What Is It with GOPers and Their Email?, Episode 516,345

by emptywheel

It seems the only thing Republicans do more consistently than troll for extra-marital sex in public places is delete their emails. Via CREW, ABC News is reporting that Congressman Feeney is spending a chunk of money in an attempt--apparently--to reconstruct some lost emails.

Since April, Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., has paid over $90,000 to a Washington, D.C. office of FTI Consulting, through his re-election campaign and a separate legal defense fund he began in June, according to financial filings and a news account.

The payments were for helping Feeney "voluntarily cooperate" with federal prosecutors, according to Pepper Pennington, the congressman's spokeswoman.

Among its specialties, FTI provides "electronic evidence consulting focused on time-sensitive situations," "computer forensic services" and "e-mail reconstruction," according to the firm's Web site.

The Department of Justice has reportedly sought e-mails from Feeney regarding interactions between the lawmaker's office and Abramoff, the disgraced former Republican superlobbyist who was arrested in 2004 and has been cooperating with government investigators.

Now, granted, I'm extrapolating from the news that Feeney is spending $90,000 to a firm that reconstructs emails to the assumption that the emails in question disappeared. But if I'm right, it puts Feeney in the company of Bush and Cheney and Rove and Matt Blunt--all of them suspected of doing some not quite legal things and all of them with mysteriously disappearing emails. Good thing Feeney is being so forthcoming with those emails, huh?

I find this particularly interesting given that we know DOJ has Abramoff's emails from Greenberg Traurig--I've long suspected that's where DOJ first learned of the RNC server, back in 2004, when they got a Greenberg Traurig email from Susan Ralston referring to it.

Comments

[marksb]

EW, I'm wondering if there's a legal requirement on congresscriters to save email. I am pretty sure there's such a requirement on the WH, but a congressional office? I dunno. Guess the congressman thinks he's got some message tucked away somewhere that helps him.

CTI Consulting looks impressive. From their electronic services section:
"With deep experience handling complex multinational litigations and investigations, the computer forensics professionals at FTI focus on the needs of companies facing time-sensitive situations involving electronic data, networks and systems. We help organizations meet requirements for uncovering, analyzing and producing data from a variety of sources, including e-mail, voicemail, backup tapes, shared server files and databases—often on multiple continents."

Wish they were digging around at the WH...

[Jodi]

Well, as always you are assuming much emptywheel.

My guess is he is trying to "demonstrate good faith."

[marksb]

Um..that would be FTI Consulting. Aging brain. Sigh.

[William Ockham]

Um, there were people in the DOJ in February 2001 who knew all about the RNC email server.

[marksb]

Good faith? You assume much yourself, Jodi.
Feeney's (attorneys are) more likely working to find some email message that shows either his innocence or deflects some aspect of potential charges.
And EW's statement is pretty tough to dispute: the guys nicking around on the edge of the law seem to be associated with deleting/destroying emails. Until they need them to defend.
Duh.

[emptywheel]

WO

What am I missing? Just the use of it by people IN DOJ?

[Jodi]

marksb,

it is simple. The cops think you are hiding the body. You need to be in their good graces, so you hire someone to dig up your back yard and cellar to demonstrate "good faith."

Now maybe there isn't a body or maybe it was dropped in the middle of the lake with 6 cement blocks tied to it. Who knows.

Taking a lie detector test is also useful.

[William Ockham]

As one example, Monica Goodling started at DOJ at the very beginning of the Bush Administration. Prior to that, she had worked for Karl Rove and Tim Griffin as an opposition researcher at the RNC. She certainly had an RNC email account before at the RNC. She had to have known that Rove and Griffin continued to use their accounts after they took government positions.

[mark boswell]

JODI

what is your GUESS based on that Feeney is demonstrating "good faith?"
please back up your assumptions with something more than your own good faith or naivete

[freepatriot]

you expect these people to know where their email is ???

these people don't even know where their own brothers work ???

shit stain says they're "demonstrating good faith"

which causes some newbies to wonder what the repuglicans consider "good faith"

for the record, the shit stain will defend any dispicable lying fuck of a repuglican for any dispicable act

the shit stain doesn't have morals or shame

just repuglican talking points

[emptywheel]

Actually, WO, Goodling didn't get to DOJ until 2002. But I see your point.

