A lot of discussion has been brewing over the revelation that people like Karl Rove use a email address from the RNC as compared to the whitehouse.gov email address assigned to all employees. The biggest question lies within the possible violation of the presidential records act. CREW has been following this closely:

Washington, DC – In light of e-mails released by the House Judiciary Committee this week in response to the on-going U.S. Attorney firing scandal, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter today to Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), asking for an investigation into whether the White House has violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

[SNIP]

CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.

CREW currently is involved in several lawsuits challenging other improper and illegal record keeping practices of the Bush administration. In this matter, CREW cannot bring a lawsuit challenging the White House on its compliance with the PRA because of a legal precedent that relies on presidents to honor the mandatory record-keeping practices, with no judicial review.

Now Henry Waxman is getting into this debate and has told the White House and RNC not to destroy any emails (via Think Progress):

The e-mails of White House officials maintained on RNC e-mail accounts may be relevant to multiple congressional investigations. For this reason, the Committee directs you to preserve all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under your control.

In addition, the Committee requests that you or your designee meet with Committee staff during the week of April 2,2007, to discuss the following five matters:

– Who has access to the e-mail accounts maintained by the RNC; […]

– What steps have been taken to preserve the e-mail accounts maintained by the RNC that have been used by White House officials;

– What assurance can the RNC provide the Committee that no e-mails involving official White House business have been destroyed or altered.

This isn’t limited to the White House nor the RNC. A commenter on Firedoglake pointed this out yesterday:

why are DOJ employees using Yahoo email addy?

That is a very good question and one that raises alarms of not only national security, but also accountability in our government. I am sure there is laws being violated by this practice, and at the very least policy violations. So why is the Bush government so lax on their use of emails? Hopefully Henry will be able to find out.