JUDGE ISSUES ORDER DEMANDING ANSWERS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE ON BACK-UPS OF 10 MILLION MISSING EMAILS

8 Jan 2008 // Today in a case consolidated with CREW's lawsuit against the Executive Office of the President, The National Security Archive v. Exec. Office of the President, Magistrate Judge Facciola issued an order requiring the White House within five business days to answer four questions concerning back-up copies of the millions of emails missing from White House servers.

Like CREW, the National Security Archive is seeking expedited discovery to determine what, if any, back-up copies of the missing email still exist. In advance of ruling on the discovery request Magistrate Judge Facciola -- who also issued an order several months ago requiring the White House to preserve all existing back-up capies in response to CREW's motion -- required the White House defendants to answer, through a sworn declaration, questions about whether the back-ups are identifiable by period of time they cover, whether they are identifiable by data they contain, whether they contain emails created between 2003 and 2005 and whether they contain the missing emails.

The full order is available on the right side of this page.