My point about 2004 was that was the point (as far as we know) when criminal investigators first learned people were using teh RNC server to hide certain activities.

[mark boswell]

does JODI enjoy being refered to as a shit stain, or does she have an ulterior motive for posting on this site?

[freepatriot]

the shit stain thinks she's relevant and shit ...

actually the shit stain is an amalgamation of freepi (probably paid) who come here to disrupt or conversations

that the shit stain just serves to "sharpen our claws" is just another unintended consequence of the freepi incompetence that rules the repuglican party

[Jeff]

My point about 2004 was that was the point (as far as we know) when criminal investigators first learned people were using teh RNC server to hide certain activities.

Remind me again, what transpired then?

[Neil]

It would be helpful to know what email system mailbox is being reconstructed, Rep. Feeney’s official government business email address (the one supported by Congress’ IT department) or a personal one like gmail, yahoo, rr.com or RNC.COM.

I’ll wager it’s the former, the congressmen’s official mailbox. If it is, and if there are no other known reports of problems with the congressional email system, I think you can assume they’re reconstructing messages that were deleted by the congressmen or his staff, and that the Congressmen, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) has been sufficiently motivated by investigators to cooperate.

Feeney’s reputation as a corrupted official, in combination with his cooperation with the Abramoff investigation, adds up to trouble for Feeney and probably others.

But why would DOJ entrust a private company to produce the material when they could secure their own agent to do the work if given consent by the Congressmen?

What’s more interesting to me is that the White House’s stonewalling on its response to subpoenas to produce 5 million email messages it claims to have lost, an explanation of how, a description of what backups it possesses, the identity of the spectral contractor it blamed for the problem, the role of the Bush policy on records retention.

Either the White House has demonstrated woeful neglect of custodial responsibilities under the law in keeping presidential records and is trying to avoid accountability for the same, or it is trying to conceal smoking gun evidence in the US Attorney scandal or other oversight inquiries.

Oddly, our law enforcement branch of government, the DOJ and her independent counsels, are not investigating this issue or working to resolve it. A citizen’s group, CREW, is suing the government in court to obey the law.

Under Bush’s unitary executive theory and Mukasey as AG, we can neither expect the DOJ to investigate potential criminal acts in the executive branch or enforce contempt of congress. Their legal view is that discussion between the legislative and executive branch will resolve these issues, and that the legal system including our courts have no role unless a citizen’s group can get standing.

Forensic computer science is a big deal in litigation since the advent and adoption of Internet email in business (and government.) It has changed discovery practices and opened the door to a telling source of information. Big business focused on risk management has leaned to tame the beast and hide the smoking gun (that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud – just kidding) and limit the trail by enforcing discipline in retention and destruction policy that keeps only essential and uncompromising documents and purges the rest. The trail left by email accompanied with other documents like calendars, whether electronic or hardcopy, contracts, drafts of contracts and other document tell a story that few eyewitnesses could recall without reference.

[Shit Stain Remover]

for the record, the shit stain will defend any dispicable lying fuck of a repuglican for any dispicable act
the shit stain doesn't have morals or shame
just repuglican talking points
Posted by: freepatriot | November 14, 2007 at 14:26

Who could improve on freepatriot's assessment of SHIT STAIN JODI?

[emptywheel]

Jeff

That's when the Abramoff investigation took off. GT cooperated right away and handed over Abramoff's corporate emails, which included one from Susan Ralston referencing the RNC server.

Neil

I can think of two scenarios that would involve a private company. One, Feeney has been threatened with obstruction unless he hands over emails that DOJ has reason to believe once existed. So Feeney, having tried to destroy the emails, would have an incentive to reconstruct them to avoid any obstruction charge.

