Lawyer: Rove Didn't Mean to Delete Email
Updated 1:16 PM ET April 13, 2007
By LAURIE KELLMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) - Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored server, saying Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.
The issue arose because the White House and Republican National Committee have said they may have lost e-mails from Rove and other administration officials. Democratically chaired congressional committees want those e-mails for their probe of the firings of eight federal prosecutors.
"His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived," Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said.
The prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame spy case saw and copied all of Rove's e-mails from his various accounts after searching Rove's laptop, his home computer, and the handheld computer devices he used for both the White House and Republican National Committee, Luskin said.
The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, subpoenaed the e-mails from the White House, the RNC and Bush's re-election campaign, he added.
"There's never been any suggestion that Fitzgerald had anything less than a complete record," Luskin said.
Any e-mails Rove deleted were the type of routine deletions people make to keep their inboxes orderly, Luskin said. He said Rove had no idea the e-mails were being deleted from the server, a central computer that managed the e-mail.
On Thursday, one Democratic committee chairman said his understanding was that the RNC believed Rove might have been deleting his e-mails and in 2005 took action to preserve them in accordance with the law and pending legal action.
The mystery of the missing e-mails is just one part of a furor over the firings of eight federal prosecutors that has threatened Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' job and thrown his Justice Department into turmoil.
For now, Bush is standing by his longtime friend from Texas, who has spent weeks huddled in his fifth-floor conference room at the Justice Department preparing to tell his story to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
New documents released Friday by the Justice Department may shed additional light, but their release prompted Gonzales' one-time chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to postpone a closed-door interview with congressional investigators.
The missing e-mails posed some of the weightiest questions of a sprawling political and legal conflict between the Bush administration and Democrats in Congress.
Democrats are questioning whether any White House officials purposely sent e-mails about official business on the RNC server _ then deleted them, in violation of the law _ to avoid scrutiny.
White House officials say they can't rule that out, but that the administration is making an honest and aggressive effort to recover anything that was lost. "We have no indications that there was improper intent when using these RNC e-mails," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Luskin said Rove didn't know that deleting e-mails from his RNC inbox also deleted them from the RNC's server. That system was changed in 2005.
Rove voluntarily allowed investigators in the Plame case to review his laptop and copy the entire hard drive, from which investigators could have recovered even deleted e-mails, Luskin said.
As the investigation was winding down, Luskin said, prosecutors came to his office and reviewed all the documents _ including e-mails _ he had collected to be sure both sides a complete set.
Luskin said he has not heard from Fitzgerald's office and said that, if Fitzgerald believed any e-mails were destroyed, he would have called. Fitzgerald's office declined comment.
The White House did not immediately respond to Luskin's comments.
A lawyer for the RNC told congressional investigators that the RNC may be able to recover some of those e-mails sent from August 2004 on. That's when the RNC put a hold on an automatic purge policy.
The RNC lawyer, Rob Kelner, also said that the Republican committee has none of Rove's e-mails on its server prior to 2005, possibly because Rove deleted them, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Sometime in 2005, the RNC took action solely to prevent Rove from deleting his e-mails on that server. One reason for specifying Rove, Waxman said, appears to have been pending legal action against him.
It was unclear, Waxman said, whether the RNC had or would be able to recover e-mails written by any White House officials, including Rove, and sent on the committee's account.
The White House and RNC said they are taking action to recover as many lost e-mails as possible. Some 50 past and current White House aides had the RNC accounts, according to the administration, to avoid using government resources to conduct political business.
Separately, the White House was also confronted with unrelated questions about the possible loss of e-mails from aides' government accounts.
Perino said she could not rule out that millions of White House e-mails could have been lost when staffers' accounts were converted over to Microsoft Outlook from Lotus Notes. It was a rolling process that took place in the first couple of years of the administration, she said.
"I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost," she said. "There was no intent to have lost them."
___
Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo and Pete Yost contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Not like those 18 minutes of REPUBLICAN Nixon's tapes.....e-mails are there....
posted on April 13, 2007 11:40:14 AM
brings back those 500 FBI files - including the file of CIA Director Bob Gates that 'suddenly were found' inside the clinton WH.
......and the Whitewater files that somehow 'went missing' during the clinton administration.
And they later reappeared right in old hillary's library.
Who'd have thunk? LOL LOL LOL
edited to correct WHICH 'gate' it was....
[ edited by Linda_K on Apr 13, 2007 11:44 AM ]
posted on April 13, 2007 11:54:09 AMand the watergate files that somehow 'went missing' during the clinton administration.
Now Linda is trying to blame the Nixon scandal on the Clintons. It must be more of the Republican dope she continues to smoke. She can't even remember what happened during the Clinton administration.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 13, 2007 01:45:18 PM
Looks like logansdunce has egg on his face. It was Klinton that hid those whitewash files. No matter how much the Demomorons lie, the truth does find it's way out.
.
.
.
If it's called common sense, why do so few Demomorons have it?
posted on April 13, 2007 02:09:47 PMLooks like logansdunce has egg on his face. It was Klinton that hid those whitewash files. No matter how much the Demomorons lie, the truth does find it's way out.
