NYT: Lawyer Says Rove Assumed E-Mail Was Kept

So that clears this whole mess up.:eyes: :mad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/washington/14emails.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


Lawyer Says Rove Assumed E-Mail Was Kept


By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: April 14, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 13 — Karl Rove, the chief political strategist for President Bush, did not intentionally delete e-mail messages to avoid creating a paper trail detailing his work, his lawyer said on Friday. Rather, he mistakenly thought that the messages were being preserved by the Republican National Committee.

“Karl has always understood that his R.N.C. e-mails were being archived,” the lawyer, Robert Luskin, said in an interview. “He has never asked or sought any kind of special treatment to permit him to delete anything.”

In addition to their government e-mail addresses, Mr. Rove and 21 other White House officials maintain e-mail accounts with the national committee that are supposed to be used for political business only.

Facing questions from Democrats and in the news media, the White House has said that some e-mail messages from the political accounts are missing and that it is working to recover them. The party committee, which until August 2004 automatically deleted e-mail from its server after 30 days, has said it has no e-mail records for Mr. Rove before 2005. But Rob Kelner, a lawyer for the R.N.C., said that work to recreate the lost records was under way on Friday and that some e-mail had already been retrieved.

On Friday, a watchdog group called on Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, to reopen his investigation into whether Mr. Rove was involved in leaking the name of a C.I.A. agent. Mr. Rove had been cleared in the inquiry, but the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said this week’s revelations about missing e-mail raised questions about whether he might have destroyed or hidden documents.

A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald had no comment, but Mr. Luskin, the lawyer for Mr. Rove, said the special prosecutor had “complete unfettered access” to his client’s computers, including his Republican National Committee laptop, his home computer and his portable BlackBerry device.

more...

We ALL obviously use email, right? So....what is the process if you wish to save an email? You do NOT delete it ~~ but move it to a folder where it is saved. And, if it is something of importance on an issue, print a hard-copy and file it in the appropriate file on a matter.

How many of us would maybe even think that if we deleted emails that some system somewhere was saving and archeiving it for us?

That is just total, unmitigated bullshit from Rove's mouthpiece. Everyday people experience using an email system ~~ which would include sending, saving and deleting messages. Who the hell does that lawyer think he is fooling ~~ other than the 30% who over-dosed on Kool Aid long ago ~~ ??

Edit for typo

for everyone. Its common practice to defend against suits and comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. If you work at a publicly held company, count on your emails being archived.

According to several articles, the RNC did start archiving all of Rove's email on his RNC accounts at some point.

some opt to delete quickly and intentionally NOT archive

I worked on a contract recently with a multinational company with a 30-day email autodelete policy set via Exchange; they caution employees "if you want to keep the email or its attachments, be sure to 'save as' or its gone for good."

litigations and S-O effectively give US courts and auditors very long arms (in the legal sense).

I think they felt if it no longer exists it cannot be used against them. I had informal conversations with them to the effect that if somebody did a "save as" of something problematic and somebody managed to get hold of that person's pc, the whole thing could blow up on them - not just that info was found, but that they attempted to be hide it. They agreed, said "legal" calls the shots. Unfortunately like in many organizations, the RNC possibly included, the people making policy decisions about technology don't necessarily have all the facts. And many of them think they are too good for all that tecchy stuff, don't want to be bothered with the details. they don't understand that technical details are what the world runs on.

Let's hope that hubris blows ol' kkkarl right to hell.

You have lied to us so many times, why should we believe you now? I rather doubt your concern was whether or not the RNC kept your emails in the archives, but whether they deleted ASAP to keep you out of trouble.

Personally, I don't think the peoples' business, nor any other government business, should be conducted through the RNC...OR the DNC, for that matter. Why did you have to conduct business outside the White House system? In today's world, you can still route your emails through the White House system, no matter where you are sitting/standing/lying. Oops! No pun intended on that last word.

say they aren't allowed to use other means of communication outside the WH?

WH policy is/was that official WH stuff got done on the WH systems and inadvernt usage should be forwarded to the WH account or printed and held.

because he would not have destroyed any possible copies. If the second layer is also missing then it was done deliberately.

Some articles have said there was a 30 day autodelete policy in place. In that case there would be no need of a backup over 30 days old.

I should think many of those emails were cc'd or forwarded to others in the White House system. Maybe they should subpoena the files from the underlings...beginning with secretaries on down. I realize that some secretaries could plead executive privilege, but those people can't type everything. Surely, there is someone along the path that would have a gold mine on their computers.

Anything that was sent or received on the WH system is supposed to be archived. There have been issues with the archival system both under Clinton and Bush. Seen some numbers and a lot of hysteria about that, waiting until cooler heads prevail and real facts come out.

Every college educated person I know types, so even composition is self done, though I could see formatting being done by a secretary. There are some pretty arcane stuff for Gov docs.

If it came from the RNC servers before they started archiving Rove, and did not hit the WH system its very likely to be irretrivable. That is also not illegal.

...is that Karl and his lawyer felt they had to reply. IOW, they know it's damaging, they're trying to get ahead of it by putting out their story.

Which means, we've hit a weak point. Keep poking that spot with a sharp stick...

New Name: Joe Isuzu Rove