With the revelation that millions of illegal emails have been either accidentally or willfully destroyed by the Bush administration, a bit of reiteration is in order.
The very existence of the emails themselves is a crime under federal law. So too is their subsequent destruction. Unless federal courts are going to begin holding that executive privilege can be used to deliberately withhold evidence of a crime, I do not see how it is possible that the claims of privilege will stand. I understand that there are competing interests involved, but I simply do not see how they will outweigh the simple fact that the emails themselves are evidence of criminal activity.
The Hatch Act requires government officials separate official business from the work of party building and campaigning. The emails in question were sent using the servers of a political party. They unambiguously fall into the second category of business, not the first. To uphold claims of executive privilege over such emails, you would have to completely ignore the Hatch Act. Does anyone really believe that likely? Really?
What am I missing here?
UPDATE: And while we're on the subject of lawbreaking, be sure to catch this follow-up report on impact of Bush's signing statements on the actions of the executive branch.
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