Bush White House email controversy

This article is part of a series about George W. Bush
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During the 2007 Congressional investigation of the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, it was discovered that administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee,^[1] for various official communications. The domain name is an abbreviation for "George W. Bush, 43rd" President of the United States. The use of this email domain became public when it was discovered that Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas.^[2] Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com (registered to "Bush-Cheney '04, Inc."^[3]) and rnchq.org (registered to "Republican National Committee"^[4]). Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.^[5] Over 5 million emails may have been lost.^[6][7] Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove emails, leading to damaging allegations.^[8] In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been lost.^[9]

The "gwb43.com"^[10] domain name was publicized by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who sent a letter to Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry A. Waxman requesting an investigation.^[11] Waxman sent a formal warning to the RNC, advising them to retain copies of all emails sent by White House employees. According to Waxman, "in some instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications."^[12] The Republican National Committee claims to have erased the emails, supposedly making them unavailable for Congressional investigators.^[13]

On April 12, 2007, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that White House staffers were told to use RNC accounts to "err on the side of avoiding violations of the Hatch Act, but they should also retain that information so it can be reviewed for the Presidential Records Act," and that "some employees ... have communicated about official business on those political email accounts."^[14] Stanzel also said that even though RNC policy since 2004 has been to retain all emails of White House staff with RNC accounts, the staffers had the ability to delete the email, themselves.

On December 14, 2009, CNN reported^[15] that 22 million missing emails had been found on backup tapes, and that the Obama Administration reached a settlement with two watchdog groups who had sued to obtain the emails.