Cafferty to WH: WTF?!

The watchdog group known as CREW has revised their earlier estimate of the number of missing e-mails from the White House e-mail servers. Initially, they said 5 million, and now it's up to 10 million. Jack Cafferty caught wind of this and tore the administration a new asshole in the following clip (transcript below the fold thanks to C&L):


I'm especially glad that Jack remembered to point out (again) that these e-mail deletions are 100% illegal, not open to debate.

In response to the allegation, the White House tried to shrug CREW's attack off as some stupid ramblings from a "liberal group" while not showing any evidence that these missing e-mails exist somewhere, even if only on their backups. In true CREW fashion, they laid the smack down back on the White House, which can be found here.

[H/T to MoxieGrrrl]

Cafferty: A government watchdog group now says more than 10 million White House emails are missing. Citizens for the Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) described this massive hole in White House email records last April. At that time they thought the number was 5 million - Now they say it is more than 10 million emails. In one of the great understatements of this here Christmas season, the group says that this revised estimate - quote - highlights that this is a very serious and systematic problem at the White House - unquote. Both CREW and another private group called the National Security archive are suing the Bush administration to try to get information about all these missing emails. The White House email problems first came to light during special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity.

It’s worth noting what a critical time period these missing emails represent. Why it’s from March of 2003 to October 2005. That would include the start of the Iraq War right up through the aftermath of Katrina. As the director of one of these groups put it: It doesn’t get more historically valuable than that. Given the way the White House handled both the war and Katrina, it’s also quite convenient that suddenly this mountain of stuff is missing. By the way it’s against the law that these emails be destroyed or lost. They are supposed to be saved. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 mandates White House communications be preserved. Another law broken — Another example of nobody doing a damn thing about it.