White House being ordered to Provide info on the millions of missing emails.
By John Amato Monday Jan 07, 2008 4:30pmI'm not sure if this is enforceable, but it's a good ruling:
A federal magistrate ordered the White House on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing e-mails are stored on computer backup tapes.
The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any e-mail that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived.
In their lawsuits, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington suggest the e-mails were improperly deleted from White House computer servers. Over 5 million White House e-mails are missing, CREW alleged. Recently, the group said it has been told by reliable sources that the actual figure of missing e-mail is over 10 million.
In asking that the complaints be dismissed, the Bush administration says the president's record keeping practices under the Presidential Records Act are not reviewable by the courts. Also, the Federal Records Act does not allow the far-reaching action the two private groups are demanding, the administration contends...read on
Good job by CREW. And it's not surprising that the White House will do everything it can to prevent these emails from being exposed.
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IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST!
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I'm sure they will get right on that.
The White House is wrong.
It's in a dictatorship where the dictator is not accountable to anyone, in a democracy, there's this thing called "checks and balances".
Don't impeach. IMPRISON!
I'm sure they've been
destroyedlost by now.fuck off...make me.
Emails? What emails?
Good luck with that.
*happy dance*
Nah. It'll never happen.
*sits back down*
Maybe the court could give them some hints on where to wipe -- I mean, "look"?
And while they are at it, could the courts request every criminal in the country turn himself in by Friday?
Interesting when Congress doesn't do its job, isn't it?
Bush & Co. Have developed a real art to the Ignore it and will go away philosophy
Kerry @ 2:
Not only has Cheney had those hard-drives level 6 wiped, he
took the hardware, and had it crushed in a metal press and
had the particles taken aboard the Space Shuttle, and hurled
into outer orbit.
Then, they will claim, it was some kind of cleric error?
Gone, baby, Gone.
smchris @ 9:
Not only is Congress not doing its job, we the people aren't either. Congress's phone lines should be jammed with constituents demanding impeachment.
The deepest, darkest secrets of this White House will one day be revealed and it will either shock us out of our complacency or shoulders will just be shrugged and expectations lowered even further, until we lose the plot altogether and this isn't America anymore. If that hasn't already happened.
bush speaks on Friday, markets tank.
bush speaks on Tuesday, markets tank.
Decline effectively wipes out ALL THE EARNINGS FROM THE ENTIRE YEAR OF 2007!!!
impeach them both, NOW!!!
gee dumbya bush = Worst President Ever!!!
After a couple years this will all pan down, heavily redacted emails with convenient "unrecoverable" sections will see the light of day and paint an acute picture leading later to the soon to be pardoned convictions of a handful of mid-level patsies and everyone will be happy that justice was served *cough*. :/ 25 years from now those same presidentially pardoned criminals will be assigned positions by the new figurehead of the time while the forgetful public argues over civil rights for the minority group of choice for the generation instead of realizing that the word ALL is encompassing of everyone in "all men are created equal".
wasn't the "accidental" fire in Cheney's & Addington's offices on Dec 24 2007 supposed to have destroyed all that incriminating evidence against this corrupt illegal war mongering/profiteering administration?
bush and cheney, traitors and enemies of the state.
I'm sure once elected Obama will be able to reach across the aisle and ask the Repulicans politely to give up the emails.
the RNC is complicit in the bushco crime syndicates actions.
It's still not to late to impeach and remove the war criminals.
Some of those emails contain information on what the bush admin is doing to lessen the violence in Iraq.
On such absolutely amazing tidbit of information that was released via other means is that it seems like we are paying the insurgents US dollars to be peaceful!!!! Some 70,000 former insurgents are now being paid $10 a day by the U.S. military. It costs about a quarter billion dollars a year.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17899543
Wow....
I hope everyone here gets mad at the fact that YOUR money is being GIVEN to Iraqi insurgents in order not to attack.
