Oh, Monica, Monica, Monica. I shake my head in sorrow. You should have skipped Regent and the law degree and gone someplace where they taught history. Recent American history for example. Like the Watergate story.
You, dear reader, or I may delete a hundred emails a day. Employees of the Justice Department operate under somewhat different rules. So when one Monica wrote (we don’t know at this point if it was on her .gov email or that nasty gwb43.com one) looked suspicious to several people scanning the Friday Document Dump, including our own scarshapedstar, it was because he noted her use of the word “friendlies.” Now it turns out there were other words of interest in this same mail as well.
These were found, and Monica got busted, by a party with the excellent name of Anonymous Liberal, who happens to be a lawyer too. She/he makes clear just why Monica is now well and truly screwed, blued and tattooed: the words, in bold even, on her email of Feb. 12 2007, Please delete prior versions.
As AnonLib puts it:
As a litigator, I can tell you, that’s a real no-no. You never instruct people to delete documents that are relevant to a pending investigation. Never. That’s true even when the investigating body hasn’t yet got around to requesting those documents. It smacks of obstruction. Indeed, the Obstruction of Congress statute, 18 U.S.C § 1505, specifically prohibits any attempts to obstruct “the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress.” The penalty is up to 5 years in prison.
From Firedoglake comes a thought which explains why this is today’s entry in the Saga of gwb43.com:
Suddenly, all those e-mails in the custody of the RNC take on an even more urgent context — because there may well be a number of documents which have been deleted from the DoJ included in the e-mail stream in and out of the White House political shop which were sent back and forth through the RNC servers.And, in the context of a potential attempt to obstruct an ongoing Congressional investigation and, now, a very real question of criminal obstruction? Well, that claim of executive privilege just lost a whole lot of lustre, didn’t it?
Finally, from a comment in a dKos diary on the subject we get this useful item:
“CRS Report 95-464A is titled, “Investigative Oversight: An Introduction to the Law, Practice and Procedure of Congressional Inquiry”, and has been referenced by many other oversight documents and reports since it was issued. There is an online copy here. It makes for most interesting reading.”
Heh, indeedy as the saying goes.
Miss Goodling, dear child, I know being unemployed is stressful, and under investigation by a Congressional committee to which you have already been just a tad snooty even more so. But take time out of your busy schedule, cutting back on your prayer life even if need be, and look up the names “Elliot Richardson” and “Archibald Cox.” The story is an interesting one, you might even find it inspirational.
Front page
Emails, the Internet and the Expectation of Privacy
It appears the Bush Administration has argued in court that a VoIP user, because it goes over the Internet as packets, has no expectation of privacy, therefore can be wiretapped without a court order. (I wonder if they have any idea how cell phones and land lines transmit data.)
It is a short step to the inclusion of emails, if it already hasn’t been argued such. So, if people in the White House use the Internet for email and have no expectation of privacy then how can it be privileged.
The logical equivalent would be a discussion with your lawyer from opposite sides of a crowded stadium thru bullhorns. …if you buy their argument.
Let me say that I totally disagree with this. And hope SCOTUS will make VoIP and emails subject to USC Title 18, 251x. But in the meantime and knowing the current SCOTUS, it is likely to agree with the Administration. We should use it against them. You can’t have it both ways.
Ouch, DGOQ, I see your point but...
we too cannot have it both ways. If we use the argument you suggest, and are successful at it, then it becomes part of legal history and precedent and all that. We would be helping to solidify into permanence the very thing we are anxious to consign to the dustbin of the history of tyranny.
And besides, if we use it, then after we get back in power we retroactively restore the privacy rights you cite….wouldn’t that require anybody convicted by the use of the now-illegally-obtained evidence to be let go? Not a lawyer myself but that’s sure my understanding of the matter.
Besides…bad karma. Very bad. I think their crimes are sufficiently numerous and egregious that we can get ’em with good old fashioned investigative work, turning one rat against another, creative use of immunity, etc.
Speaking of which, I forgot to mention it in the Goodling email story above, but the discovery of this “delete prior versions” email, which is now on public record, seems to me to allow the Waxman committee’s offer of immunity to Goodwin to be revoked posthaste. As best I remember the offer was extended but never formally accepted. Heh heh indeed x 2. :)
The legal basis for surveilling packets is not clear
As we said, back in January of 2006 (how long ago that seems).
Therefore, we can assume that Bush is doing whatever the Fuck
he wants, eh?
Excellent point on revoking immunity, Xan. I hope a Waxman staffer is reading this…
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
More Emails, Internet, Privacy and Monica
I meant the Administration can’t have it both ways. If they go to court and argue as they previously did, then the emails will probably not be covered by privilege. And if the argue the privilege obtains over the Internet, then by logical reasoning it will extend to email. Then the argument becomes that the RNC emails aren’t privileged because they aren’t related to National Security and/or the President is not an addressee. And as a firm believer in Karma, this one falls in their court.