But there's also the Jefferson precedent. DOJ isn't going to be able to get Feeney's emails directly. So they're going to have to ask him for them, and have him hand them over directly. Which may well mean Feeney has to reconstruct the emails himself.

[William Ockham]

ew,

I probably should have pointed to Tim Griffin who was at the RNC from Sep 1999 until Feb 2001. In March 2001, he became special assistant to AAG Michael Chertoff (in the Criminal Division). In June 2002, Griffin left DOJ to go back to the RNC.

I guess the point I want to make is that the RNC email server was no secret in Washington D.C. You are absolutely correct that the big discovery was that the Ralston-Abramoff email exchanges showed a "guilty frame of mind". That is, Abramoff wanted to keep evidence of his illegal activities off the government servers.

[Jeff]

Got it, thanks.

[Neil]

That makes sense, Feeney alone could not give consent for DOJ agents to access his message store because of logistics - backups tapes of his message store would contain others congressmen and staffers' emailbox data. Everyone's interests are served if Feeney hires a trusted accredited? independent company to do the work supervised by congressional IT.

No doubt DOJ has asked him for everything related to "X". Would one be able to determine what they subpeonad in public court documents or does "cooperation" in this instance mean no subpeona has been served... yet?

[bmaz]

And really, those two are not mutually exclusive EW. Feeney has a problem brewing and he is scrambling; either to protect himself on the number and severity of charges, or to cooperate. Either way, the attempt to reconstruct emails may be at the urging of the DOJ.

[bmaz]

Of note, and I can't find a cite for it, but I believe the decision on suppression of evidence taken from Jefferson's office was recently affirmed. I would swear I just saw something on that in the last few days, but can't find it.

Also, from the "Gee, who'd have thunk it department", from TPM:

The House Democrats were set to hold a vote this Friday on whether to find White House officials in contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas related to the U.S. attorney firings investigation, The Politico reports. But no more. The vote, already delayed since July, has been pushed to December, at the earliest. The reason? The Politico quotes a "top House Democratic leadership aide": "[Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-NY)] has been saying that this week is not the time to do this, that it will step on our message on Iraq and FISA."

[Mary]

So bmaz, is the "Gee, who'd have thunk it department",
for the discovery that the Democrats actually think they have a message on Iraq and FISA?

I think he's probably right, though. It does interfere with the: Kumbayah, we are here to do Bush's bidding on Iraq and FISA moment if they actually had a vote on something other than Bush's priorities.

[bmaz]

Heh heh; I suppose that is, quite unfortunately, about right. You know, what is really infuriating is not just that the Democratic Leadersheep won't take action on anything resembling accountability for the Bush Administration, but they make anybody who really wants to do so (see: Kucinich, Dennis) out to be a total loon. It really is a dereliction of duty that borders on the criminal. Pelosi has, at least in the California media, been demanding Congressional hearings into the bridge strike/oil leak incident. I agree that is a heinous occurrence, but how can you say there is time for that (just happened a few days ago; hasn't even been time for a full investigation yet) but there is no time to protect the Constitution of the United States from what is arguably the biggest assault it has suffered in it's history?

[Mary]

Amen.

I think it's pretty incredible that they ran on an accountability and oversight platform and then they proffer up,

-no impeachment, no matter what
-no subpoena enforcement
-no response to blocking witnesses, including when the Pentagon refuses to produce a specific requested witnes
-no criminal charges
-no demand for release of information on illegal kidnapping and torture of el-Masri so his suit could have proceeded
-no breath wasted on any of the hundred at GITMO and tens of thousand in Iraq/Afghanistan being illegally held and abused
-no steps taken to end the Iraq war
-no steps taken to shore up the Afghanistan position
-no ...

Well, Hugh's lists are proof that you can't be a good scrivener for the Republicans and Democrats of the last 6 years if you have any arthritis in your fingers, so I'll stop.

[Mary]

'nother OT - Scott Horton, in the context of examining the Nisour Square killings, has a great piece up on how the Bush administration has handled high profile prosecutions that it really didn't want to prosecute.

