A day after a House panel issued a subpoena for sensitive emails sent from private accounts by Bush administration and Justice Department employees, the White House announced it has lost a mess of sensitive emails sent from private accounts by its employees. The House judiciary committee demanded the emails in the course of its investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Discussions about the firings took place by email outside official government channels. Democrats believe this tactic was an attempt to avoid scrutiny. Federal law requires that the White House maintain official records of such deliberations.
Administration officials told the press yesterday that some of the lost emails may have been from White House senior adviser Karl Rove. This is bad news for U.S. Attorney General Antonio Gonzales. If the White House is protecting Rove, Gonzales is the logical fall guy.
More troubling than the sight of our country's highest officials playing hot potato with this issue, however, is the possibility that private emails may have been deleted between March 28, when the chairmen of both the House and Senate judiciary committees sent a letter to the White House asking that it preserve any outside emails, and this Tuesday, when the Justice Department received a subpoena.