White House ordered? Hahaha! Now that's rich! And just who's going to make them comply? Nancy Pelosi?
Ruthless People @ 21:
....maybe Patrick Leahy will write another stern letter right after Cheney tells him to go fuck himself again.
The Judge forget to say " pretty please, with sugar on top?"
Prediction: We will never see those emails.
Umm...If this is a COURT ORDER, why can't Federal Marshals simply WALK into the White House (or wherever these things are squirreled away) and TAKE them? I mean, that is what they'd do to you and me, right? Huh? Right? Hello? Is this on?
Hey, if they can't find them on the white house computers check with the NSA. They read all our emails maybe they have copies of the white house emails too.
Just trying to be helpful.
Yeah. They were ordered. Ooooh. I bet they're scared...
This WH gives orders. They never take them. Taking impeachment off the table (a Constitutional power) was, in effect, taking the entire Constitution off the table.
SamDog @ 24:
Exactly. Cheney and Bush should have been frog marched out of the White House long ago.
SamDog @ 24:
Yep, it's on and it makes total sense to me. Didn't the FBI raid the office of a US Representative and take his computer among other things?
Tapes? What tapes? Oh THOSE tapes? We erased them weeks ago.
They shouldn't ASK the white house for shit. They should go there and take the stuff, as there is a clear pattern of disregard for the law on the part of the WH. ask the white house. right. Morons.
Ruthless People @ 27:
Totally agree!
If a judge informs me that I must turn over my computer for investigation, I guess I'll just tell him I won't do it because it could prove I might have committed a crime. I'm sure that'll fly.
Storm Cheney's office to retrieve the evidence and if Cheney gets startled falling to the floor having another heart attack in the process have Cigna make him wait on a transplant decision....and wait....and wait....
Frizzlebear @ 29:
YES!!!
Melanie Sloan is one of the best fighters the American public have. Every penny donated to CREW is money well spent
These secrecy problens occur when the corporations merge with the security apparatus. How could we have known.
Drew @ 20:
Its the first thing they've done that works. I find it more appalling that Saddam was willing to skip town for 1 Billion, no one needed to die in the invasion at all, but Bush turned him down so we could be "tough". I find it more appalling than that that those same insurgents continued to carry out their ethnic cleansing agenda during this time while we did nothing. Civilians continued to pay for our actions but were not afforded the protection we owed them.
Bagdad was 70 percent Sunni before the invasion, now its at like %60 Shiite. Over 3 million refuges fleeing the genocide, over one million killed because of our actions. I love my wallet as much as the next guy, but I find it hard to be outraged over the loss of a few hundred million out of a 2 Trillion war compared to the torture and/or death of thousands of innocent women and children. But thats just me. Call me a hippie.
The high-tech version of the famous 18 missing minutes..........multiplied exponentially.
I think you all are forgetting something. You cant treat Bush like a normal citizen. He is above the law. If he says the constitution is just a piece of paper than its just a piece of paper. Thats his "executive privilege" as Decider, as Commander in Chief and you cant do anything about it. Afterall its his country. He stole it fair and square, twice
I'd prosecute all these republicans using the RICO statute.
the words "sic (sp?) balls, Chopper!" come to mind...
While they are at it perhaps they explain what happened to the nearly 10 Billion dollars that went mysteriously missing in Iraq that the MSM can't seem to get it up for...
which of the democrat candidates will pursue criminal prosecution against bushco?
I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The NSA is "Hoover-ing" up all internet traffic, right!?! So they should be able to provide copies of all those emails, no? You make a call, you run over 6 or 7 blank DVDs, Ta-Daa!! There's your emails!!
it's just too bad that we don't have a delete button for bush and cheney, the last 7 years
are the most corupt and criminal in our history. two complete bastards in the whitehouse.
tr @ 42:
You are kidding right? You think any of them have the balls (figuratively, not literally)?
And then ,and then maybe a judge will order them to turn over the T I L L M A N files
because there is no executive privilege in the constitution over the death of any G.I.
serving us.
