Well it has been an interesting night. First we were told that a lot of the NRC emails, especially those of Karl Rove, have "inadvertently" gone missing. The New York Times reports that
The White House said Thursday that missing e-mail messages sent on Republican Party accounts may include some relating to the firing of eight United States attorneysIf they do, then the RNC email accounts were used on official government business, and not on political business. That is a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Numerous experts have said that while copies of the emails might have been "deleted" by Karl Rove and others from their machines, those deletes wouldn't affect backed up servers.
Apparently the White House didn't think about server back ups. The Times story says that White House's lawyer Fred F. Fielding, ever the champion of executive privilege, is now asserting that the White House controls the emails on the RNC servers and that the White House doesn't have to turn over e-mail messages that the Republican National Committee has archived. I guess he figures we, the people, can't handle the truth of what our employees have been trying to hide.
It is all very murky, but I suspect we are inching ever closer to a Constitutional showdown. Those never turn out well for Presidents trying to hide wrongdoing from the Congress. Just ask President Nixon.
TPMmuckraker says another document dump is coming. More documents sanitized for Karl's protection. When do the subpoenas start flying? I think we can handle the truth.
