White house email and the Presidential Records Act

Where have all the e-mails gone?

Waxman's staff report notes that the Presidential Records Act requires the president to ensure that all "activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented ... and maintained as presidential records" and charges that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts "in a manner that circumvented these requirements."

Using email accounts on the Republican National Committee server to conduct official government business could be judged as a evasion of the Presidential Records Act.

e-discovery, evidence recovery, and content management lollapalooza

Interim Report on RNC Emails and the Presidential Records Act

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.

Obviously there will be several investigations coming out of this. Those investigators will have to sift through mountains of evidence, employ advanced technology to recover other evidence, and generally search for needles concealed in fields of haystacks. Presto Vivace does not currently represent clients who officer that sort of service, but this is a great time to tell those stories.

It’s a great day for evidence recovery

Dan Froomkin, Washington Post:

Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas -- due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

I wouldn’t bet on that. Oliver North thought he had deleted all those emails. He discovered otherwise.

Congressional investigations are going to be very good to the evidence recovery industry. Presto Vivace does not currently have any evidence recovery clients, we wish we did. There are going to be a lot of terrific stories to be told.

Of course the key to attracting and retaining clients in this line of work is keeping your mouth shut. But without talking about your clients there is much that can be said about the science of recovery. This is a moment for journalists who report on litigation support, evidence recovery, and records management to come into their own.