate to be the Speaker.
So now you’ve got Bush and Cheney agreeing to step down OR being successfully impeached (remember, the house charges, the senate convicts/impeaches) AND you’ve got Speaker Pelosi voluntarily (and potentially permanently) surrendering her office AND you’ve got at least 16 Democrats willing to sacrifice their seats (re-election after this vote? ha) and hoping that the GOP speaker will accept the promotion to president for the remainder of the term (and probably never serve in office again) – as opposed to remaining Speaker of the House and letting the next in order take the presidency. (Senator Robert Byrd, D-WV, President pro tem of the Senate.)
You’re really stretching, friend. It’s possible, but it’s extremely unlikely.
jcricket
Are we all so fatigued by the raft of Bush & co. scandals that we fail to see these “lost” emails as the “biggie”? This trumps Nixon’s 18-minute gap by a mile.
It’s one thing for a corporation to institute a policy where emails are deleted every 30 days (actually legal). It’s another thing for the WH to try and do the same, and simultaneously try and get around archival policies by using non-WH servers and then selectively delete potentially incriminating evidence in who knows how many numbers of crimes.
At the very least someone like Fitz could claim additional counts of obstruction of justice (hard to prove there’s a crime when people are deleting the evidence), perjury (“oh no, that’s all the evidence there is, I swear”), lying to a grand jury, the FBI, etc. Not to mention if the emails aren’t lost, just how much will we find there.
I’m all out of popcorn, so someone please pass the smelling salts.