Leahy unloads

The latest twist in the ongoing US Attorney firing scandal is the revelation that some White House staffers were using email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee. This may not sound like a big deal except that these accounts may have been used to communicate information regarding those firings and the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to see them. When the Committee requested the emails sent from the suspect accounts, the White House claimed that the emails were accidentally deleted. I don’t buy that for a minute, and thankfully, neither does Senator Patrick Leahy. From the AP:

President Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy suggested Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.

“They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said there is no effort to keep the e-mails under wraps, and that the counsel's office is doing everything it can to find any that were lost.

"The purpose of our review is to make every reasonable effort to recover potentially lost e-mails, and that is why we've been in contact with forensic experts," he said.

Leahy scoffed.

"I've got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get 'em for them," he told reporters later.

Leahy is pissed. He is a very serious guy and one not to be trifled with when it comes to this sort of business. He also thinks, probably correctly, that the Administration is lying to him. That almost guarantees a full investigation. Remember, the cover up is usually worse than the crime. Think Watergate. This just got interesting...