The Progress Report:

ADMINISTRATION

The Fall Of The Bush Empire

"If there’s one empire I want built, it's the George Bush empire," said former Bush adviser and Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman in 2005 [One Party Country, p. 102]. In this effort to spawn an empire in the federal government, the White House and the RNC have opened up unprecedented lines of communications and have potentially violated federal law in doing so. In a recent investigation into the Bush administration's use and destruction of e-mails from RNC accounts, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) found there may be "extensive" violations of the Presidential Records Act, which stipulates that the President take "all steps as may be necessary to assure" that the activities of the White House "are adequately documented." "This should be a matter of grave concern for anyone who values open government and the preservation of an accurate historical record," said Waxman. Also under investigation is the White House's violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan political use of federal government property. The Oversight Committee uncovered serious abuses of both laws by the White House in order to secure electoral victories.

REGULAR UNDERESTIMATION: The White House has consistently understated the extent of its RNC e-mail usage. On March 27, 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a “handful" of White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. In April, the White House's estimate rose to 50 staffers since 2001. In its investigation, the Oversight Committee learned that at least 88 top White House officials used RNC e-mail accounts. "The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President’s senior adviser; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President." These e-mail accounts were heavily used by the administration officials for "official purposes," such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies. Rove averaged "more than 100 e-mails sent or received each weekday" and used over half of e-mail communications from his RNC account (75,374) to communicate with government officials with ".gov" e-mail accounts, "indicat[ing] that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts to conduct official business."

E-MAIL EVASION: Ignoring the Presidential Records Act, the RNC systematically destroyed "potentially hundreds of thousands" of e-mails. "One indication of the scale of the loss of White House e-mail is the fact that the RNC has retained no e-mail messages whatsoever for 51 of the 88 White House officials with RNC e-mail accounts." According to Rove's former executive assistant, Susan Ralston, Mehlman used his e-mail account "frequently, daily," but the RNC "has not retained a single e-mail to or from Mr. Mehlman during his period as White House Political Director." "The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003." Of the 37 officials for whom the RNC has retained e-mails, only 15 have e-mail records from before 2006, and, of those, "seven have virtually no e-mails dating to those earlier years." The destruction of RNC e-mails is noteworthy because of their use in a multitude of scandals plaguing the White House. In communicating with the General Services Administration about a potentially illegal PowerPoint presentation, Rove deputy Scott Jennings used a "gwb43.com" e-mail account. Ralston invited two lobbyists working for Jack Abramoff to use her RNC e-mail account to avoid "security issues" with the White House e-mail system. Several White House officials used similar e-mail accounts in the U.S. attorneys scandal.

AGENCY INVASION: Waxman's investigation has uncovered more evidence of the White House's politicization of federal agencies, raising concerns about potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits political interference in the federal government's work. In her deposition before the committee, Ralston said that Rove's PowerPoint, which briefed federal agency employees on how to secure GOP electoral victories, was a "regular occurrence." During his first few years in office, Ralston stated that "[Rove] gave it, possibly, at least once to each of the...major Cabinet agencies." Ralston said that Rove was involved in the editing of the presentation prior to its delivery and "sometimes...got information from the RNC" to create the presentations. She stated that the formation and drafts of the PowerPoint presentation was "always done" on political e-mail accounts, despite the presentation originating from the White House Office of Political Affairs. Ralston also confirmed that the PowerPoints were "more frequent[ly]" given prior to major elections, "laying out their best estimate of how races might fall, what the target States are," suggesting overtly partisan motives. The Office of Special Counsel, which earlier found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act by allowing one such political briefing to take place at her agency, is now expanding its investigation to cover nearly 20 administration agencies for possible Hatch Act violations.

ROVE'S EMPIRE: Several agencies contacted by the House Oversight Committee have indicated they "have preserved official communications that were destroyed by the RNC," but others have even resisted the investigation. The White House's attempts to inject partisan overtones into federal agencies has become a tradition in the Bush administration. In 2005, Mehlman outlined the White House's strategy of utilizing government resources for partisan gain: "One of the things that can happen in Washington when you work in an agency is that you forget who sent you there. And it's important to remind people that you're George Bush people" [One Party Country, p. 102]. With that imperial partisanship in mind, the White House has briefed employees on GOP strategy throughout the federal government, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Commerce Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Interior Department, and even NASA. Said one Interior Department official: "We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results" (One Party Country, p. 103).