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GOP may target Clinton Administration e-mails

Probes can go both ways, Republicans are warning Congressional Democrats who are investigating the use of private, sometimes GOP-issued e-mail accounts by many Bush Administration staffers, a Capitol Hill newspaper reports.

"As Democrats gear up for a broad investigation of Republican e-mail accounts, GOP staff warn that the issue could come back to haunt Democrats, as the minority is looking for ways to extend the issue into Democratic e-mails as well," Paul Singer and Rachel Van Dongen write for Roll Call.

The paper reports, that "Brian McNicoll, a spokesman for Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans, warned that if Democrats want to broadly investigate the use of party e-mail accounts by administration officials, Republicans could extend this investigation back to the end of the Clinton administration as well."

"If you can go back through five years of e-mails, you can go back 10 years of e-mails,” McNicoll is quoted as saying. "The Clinton administration was doing this too — they were using e-mail accounts that were outside the presidential records system."

The spokesman added that such activity might be swept into the House Oversight and Government Reform investigation mounted by Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif).

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