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The Republican National Committee Responds To E-mail Report
The Republican National Committee has a few things to say about a new congressional report alleging that White House officials may have violated federal law by using e-mail accounts tied to the RNC and the Bush-Cheney campaign for official White House communication.
“It is troubling that Henry Waxman’s committee jumped the gun and appears to be representing Democrats’ partisan spin as ‘fact,’” said Tracey Schmitt, spokesperson for the RNC, referring to Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Reform and Oversight Committee.
“Not only have we been clear that we are continuing our efforts to search for e-mails, but there is no basis for an assumption that any e-mail not already found would be of an official nature,” Schmitt said.
And this from Eric A. Kuwana, counsel to the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, about the new report, which we wrote about yesterday:
“In an effort to cooperate with the committee, counsel for BC ‘04 engaged in substantial written and verbal communications with committee staff for more than a month to try to reach an agreement on exactly what, when and how any appropriate information would be produced to the committee,” Kuwana said.
The campaign documents and information are from a limited time serveral years ago, Kuwana said. They have “no articulated connection to the investigations of the committee, and very well may be the type and nature of political documents that are specifically exempt from the Presidential Records Act,” he said.
Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesperson, takes issue with the congressional report. No one is trying to hide communication by using their political accounts, he said. Rather, it is practical for certain White House officials to use e-mail accounts tied to the Republican party when they deal with political issues.
“This is an attempt make old news new again,” Stanzel said. The White House has rewritten its rules for using outside accounts since the uproar over White House officials communicating about fired U.S. attorneys on outside accounts.
“What Rep. Waxman tried to do was to make premature conclusions based on incomplete information in an effort to grab headlines,” Stanzel said.
“The policy is clear now,” Stanzel said.
The Presidential Records Act requires the president to “take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented … and maintained as Presidential records.”
To comply with the law, the White House counsel’s office instructed White House staff six years ago to refrain from using any other e-mail account for official business other than the White House system.
The evidence obtained by the committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts “in a manner that circumvented these requirements,” according to the report.
“Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive,” the committee report states.
To see specifics from the report look at yesterday’s blog item.
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