There is little operational difference between multiplexing and packets. The argument that anyone can open a packet is the same as anyone can tap a phone line. The wiretap law was not written because phones can’t be bugged, it was written because they can. It is still easier, for me, to bug a phone or a headset rather than trying capture the packets. It’s always possible to bug a phone, any phone, it’s the law and hopefully the courts that make it illegal.
Monica Goodling did not hire one of her alums to defend her. She got a real lawyer. And limited immunity is a very sharp double edged sword. The “delete old copies” is probably covered. What is not covered is lying. If they catch her is a lie, then she loses the immunity. I would love to read her proffer. She is a lawyer whose experience seems to be limited to situations where she was in control or others who sided with her were in control.
Operational difference doesn't equal legal difference
I agree that ultimately voice and data are all about, if not bits for an analog phone, then electrical impulses.
But the law for voice developed under a regimen of wiretapping. Whether that law applies to packets is yet to be determined IMHO.
Further, the administration consistently says it monitors only international commmunications — but for these guys, I’d say that if a single packet took a hop out of the country, that’s international. (Or, given these guys, could reasonably be claimed to have done so.)
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
I think we've gone a bit overboard here -
In her email, Monica referred to prior versions of the DOCS. Not the emails. It is perfectly acceptable to eliminate prior versions of documents so as to not end up with conflicting versions. It’s an everybody-on-the-same-page thing.
Monica even refers to use-by date for the current set of docs.
I don’t think this is a smoking gun.
Jake
But Jake, look at what these docs were about
This is not an artist, an ad director, a photographer and a dress designer coordinating updated versions of the spring fashion campaign at Macys because one final version has to go to the printer on Wednesday. This was about pulling together the assorted
liesspins and claims about the US Attorney firings—and being careful to order the elimination of evidence that they are making these claims up as they go along by deleting the earlier sets ofon-the-fly horseshitcontradictory claims.That seems to put it more in the category of rounding up a gang suspected of robbing a bank. Then you conveeeeniently put all the gang members in the same holding cell and they hasten to get their stories straight: gang leader Tony can tell Dave to back up Bill’s alibi of being at Ted’s party with Frank, Ernest and Bob, where Lucy, Tracy and Kathleen were all giving free samples of the world’s best blowjob so they definitely remember the occasion—and that it was on Thursday night, not Saturday, so they definitely could not have been knocking over the First National Bank at the same time, now could they?
This I believe is called something along the lines of “facilitating a conspiracy to obstruct justice” at the very least. And has the added advantage of following another one of the Primo Rules of Lying: when suspected of a very grave offense, try to steer the questioner to evidence implicating you in a different, lesser crime rather than claim simon-pure innocence of anything at all. And AnonymousLiberal, the lawyer, seems to take it the same way, with the added advantage of citing US Code rather than just-made-up stories about bank robbers and blow jobs.
Of course you could be right and this “delete earlier versions” is completely defensible or else irrelevant. But that’s what Monica’s gonna claim anyway so I see no reason for us here in the Defenders of Constitutionalism camp to take her side of the argument. :)
I'm just being an anchor to reality here, Xan
There is little doubt that the docs themselves, and the emails surrounding them, would paint a picture of subversion of Justice, were we to see the entire train of communications. None the less, the “delete” comment refers to prior versions of docs, not emails.
And I did feel bad for defending Monica, but only for a second. After all, we are interested in truth first, and only secondarily in facts that support our preferred world view? Right? :)
Also, Monica appears to refer to an ongoing series of docs that reflect current job openings, however those job openings occur. Is that not also a perfectly legitimate reason for actively seeking to keep current docs on the table, not old ones that only confuse the conspirators?
Jake
Surely obstruction of justice doesn't depend on the type of doc?
Deletion is deletion, is it not? I thinmk that’s Xan’s point.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
LB, deleting old docs
so as to not have multiple versions, all but the last of which is innacurate, is common sense in dealing with multiple people providing content input as well as in dealing with multiple users.
If the doc is part of an email, then a question certainly arises as just exactly what “delete” means. If it means deleting the email, that’s bad. If it means deleting the copy on your hard drive, that’s not bad.
So, no, deletion is not deletion.
Jake
Email Attachments, Monica
Jake is correct, sort of. Since the docs were attachments to an email, copies of the docs would be downloaded but the docs will still be attached to the email. The earlier versions of the docs would likely be overwritten by the new version.
However, the email still contains the attachments, as do previous emails with the earlier attachments. I do not know if the attachments were included in the document dump but should have been.
As I said earlier, Monica’s problems arise if she lies, which could not only result in her loss of immunity, but get her charged with perjury and obstruction as well as the underlying crimes. She probably would have been better off not trying to use the 5th amendment. It appears she is using it to avoid questions about other’s actions. I think she is in terrible legal jeopardy. The question is whether she is a martyr.
I hope not.