Where have all the e-mails gone?

An estimated 5 million White House emails have vanished into thin air. Who is to blame? Speculation about presidential advisor Karl Rove misusing the Republican National Committee’s email system had previously raised questions, but surprise surprise-those records have gone missing as well. CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), a liberally driven watchdog group is insistent that a Presidential Records Act violation has occurred. CREW is lobbying for investigation in separate instances; one being the Republican National Committee’s mishandling of the email server and the other being the eye opening 5 million emails missing.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was quick to distance speculation from the outside resource, CREW. “We're checking into them. There are 1,700 people in the Executive Office of the President.” Republican Party campaign account emails have not been saved, which creates a big problem that the White House has already recognized as a ‘screw up.’ This Capitol Hill controversy surrounds email accounts set up for the 22 aids that were supposed to part official business from political work. Senator Patrick Leahy is spearheading the Congressional attack for action to be taken. “You can't erase e-mails, not today, that's like saying, the dog ate my homework.” Leahy has already compared this incident to the Watergate scandal and threatens the RNC with subpoenas.

Although this incident is claimed to be incidental (yeah, right), the Executive Office of the President has certainly not stopped there. A special prosecutor from the CIA leak case has already identified that a gap in saved emails took place in 2003. Democratic officials feel that this is an especially controversial topic because it sparks questions about a lack of information released in the CIA leak case. What does the RNC have to say about it? Attorney Robert Luskin reported that until this month Karl Rove thought his emails were being archived, and that he had done nothing wrong. While the White House may come up with better excuses than Karl Rove, the public may never know the truth about the missing emails.