More on the "missing" White House email

Glenn Greenwald has an extensive rundown on the administration's long history of, shall we say, sloppy record-keeping (as opposed to an intentional effort to destroy evidence).

One great quote from attorney Anonymous Liberal:

As an attorney who deals with subpoenas and requests for electronic documents on a regular basis, I can tell you that if a private entity--particularly one subject to legally mandated record keeping requirements--were to inform government investigators seeking such documents that they had been "mishandled" and were now "lost," that entity would immediately find itself in a world of hurt and would be lucky if it survived the aftermath.

No amount of talking would be enough to convince the authorities that there was an innocent explanation for the missing documents. They would be absolutely convinced that the "mishandled" documents were intentionally destroyed in order to cover up wrongdoing.

Greenwald's account should be read in full, especially by those who might be tempted to give the White House the benefit of the doubt.

"Missing" White House email

Co-incidence does not equal causation, or at least it doesn't have to.

Neither, however, does co-incidence eliminate causality.

Example: the fact that the White House has just discovered that it had "lost" thousands of emails which it is required to record may just happen to co-incide with congressional demands that it produce those emails.

My reaction is best summed up in those two unique positive words that miraculously combine to produce a negative.

Yeah, right.

But regardless the potential outcomes for the White House are not co-incidental.

As any IT person will tell you, emails that are merely "deleted" are far from irrecoverable, copies remain both on the sender's computer, the recipient's computer, and quite possibly on the computer used as the network server.

So, under normal circumstances all the emails should be recoverable.

But, as any IT person could also tell you, emails can be fully erased, IF you take special measures to eliminate them, measures beyond a simple monthly delete protocol.

So, either the White House email eventually will be recovered, or their senders AND recipients will have taken purposeful measures to fully erase them in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Neither outcome will paint a pretty picture.