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 News from Around the Americas | April 2007 
Leahy Doubts Bush Aides on Lost Emails
 Laurie Kellman - Associated Press
| | Editors Note: Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested Thursday that Bush administration officials are lying about White House e-mails sent via email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee that may have been lost. During an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, Leahy said he does not believe that the White House did not preserve the emails in question, rather, the White House is hiding the emails from Congressional investigators. Leahy said additional subpoenas may be forthcoming. TO/jl |
President Bush's aides are lying about White House emails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy suggested Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.
"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.
"You can't erase emails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those emails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said there is no effort to purposely keep the emails under wraps, and that the counsel's office is doing everything it can to recover any that were lost.
"The purpose of our review is to make every reasonable effort to recover potentially lost emails, and that is why we've been in contact with forensic experts," he said.
Leahy scoffed.
"I've got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get 'em for them," he told reporters later.
Senate Democrats continued to toughen their stance against the White House over the firings of eight prosecutors over the winter.
After his speech, Leahy's committee approved - but did not issue - new subpoenas to compel the administration to produce documents and testimony about the firings.
Democrats say the firings might have been improper, but that probe yielded a weightier question: Whether White House officials such as political adviser Karl Rove are intentionally conducting sensitive official presidential business via non-governmental accounts to evade a law requiring preservation - and eventual disclosure - of presidential records.
The White House issued an emphatic "No" to those questions during a conference call with reporters Wednesday, saying the Republican National Committee accounts were used to comply with the Hatch Act, which bars political work using official resources or on government time.
But White House spokesman Scott Stanzel acknowledged that 22 White House aides have email accounts sponsored by the RNC and that emails they sent may have been lost.
Stanzel said the White House was trying to recover the emails and could not rule out that some may have involved the firings.The administration also is drafting new guidelines for aides on how to comply with the law.
Leahy was not buying that.
"Emails don't get lost," Leahy insisted. "These are just emails they don't want to bring forward."
The revelation about the emails escalates a standoff between the Democrat-controlled Congress and the White House over the prosecutor firings. The subpoenas come a few days before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is to appear before Leahy's committee to fight for his job Tuesday.
Leahy's panel approved new subpoenas that would require the Bush administration to surrender hundreds of new documents and force two officials - Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella and White House political aide Scott Jennings - to reveal their roles in the firings. The panel delayed for a week a vote on whether to authorize a subpoena for Rove's deputy, Sara Taylor.
Leahy has not issued any subpoenas, but permission by his committee Thursday would give him authority to require testimony from all eight of the fired U.S. attorneys and several White House and Justice Department officials named in emails made public as having had roles in the firings. The White House has refused to make officials such as Rove available to testify under oath. |
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