Worst in history.
Courts: "Give us the emails"
Preznit: "Muh dawgs ate 'em. Heh. Heh. Hehhehheh."
Supreme Court: Hand over those e-mails!
The Chimp in Chief: Gawd said I don' hafta!
Dickless Cheney: Go f*ck yourselves!
January 21, 2009
While he remains president, Dubya can stall releasing records until the cows come home, with claims of executive privilege, national security classification, and by having DoJ file briefs on behalf of our govt. But the second he becomes ex-pesident Bush, his successor decides what is classified and what isn't, what records of the Bush administration are covered by executive privilege and which aren't, and what briefs DoJ lawyers file on behalf of our govt. Private citizen Bush will have no control whatsoever over, no standing to appeal, most of these decisions, because the PRA makes the new president, and not any court, "the controlling legal authority" in determining whether executive privilege is to be invoked. Put another way, an ex-president cannot invoke executive privilege for records from his administration. It is a privilege of the sitting president only. And private citizens have no recourse through the courts to keep information classified, or to direct DoJ lawyers to take positions to their liking.
Don't imagine for a minute that BushCo hasn't thought this through very thoroughly. They got the MCA passed for what they claimed was the protection of CIA and other intelligence field operatives who had obeyed their directives to do illegal things, but clearly the people who ordered these crimes stood in greater need of protection, and this surely was BushCo's motivation in getting the MCA passed. It has been pointed out extensively that telecom amnesty makes little sense in terms of protecting the telcoms, but lots of sense in granting BushCo amnesty. These people have mens rea in spades, and they know perfectly well that they can't plug all the holes with the MCA and telcom amnesty, or even a dozen similar patches covering specific areas of their culpability, because that culpability is too widespread. Nor can they place any confidence in last-minute blanket self-pardons, because of the dubious legal standing of such a thing. They simply cannot without going to jail, and therefore will not, hand over custody of the evidence of their guilt on January 20, 2009. What will they do instead, especially if a Democrat wins? The answer to that question is what occupies the forefront of my worries tonight, not the results of the primary bread and circuses.
If, (fat chance) the e mails ever are available who could read 5 million? We'd all have to pitch in and read thru 100 or so and report the interesting ones.
Of course the problem is that trolls would volunteer but, someone smarter than I could distribute them in a random fashion, with redundancy. It would not surprize me if there were 100,000 people willing and capable of reading and winnowing out the important letters.
Bush administration to judiciary: "the dog ate them," and he has executive privilege we said! What ya gonna do, subpoena us again? Hahaha..........
tr @ 42:
Dennis Kucinich - he already has submitted articles of impeachment against VP Cheney for just this sort of thing, and is preparing a 50-page articles of impeachment against gee dumbya bush, wannebeeprez.
I look forward to the impeachment hearings, convictions and war crimes trials in The Haugue in 2008!
Looks like more ICC issues for current and former EOP-DoJ legal counsel.
Article 1 Section 8 gives Congress the power to regulate all powers of the President and Judiciary. If the US government is not interested in reviewing these issues of alleged war crimes, the ICC is ready. How did the President plan to "manage" a war if he has no records; and will not permit review of his "leadership"?
Since 2003, Fitzgerald warned us of the WH records retention problem. What oversight has there been either in EOP or Congress to determine whether there is or is not a suitable "alternate" system to meet the records retention requirement under Federal Law?
It appears OVP-EOP legal counsel created a backup system when they learned the e-mails could not be shielded; but when that was discovered, the lawyers allegedly said "preserve" the e-mail, knowing fully well this meant the opposite: Destroy the war crimes evidence the ICC will ask for. Makes no sense for the GOP to hide anything when they were to have "permanent" control of the US government. When did EOP legal counsel worry that "their party" would lose control and might appear before the ICC?
This administration is clearly criminal. Get a warrant if you have to but hold these SOB's accountable!
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