Ethics

Missing White House Emails Suddenly Appear

By Ed Brayton

Those millions of mysteriously and conveniently missing emails -- you know, the ones that suddenly went missing as soon as Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate the Valeria Plame leak -- have reappeared with just a few days left in the administration. What a coinkydink!

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

Civil division trial lawyer Helen H. Hong made the disclosure at a court hearing provoked by a 2007 lawsuit filed by outside groups to ensure that politically significant records created by the White House are not destroyed or removed before President Bush leaves office at noon on Tuesday. She said the department plans to argue in a court filing this week that the administration's successful recent search renders the lawsuit moot.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 20, 2009 (boomark / email).