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001669

Unfortunately, the MO rings true for so many different areas. Let a little minimal progress seem to exist to placate, then wait for things to go stale enough that the peasants take their pitchforks and go home and the aristrocrats in the castle can finish their dinners.

[bmaz]

Mary - I have been gearing up for a trial that started this morning (thankfully, settled in the first hour); and have been a total space cadet on time lately. Sometime in the last few days, may even have been yesterday, there was an article in the NYT about the FBI investigation of Nissour Square. The article painted a happy face of all the progress; I saw nothing but absolute bullshit preparing the ground for doing nothing.

Ah, it was yesterday. nolo mentioned the article and here is the substance to my response. "I read the article on this in the Times and found the conclusions contained therein on the part of the FBI to be amazing, sloppy and questionable. How they came to conclude that three of the killings were justified is beyond me. The statements of Democratic Rep. Price were also abhorrent. I am glad they are doing something, but I don't like what they are doing if this is representative."

[bmaz]

Oops, here is link for the NYT article on Nissour Square.

[BlueStateRedhead]

EPU'ed from earlier thread on throwning AGAG under the bus.

"When Bush praised Gonzales as a man of integrity and decency, Justice Department employees responded with sustained applause. It got even louder moments later after Mukasey took the oath, formally ending the Gonzales chapter in the agency's history."

End of day obtuseness, perhaps but my parsing of EW's parsing of Redshift's parsing of the AP article seems to mean that they applauded Bush's praise for Gonzales knowing that they would be given the opportunity to applaud Mukasey even harder as a sign of their relief that Gonzo is Gonzo. Given that this was a ritual, and the essence of ritual is to be predictable because it repeats earlier ritual, it makes sense that they knew what was coming next. But in the end they still affirmed that praise with sustained applause. IMHO, to make that argument stick, they would have needed to sit on their hands. Hard to do with the big bosses watching, admittedly. But still I have a nagging doubt. Anyone want to put it to rest?

[BlueStateRedhead]

End of day frustration is causing me to speak out. Hope I am not violating some rule of the blog unknown to me.

Can we do to Jodi what TPM -Muckrakerdid to her evil parallel, Jake D. ?
I always wondered about both name's beginning with J.

You can look it up in Josh's archive.

In the meantime, please don't feed the troll.

[BlueStateRedhead]

Sorry. That's both names, not name's. Same reason as previous comment.

[bmaz]

BSR - Its not that simple; we must think of Freepatriot. I would hate to deny him his chosen profession.....

[Mad Dogs]

OT, but I thought it telling - An AP article via ArmsControlWonk - Intel Chief Blasts 'Cherry Picked' Intel:

"National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said Tuesday he would resign if administration officials mischaracterized or "cherry-picked" intelligence to support their own political agenda.

"If it were cherry-picked in an inappropriate way, then for me, that's a professional obligation to object, and I would submit my resignation," McConnell told reporters."

Seems that Mikey is of the belief that one can "cherry-pick" in an appropriate way.

[eyesonthestreet]

Maybe you are all versed in the ways of servers, ISP's, domain names and the like. I tried googling gwb43.com, and only found one article that sheds any light on the "operation" of that domain name,

http://trustme.com/story.php?title=secret-White-House-comunication-system

I don't know if I can "trust" this information, anyone know?

[bmaz]

Mad Dogs - So are we to expect McConnell's resignation tomorrow?

[P J Evans]

bmaz @ 16:17

I went off and let Nancy know that if they have time to investigate the ship hitting the bumper on the bridge (which they now are saying may have been non-functioning radar on the ship), they have time to issue those contempt subpoenas and investigate those potentially-impeachable acts of Shrub and Darth. All they'd really have to do is work a few more hours a week. And isn't that why she was so happy to have a majority?

