Waxman to RNC: Hold on to your emails...

Pointing to e-mails between Bush administration officials and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff that used private e-mail addresses, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ordered the Republican National Committee and the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign to preserve all e-mail records and to ensure that they aren't purged or destroyed.

· Letter to Mike Duncan
· Letter to Marc Racicot
· E-mails Showing Use of Non-Governmental Accounts for Official Business


More on the story.

So what's the official/political breakdown for Karl Rove?

According to National Journal (not available online), Rove does approximately 95 percent of his emailing from his RNC address.
Jason Leopold does a good piece about the latest of Waxman but expand more in his article.


Emails released by the Department of Justice over the past two weeks in conjunction with a Congressional investigation into the firings of eight US attorneys show that White House officials have communicated with DOJ staffers about the attorney purge, using email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee in possible violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Using alternative email accounts also creates the appearance of impropriety, lawmakers charged Monday, because it allows White House officials to avoid the usual archival process and the automatic paper trail that is established when they use White House email servers to conduct business. Emails sent through the RNC server can be destroyed.

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 states that the records of a president, his immediate staff, and specific areas of the Executive Office of the President belong to the United States, not to the individual president or his staff. The act further states that the president must "take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as presidential records pursuant to the requirements of this section and other provisions of law."