No it is Linda that has EGG ON HER FACE.
Linda mentioned watergate.
WATERGATE WAS THE NIXON SCANDAL.
The Clintons were involved with the WHITEWATER scandal.
If Linda wants to bash the Clintons fine, but at least associate them with the correct scandal.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 13, 2007 04:39:45 PMsure ld.....I think some here noticed that you posted your garbage 11 minutes after I had corrected my post.
If that was the case then how was I able to copy and paste what you had ORIGINALLY posted?
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 13, 2007 06:39:15 PM
But Linda you forget, Hillarys lie about the missing Whitewater records that she was able to conveniently locate happened on Emperor Willies watch, the period of "Can do no wrong" for the demonrats.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
[ edited by Bear1949 on Apr 13, 2007 06:51 PM ]
posted on April 13, 2007 06:49:04 PM
yea....lol....and I believe that was the time they kept tabs on how many times SHE said SHE couldn't REMEMBER......something like 250 she claimed that.
LOL LOL LOL
As of today....it looks like hillary's at the bottom of the poll they took at moveon.org. LOL LOL
They don't even like her.
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 13, 2007 07:16:37 PM
Well, Nixon had to resign in disgrace, had an 18 minute gap in the tape, knew about the Watergate break-in---neener, neener. I'll see your Clinton and raise you a Nixon. Geez. Not denying there were problems in the Clinton administration, but is that your only defense when some new scandal is brewing in the Bush administration? Very lame.
posted on April 13, 2007 07:48:11 PM
Nope....just pointing out the hypocrisy....it's okay when clinton did something....not okay now.
But seriously.....this is nothing but more of the WITCH HUNT the dems have been on since this President first WON the 2000 election.
Every single piece of crap they've TRIED to stick on him....just refused to stick.
There are ENDLESS so called 'scandals' the dems/liberals DREAM UP. Then it takes YEARS to disprove them...and meanwhile they've found another 'conspiracy' they HOPE they'll be able to make stick THIS time.
Liberals can't deal with our Nations BIG, important issues....so they spend their time on all these different WITCH HUNTS.....trying to 'get' anyone in this administration.
posted on April 13, 2007 08:57:57 PM
BUSH IS GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY
Presidential Records Evasion
The Presidential Records Act (PRA) -- 44 U.S.C. section 2203 -- reads, "Through the implementation of records management controls and other necessary actions, the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure" that the activities of the White House "are adequately documented." Passed in 1978 by Congress to counteract Richard Nixon's attempts to seal and destroy some of his papers, the PRA was intended to make Executive Branch leaders accountable by ensuring eventual public access to White House decision-making. In recent weeks, through the congressional investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, more evidence has come to light suggesting that senior White House officials have been using political e-mail accounts provided by the Republican National Committee (RNC), apparently in an effort to evade the PRA. This week, the RNC informed House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) that it had destroyed all e-mail records from White House officials in 2001, 2002, and 2003. "In 2004, the RNC exempted White House officials from its policy of purging all e-mail," but the RNC claims the system still allowed individual users, like Karl Rove, to personally delete such records. "The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said. As a result, Stanzel noted that "we may not have preserved all e-mails that deal with White House business."
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 13, 2007 09:01:27 PMLiberals can't deal with our Nations BIG, important issues....so they spend their time on all these different WITCH HUNTS.....trying to 'get' anyone in this administration.
Who was it that kept Bill Clinton from persuing Osama Bin Laden? Yes the Republicans with the entire Monica trial. That's right getting a BJ was more important to Republicans than catching a terrorist. Nothing has changed in over 12 years. The Republicans are concerned about sucking up to Bush than trying to capture OBL.
Do we have to remind the Republicans what Newt was doing while the Bill Clinton trials were taking place. Yes that is right, he was having his own affair.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 13, 2007 09:35:45 PM
"But seriously.....this is nothing but more of the WITCH HUNT the dems have been on since this President first WON the 2000 election"
According to reports, something like several million e-mails were deleted, vanished, POOF!
Of course, that is not suspicious to you???
If your reply includes the name Clinton, I win $10.00.
posted on April 14, 2007 01:40:21 PM
Linda-You said "Every single piece of crap they've TRIED to stick on him....just refused to stick." I was just pointing out the error in your statement. It stuck to Scooter pretty good.
posted on April 14, 2007 06:17:58 PM
If he wins an appeal...then he's no longer a 'criminal'.
But you're missing the bigger point/issue.
They wanted, in the WORST way - and for YEARS - to 'get' Cheney, Bush or Rove. The BIG fish. lol
Couldn't make that stick...so they had to hang someone for 'lying' in a investigation that was about who 'outed' valerie wilson. Since they couldn't find anyone guilty of THAT...fitzpatrick had to 'get' someone.
All that time, all those investigations, all those interviews, all that money wasted. Had to have 'something to show for it.' lol
This was the best they could do...and it's pretty lame.
[except some of us know her husband outed her lol]
Are YOU a Bunghole?