[Mary]

the belief that one can "cherry-pick" in an approprate way

LOL - that was my exact reaction when I read that far, so I had to laugh out loud when you laid it out MadDodgs.

bmaz How they came to conclude that three of the killings were justified is beyond me. This is pretty much beyond me too. As it comes out, they had already dropped off the person they were supposed to protect. No civilians fired on them. Cars were well back. The Iraqi policeman on the scene was certain enough that the car with the mother and son was not a threat that he had gone towards it when they killed the son, to help the grieving mother - - at least, until they melted her into her son.

All I can tell as a point of differentiation is that the three killings/two incidents involved people who were not actively running away from them at the time they were slaughtered.

Nothing lays out how the "procedures" of throwing bottles, firing at the ground, etc. were followed prior to commencing the killings.

I also sighed over the quote I saw, from an FBI investigator saying they wouldn't exactly call it a massacre, but maybe calling it an unwarranted shooting was a little light.

My guess was that he wasn't from Boston.

[William Ockham]

eyes,

The factual information in that article is spot on. The speculation seems a little over the top, but I've underestimated the RNC before.

[Mary]

settled in the first hour

Send some of that mojo this way, will ya?

[bmaz]

PJ - Excellent! I will do the same. Thank you.

Mary - Exactly. Furthermore, I recall stories from multiple sources previously that the "white car" only lurched forward AFTER they had shot the driver and his foot apparently hit the gas pedal (or fell off the brake); at any rate that action was a result of the shooting, NOT a cause. This investigation sure is shaping up to be pure BS if the NYT story is any indication.

[Mad Dogs]

My further take on the info from the AP article via ArmsControlWonk - Intel Chief Blasts 'Cherry Picked' Intel:

"McConnell also said a new national intelligence estimate on Iran should be complete in about a month, but its key findings will not be released publicly. He says doing so could alert Iran to its intelligence vulnerabilities."

Mikey got the word from Deadeye Cheney: "If you intel types won't allow us to inappropriately "cherry-pick", then we'd better keep the Iran NIE classified so the Congress and the public won't know we're lying again to go to war. You get my drift Mikey? No talking or you sleep with the fishes."

[floyd]

Wheel....

I don't get it, I just don't. I'd rather read you twice, than anything else on the web once. You write like...talking. Don't ever go.

Can I have a here, here.

[Neil]

massacre: intentional killing of
a considerable number of human beings
under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

Apparently, the FBI guy doesn't think the shooting passed the "considerable number" test. In obsolete usage "massacre" meant murder. Here are some choice words to describe the event the FBI guy might not take issue with.

butchery or carnage: the promiscuous slaughter of
many who can not make resistance, or much resistance

[Neil]

Hear hear floyd, sehr richtig!!

[bmaz]

Floyd - I am pretty sure EW knows exactly what exalted esteem we hold her in. The unique and wonderful thing here is that most all of the commenters are passionate wonks as opposed to rah-rah types; we would rather get down to business (and occasionally goof off or delve into sports) than waste time with excessive idolatry. But, nevertheless, I certainly second your feelings.

Neil - There are 17 quite unnecessarily dead roses by any other name. I also was kind of taken aback by the shameless exercise in semantics (among the other previously described substantive grounds).

[tryggth]

He says doing so could alert Iran to its intelligence vulnerabilities

Those vulnerabilities are... they are sitting on a shit load of oil (and gas) and apparently don't have the analytic where-with-all to understand that they just have to keep a civil world running. Let the inspectors in. Defer on the nuke power plan for awhile. Just sit and wait.

[SqueakyRat]

I delete emails. Doesn't everybody?

[JohnLopresti]

I located an interestingly tedious deposition on the Melanie Stone site October 26, 2007 in which a plodding procurator is listening to a DoJ attorney trying to probe the judge's ignorance of backup technology, and crew's attorney patiently begins the tour in lay terms, though I wonder if by page 37 the idea of imaging will emerge. Clearly, crew is working to the center of the illicit email liberties in these cases, primarily the US attorney purges, the latter, in my search of my own archive including the early Cunningham emailing in the Pacific Island lobbying matter; this 'report' may still exist.

