RNC Paying Big Bucks In Treasure Hunt For ROVE's E-mails

[kpete]

Earlier this year, it was discovered that Rove and other White House aides had been using private e-mail accounts at the RNC to send messages about controversial government matters, such as the firings of U.S. attorneys. When investigators came calling, the RNC couldn't find the e-mails but promised to look.

Now, The Sleuth has learned, the hunt for those missing gigabytes has cost the RNC more than $250,000.

According to an RNC filing with the Federal Election Commission, the committee paid $231,615 in October to Stroz Friedberg, a forensics firm chock full of former FBI agents hired to retrieve the lost electronic data. The report shows the committee also paid $41,217 in October to Covington & Burling, the law firm representing the RNC on the missing e-mail controversy.

..................

Covington & Burling recruited Stroz Friedberg for technical support in the search for the missing White House e-mails, as the firm explained in a letter last spring to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

But now that we know the RNC has paid Stroz Friedberg nearly a quarter million dollars, does that mean they've found the missing e-mail messages?

more at:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2007/11/email_search_takes_byte_out_of.html

[northzax]

1. $250,000?

that's nothing. I wager Stroz bills an average of $400/hour, plus expenses, per person. you can run thorugh $250,000 like water and still have nothing real to show for it.

[Atman]

2. You don't have to be Columbo to figure this one out...

Another BushCo crony organization gets paid millions of taxpayer dollars to come up with nothing, which can be trumpeted endlessly on CNN and Fox to exonerate W and Rove.

What else is new?

:shrug:

.

[MrCoffee]

3. keep looking, e-sleuths!

don't worry that you haven't found anything yet. keep looking. take your time. do a thorough job.


don't forget to bill for every second of it.

[blogslut]

4. Bullshit

Oh, I don't doubt they're paying some forensics firm. I just doubt those emails were lost to begin with.

[gratuitous]

5. Covington & Burling?

If memory serves, that was the firm that represented (and probably still represents) Big Tobacco, their major stock-in-trade is to advise their clients how to avoid liability for their actions, no matter how despicable or reprehensible. While lawyers are not generally their clients, I'd make an exception in this case, as these lawyers inserted themselves into all of Big Tobacco's processes so that they could argue that every possible discoverable wrongdoing by the tobacco companies was covered by attorney-client privilege.

How odd that the Party of Personal Responsibility would hire such a firm to represent it.