Posted on 12/05/2011 4:53:59 PM PST by TBBT
* Republican presidential hopeful's actions unprecedented
* Aides purchased hard drives of state-issued computers
* Emails and other communications wiped from servers
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret, Reuters has learned.
The move during the final weeks of Romney's administration was legal but unusual for a departing governor, Massachusetts officials say.
The effort to purge the records was made a few months before Romney launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He is again competing for the party's nomination, this time to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at trust.org ...
Exactly! Thank you for saving me the key strokes.
The libs, Dems, MSM, are just ticked off that Romney outfoxed them. Good move on Romney’s part, and he was smart to think one chess step ahead of the commie, socialist, pinko mob who now have no electronic or paper trail to dog him with. Hahahahahah, checkmate.
Period? The action was unprecedented. The law was, according to the article, vague. It had never been applied to electronic records, so there are no appellate court cases and certainly no Massachusetts Supreme Court cases on point. The article suggests that Romney's staff asked for permission to destroy certain paper records but apparently decided it didn't need permission to destroy all electronic records.
"Legal, period," sounds great as an argument made before a judge or in a brief - but no lawyer in absence of a ruling by a court on application of the law to electronic records can say that it's "legal, period." And if Romeny's camp needed to ask permission to destroy paper records but is saying it was legal, period to destroy all electronic records (and there may not have been paper copies of those records), I'd say that the prevailing legal theory would be that once electronic records came into being they had to be maintained as well. It would be "illegal, period."
Do you have a cite to the law and, in particular, to a Masschusetts court's interpretation of it that permits you to state definitively that it's legal?
Took a lesson from the Usurping Marxist Onada.
Time to go with Huntsman guys.What's a Huntsman guy? Is that like some kind of a doll?
How many Huntsman guys are you going to go with? And where are you going with them?
Respectfully, I do. When somebody serves as governor, or President, what they do in the office is as an officer of and representative of the people and the state. If they want to handle personal business on a personal email account, fine. But public business, done for pubic pay, is a public record in my book. And under the laws of most states (apparently Massachusetts wasn't fast enough to note that electronic records were the same as paper records, although a court would almost certainly have held that they were; the court didn't get a chance because *poof*, the records were gone).
I will never vote for Romney, but this is lame.
In fact, Romney’s effort to keep his records out of the hands of the incoming scumbag Democrats was only sensible.
Watch what happens when the Food Stamp President is forced out of office. The shredding, burning and demolition of records and computers will be unprecedented.
It is getting ridiculous on a daily basis here.
Action figure, obviously.
Actually, all talk, no action.
If by action you mean Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, and Mittens then I’ll take talk any day o’ the week.
That’s all they’ve got? Not even actual wrong doing, just speculation and innuendo?
BTW, BHO spent ten times that amount to hide his birth certicate.
That’s something you would expect from Obama. Romney clearly doesnt want people seeing the truth about what he did. Im sure there were transcripts where he said some very non-conservative things.
Same here. Screw 'em (the Massachusetts Democrats) Actually this pushed Romney up a notch or two for me.
What more do you need than speculation and innuendo? Entire kingdoms have fallen on innuendo. Romney lied, people died. Or something like that.
I’d rather go with the Huntsman girls.
have you seen them?
The hell it was.
This man and his cronies covered up things they didn’t want seen. That’s the m.o. of crooks and slimebags.
And anyone who supports that gets filed into that folder too.
howard dean did the same thing when he ran for POTUS.
But mormons are some of the most honest people I know!!!!!! /s
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