I, too found the background unearthing names like Griffin and Goodling, but also the chronology of one of the early email buffs' employments, Manny Miranda transects some of this timeline, as well, going from Hatch's service in 2002 to Frist's in 2003, then to Miranda's cause celebre, assuring conservatives continued to lead the nominations to the federal bench in 2005. Frist; nominations. It was bizarre to review Hatch's praise of Griffin now after so much of the scandal has become news.
Another item on the parallel timelines would be the 2007 article Jesselyn Radack wrote about disappearing emails at the time she was fired for being too whistleblowerish about the interrogation her client underwent in December 2001, though the retrospect affords only vague time specificity in that article.

[bmaz]

John Lopresti - Not to mention Hatch shepherding in Brett Tolman as USA for Utah. Tolman, the one who surreptitiously slipped in the AG power to appoint USAs (supposedly under Specter's nose) in the first place.

[JohnLopresti]

The crew depo October 2007 is there. I appreciate the FL vector, for some homework over the next few days.

[JohnLopresti]

bmaz, There were some laws not actually laws that Scotus might have a lark parsing, if someone took the time to develop the due process concept for those twelve august individuals. Balkin had an acerbic post at the time of one of the revised appropriations post ipso facto, which was not actually a law either. Some of my notes mention the UT USA, as well, but so far my concerns primarily ranging over the early Bush2 years are in the environment field, the PEER site has volumes about early whistleblower documenting the privatization of forests and lands; plus that truculent discussion of Bloch in 2003 terms. A lot of NGOs halted much of the enterprising open space management Republican style in its tracks, eventually, though I was sad to see the bull dazers making roads across the SanPedro; maybe a wier would be better.

[JohnLopresti]

I keep getting back to the nominations surge in 2005; though. Something about Leahy's writing about the hustle to autorenominate Haynes would make me put that nomination and the other waves of nominees on a checklist for pungent emails; i.e., I think some of the early parties involved probably were executing the beginnings of a single strategy to stay extraarchival.

[sojourner]

BlueStateRedhead | November 14, 2007 at 17:39

I went back to look but was unable to see what you were referencing. I used to see Jake D's comments over there and at other places. What did Josh do, just out of curiousity?

[P J Evans]

sojourner

JakeD still posts, although it's been banned (I think more than once).

[seamus]

Josh banned Jake D but due to the number of different IP's that the Jake D troll(s) uses the banning is unenforceable.

[Jodi]

mark bowwell,

my assumtions are given in emptywheel's initial post where she speaks of him spending $90,000 to (my own words) demonstrate good faith. i.e. "The payments were for helping Feeney "voluntarily cooperate" with federal prosecutors,"

As for your question about whether I "enjoy" being called names by the potty mouths on this forum, the answer is "no." But if you ask a similar question such as "does it bother you?" The answer is also also "no." If you ask another question such as "are you surprised about it?" the answer is again "no.

[sojourner]

For persons who abuse a blog to harass others anonymously, that is akin to crank phone calls. The solution? Publish the IP addresses and names of the owners of those IPs. Eventually, a pattern will come out that reveals who the crank is, or the owners will get tired of the complaints and track the person down. That would be particularly interesting if the person is doing it from a workplace.

There is nothing wrong with good, honest, open debate. Doing a drive-by to disrupt what others are trying to express or divert attention is akin to interrupting others.

[mark boswell]

JODI - I'll see your bowell movement and raise you a potty mouth! You did not answer the question. Emptywheel assumes that Feeney is reconstructing e-mails by legal mandate, e-mails like those of Bush, Rove, et al., that have been intentionally destroyed in order to conceal illegalities and other skullduggeries. It does not take a rocket science to make that asumption. If you are assumming otherwise, then you are either once again: incredibly naive or a paid troll! Answer the question or go back to monica goodling's coffee shop...

[Jodi]

mark boswell,

well it is plain to see where you mind is.

But back to the subject. Feeney is trying to "demonstrate good faith."

No legal mandate is in evidence, though of course there is always pressure when you have the prosecutors on your case.

[Heralnj]

Herald forever!

[Omniis]

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

[Nabe]

respect