Earlier this week, after the big purge-related document dump, there was one facet to the story that I largely overlooked. Given all the scandalous details, it seemed like a bit of a tangent. Here’s the original mention from the WaPo story:
E-mails released yesterday show that White House deputy political director J. Scott Jennings communicated with Justice officials about the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, to be the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. Jennings used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as an opposition researcher.
Democratic congressional aides said they will investigate whether using the private address for government business violated laws against using taxpayer resources for political work or signaled that White House officials considered the firing of U.S. attorneys to be primarily a political issue. Jennings did not return a call to his office seeking a comment.
“As a matter of course, the RNC provides server space and equipment to certain White House personnel in order to assist them with their political efforts,” RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said.
With all the lies and corruption about the purge on the front page, this didn’t seem earth-shattering. I know from experience that White House officials routinely set up separate accounts to deal with political issues, so that there’s a distinction with official government business.
But therein lies the point (or at least part of it). Rove’s deputy at the White House was communicating with the Justice Department, working on naming a new U.S. Attorney. This is government business. Why, then, use a Republican National Committee email address?
This may come as a surprise, but these details start to suggest that at the Bush White House, there’s no substantive difference between policy and politics. Shocking, I know.
More importantly, it might also suggest an effort on the part of staffers to cover their tracks.
Indeed, while there’s ample scrutiny applied to other aspects of this scandal, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) raises a very good point in calling for another investigation on this aspect of the controversy.
[CREW] sent a letter [yesterday] to Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), asking for an investigation into whether the White House has violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
One email, sent to Justice Department Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson from J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, uses an email account, SJennings@gwb43.com, on a server owned by the Republican National Committee. This raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure.
A number of other emails from Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s former assistant Susan Ralston to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff document Ms. Ralston’s use of three outside domains: rnchq.com (used for the headquarters of the Republican National Committee), georgebush.com and aol.com. In many of these emails Ms. Ralston is communicating inside White House information to Mr. Abramoff in response to Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to broker deals for his clients and place specified individuals in positions within the administration.
When a White House staffer sends an email, it’s automatically archived. Did some members of the Bush gang deliberately seek to avoid accountability by sending politically sensitive correspondence through alternate email addresses? If so, that’s legally problematic — staffers aren’t supposed to work around the law so as to avoid scrutiny. For that matter, it would also suggest the Bush gang knew they were doing something wrong — if this were “ordinary and routine,” as Rove argued the other day, then staffers wouldn’t have thought twice about using their official email addresses.
Following up on this point, Dan Froomkin posed a series of questions to the White House Communications Office.
1) Does White House policy allow White House staffers to use non-White House e-mail addresses for official White House business? Does it prohibit it? What is the policy?
2) Would these e-mails be treated any differently from official White House e-mails when it comes to archiving or subpoena purposes?
3) Does it create either impropriety or the appearance of impropriety that gwb43.com is a domain owned by the Republican National Committee?
4) Do other White House staffers regularly use non-White House e-mail accounts for White House business, and if so, why?
5) Does non-White House e-mail fulfill security requirements for White House communications?
6) If other non-White House e-mail accounts are used, who are the providers for all of the other accounts? (Any others besides the RNC?)
7) Does White House policy allow White House staffers to use non-White House e-mail addresses from their computers, even for non-official business? I’m told that during the Clinton administration, access to external e-mail, including Web mail, was shut off from White House (eop.gov) computers. Was there a conscious change of policy by the Bush administration?
8) Have there been any recent changes in policy relating to e-mail practices, or are changes in policy contemplated?
So far, Froomkin hasn’t heard back. I’m not surprised.
Update: Shakespeare’s Sister adds an important point on the same subject — Melissa has a clip of Bush explaining that he doesn’t use email “because of the different record requests that could happen to a president.” The video (and the analysis) is great; go take a look.