Anne Weismann's posted an excellent analysis of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing on yesterday the serious email problems at the White House. 

There is also a question about White House staff using private email accounts to conduct business.  For example, Karl Rove used a private email account from the Republican National Committee (RNC) "most of the time."   Those emails used to conduct official government business should be part of the public record. We were led to believe that the RNC was spending vast sums to find Rove's missing emails.  Not anymore.  Yesterday, we learned that the RNC will not even try to find missing White House emails: 

After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel's chairman said yesterday.

The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration -- including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove -- will never be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates.

The RNC had previously told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it was attempting to restore e-mails from 2001 to 2003, when the RNC had a policy of purging all e-mails, including those to and from White House officials, after 30 days. But Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) disclosed during a hearing yesterday that the RNC has now said it "has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails."

The Chair of the Republican National Committee received a subpoena today from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) who chairs the House Judiciary Committee.  Conyers wants e-mails.  Those would be the e-mails -- for official government business -- sent and received by White House staffers on rnc.org accounts, apparently in violation of the Presidential Records Act. The other White House e-mails scandals involves the lost five million e-mails, which CREW documented in our report, Without A Trace.

The text of the letter from Conyers is below: 

BY FAX AND U.S. MAIL

Mr. Robert M. Duncan,
Chairman, Republican National Committee
c/o Mr. Robert Kelner
Covington & Burling LLP
1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Dear Mr. Duncan:

Enclosed is a subpoena for e-mail documents to be produced to the House Judiciary Committee by Tuesday, July 17, at 10:00 a.m. These are the e-mails, written by White House officials on their RNC e-mail accounts, pertaining to the Committee’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the termination of at least nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006, possible related violations of federal law, and other related matters. The subpoena is being issued pursuant to authority granted by the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law on July 12, 2007.

As you know, I first requested these e-mail documents in a letter to you from myself and Subcommittee Chair Linda Sánchez on April 12, 2007. Following that letter, your outside counsel Mr. Robert Kelner and my staff have engaged in productive and cooperative negotiations to identify documents responsive to the request that could be obtained and produced without undue burden. Through that process, the RNC has identified, collected, and processed what I understand to be a substantial number of e-mail documents relevant to our investigation.

This subpoena is tailored accordingly, calling for you to produce only documents that the RNC has already identified through our cooperative process as responsive to the Committee’s letter, and which have already been collected and reviewed by both your outside counsel and the Office of the White House Counsel. As I understand the circumstances, these documents are ready and available for production, and it is for this reason that I am comfortable issuing a subpoena with this relatively prompt return date.

Your counsel has previously informed us that the White House has directed you to withhold many of these documents from the Committee. That direction, however, was made before the RNC was formally under subpoena, and before our Subcommittee hearing yesterday at which Chairwoman Sánchez quite correctly rejected the White House’s overreaching privilege claims as asserted on behalf of another private party (in that case Harriet Miers), and in particular the White House’s asserted right to direct a private party to violate a duly issued Congressional subpoena.

Please address any questions to the Judiciary Committee office at 2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515 (tel: 202- 225-3951, fax: 202-225-7680). I look forward to your compliance with the subpoena next week.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman

Enclosure

cc: The Honorable Lamar S. Smith

The Honorable Linda T. Sánchez

The Honorable Chris Cannon

The House Oversight Committee released an interim report on the use of non-White House e-mails by White House staffers. That's one of the two on-going e-mails scandals at the Bush White House. Yes, as we often remind people, there are two separate White House e-mail scandals:

- Top White House officials’ use of RNC email accounts and RNC destruction of those emails
- Five million EOP emails missing from White House (EOP) server from period 3/03 to 10/05

The interim report from the Oversight Committee deals with the RNC email accounts.  The findings are quite damning. Karl Rove alone had over 140,000 e-mails on his RNC account:

• The number of White House officials given RNC e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed. 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.
• White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts. 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.
• There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. 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.
• There is evidence that 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. 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.

This is far from over.

CREW's Executive Director Melanie Sloan was on KOPT radio with host Brian Shaw discussing the use of outside e-mail accounts by White House staff, which violates the Presidential Records Act (PRA). She maintained that the White House staffers were "snubbing the law" by using Republican National Committee (RNC) e-mail accounts.  The link to the full interview is here.

After explaining how the White House e-mail system actually archives all whitehouse.gov e-mails to comply with the PRA.  Melanie succinctly explained the problem:

By using the Republican National Committee e-mail address, they are, in fact, bypassing that automatic archiving system and the e-mails are not being preserved.

Eariler today, Rep. Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, wrote to the Chair of the Republican National Committee. Waxman wants the RNC e-mails including those using the "gwb43.com" address that were sent relating to the now infamous powerpoint presentation at the General Services Administration and any other similar activities:

Last week, the Committee held a hearing into allegations of misconduct at the General Services Administration. One of the issues examined at the hearing involved a partisan political presentation that White House Deputy Director of Political Affairs, J. Scott Jennings, made to the GSA Administrator, Lurita A. Doan, and approximately 40 GSA appointees in the GSA headquarters building on January 26, 2007. At this event, Mr. Jennings presented a 28-page PowerPoint briefing that reviewed the 2006 election results and identified the Republican party’s top electoral targets in upcoming federal and state elections. Following the presentation, Ms. Doan asked her staff to consider how GSA resources could be used to help “our candidates” in the next election.

Serious questions were raised at the hearing about the legality and propriety of Mr. Jennings’s presentation and the discussion that followed it. In addition, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued a report finding that the presentation itself and Ms. Doan’s comments could be violations of the federal Hatch Act.[1] According to a White House spokesperson, however: “This is regular communication from the White House to political appointees throughout the administration.”[2]

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.”[3]

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.

snip

[1] Memorandum from Congressional Research Service to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Meetings, Conferences as “Political Activities” in a Federal Office, and “Hatch Act” Considerations (Mar. 26, 2007) (online at www.oversight.house.gov/ Documents/20070328154603-20874.pdf).

[2] Panel Asks Rove for Information on ’08 Election Presentation, Washington Post (Mar. 30, 2007).

[3] Email from Jocelyn Webster to Tessa Truesdale (Jan. 19, 2007) (W-02-0310).