Issa eyes Google in investigating White House e-mail abuses (WH Aides using GMail)

The Daily Caller ^ | 07/12/2010 | Jonathon Strong

[OldDeckHand]

Top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, is broadening the scope of his investigation into technology-related ethics and legal problems for the White House to include Google – a company in possession of personal e-mails of many White House aides.

In a July 9 letter, Issa asks Google to outline how it is storing the personal e-mails of key Obama administration officials and how the Mountain View, Calif., company plans to respond to federal subpoenas.

Republicans are threatening to take control of the House in November’s midterm elections, which would give Issa the authority to demand Google hand over the e-mails of White House aides.

That approach would likely be a last resort to working with the White House to discover whether the Obama administration is avoiding e-mail archiving requirements under federal law.

A Google spokeswoman said Monday, “We received Congressman Issa’s letter and we look forward to answering the Committee’s questions.”

[OldDeckHand]

Not only are they using GMail. But, they're using GMail to set up meetings with lobbyists. Why is this important? Because WH emails - per federal law - are to be properly archived. It's convenient to set up meetings with lobbyist on a email system that may be beyond a subpoena, at least beyond the normal WH subpoena.

[GoCards]

THank goodness Issa is a pain in the Dems ASS. Kudos to Issa.

[Celerity]

Google is storing these emails forever, per procedure.

Google will answer the Subpeona based on who pays them most.

[GourmetDan]

Oh darn.

We found that the emails were inadvertently deleted and lost forever by an incompetent staff-person.

[Nachum]

The list, ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

[nina0113]

We found that the emails were inadvertently deleted and lost forever by an incompetent staff-person.

Gosh, just like VP Gore's Lotus Notes emails.

[SteveH]

We found that the emails were inadvertently deleted and lost forever by an incompetent staff-person.

In a court setting, that is evidence tampering and/or contempt of court and/or conspiracy.

I think Issa is putting Google on notice to preserve the emails. If Google has not already announced a disk failure, it should in theory guarantee the viability of producing the documents requrested under a criminal subpoena. What the rules are for a Congressional hearing subpoena of a fictitious corporate entity person is, I am not sure...

[SeaHawkFan]

As an aside, MicroSoft has made some significant improvements to Hotmail and it is now superior to gmail or yahoo.

The calendar is much easier to use and you can open Office documents right from your email.