Rove’s RNC e-mails Erased For 2 Years Despite Fitz's OrderTen weeks before issuing a subpoena for records in Vice President Cheney’s office, Patrick Fitzgerald notified Karl Rove and other aides to President Bush to retain e-mail and other documents, including data in all computer records in his “possession”, that might be related to the Plame investigation.
Despite that notice, Rove deleted e-mails during the next two years from his RNC account, including messages after the RNC put his account on “hold” in 2004 due to “unspecified legal inquiries”. According to letter from Henry Waxman, during the next year, Rove’s RNC e-mail was not automatically purged, but someone manually deleted those messages.
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070412145715.pdfThe specific instruction from Fitzgerald issued in September 2003 to the White House counsel’s office was for Rove and others to preserve all relevant records:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/whouse/gonzalez100303email.html “. . . in the possession of the Executive Office of the President, its staff, or its employees, wherever located, including any documents that may have been archived in Records Management.”
Recently released document preservation orders issued in the Plame case show that investigators probed the President’s office prior to the issuance of formal subpoenas to Vice President Cheney’s staff. This bolster the widely-held belief that Karl Rove was the initial focus of Fitzgerald’s leak investigation, rather than Scooter Libby, who ended up being convicted of Obstruction charges..
A September 30, 2003 Alberto Gonzales memo informed White House staff that Fitzgerald had requested the preservation of all records potentially related to the Plame investigation. Nonetheless, all e-mails on Karl Rove’s RNC server continued to be deleted until August 2005, when Karl Rove was cut off from the ability to make further deletions. Document erasures on Rove’s account continued despite an August 2004 “document hold” instruction after Fitzgerald’s office contacted the RNC.
It had been reported that Rove had been subject to a document preservation order issued by the Department of Justice on December 16, 2003. That was, in fact, a separate order issued as a subpoena to the Office of the Vice President (OVP). See,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x646941Hat-tip to emptywheel for pointing out that Rove received a “request” letter from Fitzgerald rather than a subpoena for his communications records related to the Plame investigation. That letter was distributed to Rover and other Bush by a series of memos starting on September 30, 2003. An October 3 memo to the President’s staff, signed by Alberto Gonzalez, stated:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/whouse/gonzalez100303email.html
White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez's Oct. 3, 2003 Memo to all
White House Employees About Deadline to Provide Documents to Counsel
On September 30, 2003, you received two memoranda from me directing you to preserve and maintain certain documents. In a letter received yesterday evening, the Department of Justice has requested that we provide those documents to prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to this investigation.
To ensure compliance with the time deadlines imposed by the Department of Justice, you are directed to provide to the Counsel's Office, by no later than 5 p.m. on October 7, 2003, copies of the following documents, created during the time period February 1, 2002, through September 30, 2003, inclusive:
1. All documents that relate in any way to former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife's purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and
2. All documents that relate in any way to a contact with any member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife's purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and
3. All documents that relate in any way to a contact with any or all of the following: reporters Knut Royce, Timothy M. Phelps,
or Robert D. Novak, or any individual(s) acting directly or indirectly on behalf of them.
For purposes of this memorandum, the term "documents" includes
"without limitation all electronic records, telephone records of any kind (including but not limited to any documents that memorialize telephone calls having been made), correspondence, computer records, storage devices, notes, memoranda, and diary and calendar entries" in the possession of the Executive Office of the President, its staff, or its employees, wherever located, including any documents that may have been archived in Records Management. However, at this time, you do not need to provide to Counsel's Office copies of the following, provided that they have not been marked upon in any way and are not accompanied by any notes or other commentary:
(a) press clips or articles, whether in hard copy or e-mail or electronic form, or (b) either of the two memoranda I sent on September 30, 2003, regarding document preservation.
You are also directed to complete and return the attached Certification by 5 p.m. on October 7, 2003. Note that you must complete the Certification whether or not you have responsive documents. All documents and Certifications should be hand-delivered to EEOB Room 214. Room 214 will be staffed from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. today; from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday October 4 and Sunday October 5; from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Monday October 6; and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday October 7. Appropriate procedures will be in place to handle classified documents.
If you have any questions, please call Associate Counsels Ted Ullyot or Raul Yanes in the Counsel's Office.
ALBERTO R. GONZALES
COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
CERTIFICATION
(To be returned by no later than 5 p.m. on October 7, 2003)
I certify, to the best of my knowledge, that
____ I have produced to the Office of the Counsel to the President
all documents in my possession that are required to be produced
by the memorandum to which this Certification was attached.
____ I have no such documents.
I further understand that this Certification is for purposes of a federal criminal investigation and that intentional false statements may result in criminal penalties or other sanctions.
NAME (please print):
SIGNATURE:
DATE:
OFFICE:
PHONE NUMBER:
Note: The attorneys in the Office of the Counsel to the President are attorneys for the President in his official capacity and are not private attorneys for anyone. The attorney-client privilege does not extend to communications by government employees to government attorneys, including attorneys in the Office of the Counsel to the President, when such communications are sought for a Federal criminal investigation.
All documents and Certifications should be hand-delivered to
EEOB Room 214
According to RNC's counsel, Rob Kelner. the RNC stopped deleting all of the White House staff's emails in August 2004 in response to "unspecified legal inquiries". In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Waxman’s letter to Gonzales is reprinted in TPM. See,
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002998.php :
According to Mr. Kelner, the RNC had a policy, which the RNC called a "document retention" policy, that purged all e-mails from RNC e-mail accounts and the RNC server that were more than 30 days old. Mr. Kelner said that as a result of unspecified legal inquiries, a "hold" was placed on this e-mail destruction policy for the accounts of White House officials in August 2004. Mr. Kelner was uncertain whether the hold was consistently maintained from August 2004 to the present, but he asserted that for this period, the RNC does have a large volume of White House e-mails. According to Mr. Kelner, the hold would not have prevented individual White House officials from deleting their e-mail from the RNC server after August 2004.
Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95%o of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.
Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server. Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns. It was unclear from Mr. Kelner's briefing whether the special archiving policy for Mr. Rove was consistently in effect after 2005.