I’m sure that the White House is more saddened than most that Don Imus is gone because, now, the focus is back on them. The “Attorneygate” madness has more twists and turns than a snake and, the longer it goes on, the worse it looks.

You might have heard by now that some emails related to the attorney firings were sent out on the Republican National Committee’s email system. The RNC is the political arm of the Republican Party.

Why is this a big deal? Follow me for a minute.

A few years back, the RNC had the idea to provide laptops to some in the White House. The story goes that they were issued to certain staff so that, if they needed to conduct RNC business, like sending emails, they could do so without using U.S. government resources to do so. In all honesty, this would be a sensible thing to do. However, it appears that the RNC email system was, instead, used as a backdoor communication channel to avoid scrutiny. It is believed that information regarding the attorney firing was sent back on forth on the RNC email system because they thought that these emails could not be subpoenaed by Congress. However, they were wrong and Congress is now asking for the emails.

But, alas, there is one more twist. The RNC is now saying the emails have been deleted. Now, as a person who has worked in Information Technology for about a decade, I find it very hard to believe. I could go into how emails travel from server to server, leaving a trail. I could go into how forensic work could be done on hard drives to retrieve data (the Feds do it all the time in cases in which the accused thought they had deleted data from a hard drive). I could go into how some internet service providers keep the emails that go out over their systems. But, I won’t.

Let’s just suffice it say that in order to delete all these emails, it would take a great, concerted effort. You would have to delete them from every server and every computer to which the email has been sent.

However, the RNC is expecting the Congress and the public to believe that all the emails that went out over their systems prior to 2005 are gone forever. Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has likened this to the kid who says “the dog ate my homework” and draws a comparison of this to the infamous “missing 18 minutes” from the Nixon tapes which presumably contained some very damning evidence. I is believe by some in Congress that these emails, which could number in the millions, contain some very damaging evidence to the Bush Administration.

But, not lost in any of this should be the following — deleting these emails is illegal. Well, to be more clear, all emails relating to White House business are to be preserved. This means that, for one, emails regarding White House business should not be sent out over outside systems, particularly one on which the preservation of these emails could not be guaranteed. By putting it on a system where they could be “deleted” makes the situation appear that much worse because it appears that the ability to delete emails may have been the reason the RNC systems were used.

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 essentially states that records, including communications inside the White House are public property and are to be archived properly and securely. There are, obviously, things such as issue of national security and certain areas of executive privilege that have to be considered but, these emails fall outside of that domain. Therefore, it was incumbent upon those in the White House to 1) use the official White House system for conducting offical business or, at least, business that was carried out in their capacities as White House officials and 2) to properly preserve these records. By ignoring both, they are in violation of the law.

However, some in Congress believe that these are not “lost” but, instead, they believe that the information contained in these emails is so bad that the RNC simply does not want to turn them over.

Well, the missing 18 minutes on the Nixon tapes couldn’t stop articles of impeachment from being drawn up so, I don’t think that these missing emails will save the job of Alberto Gonzalez and, possibly, that of Karl Rove.

The Bush administration may very well go down as one of the most scandal-ridden presidential administrations in U.S. history. This is a clear example of why.

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