Rep. Issa eyes Google in investigating White House e-mail abuses

Jonathan Strong
The Daily Caller
7/12/10

Top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, is broadening the scope of his investigation into technology-related ethics and legal problems for the White House to include Google – a company in possession of personal e-mails of many White House aides.

In a July 9 letter, Issa asks Google to outline how it is storing the personal e-mails of key Obama administration officials and how the Mountain View, Calif., company plans to respond to federal subpoenas.

Republicans are threatening to take control of the House in November’s midterm elections, which would give Issa the authority to demand Google hand over the e-mails of White House aides.

That approach would likely be a last resort to working with the White House to discover whether the Obama administration is avoiding e-mail archiving requirements under federal law.

A Google spokeswoman said Monday, “We received Congressman Issa’s letter and we look forward to answering the Committee’s questions.”

Issa’s letter is his latest salvo in an ongoing campaign to uncover the truth about mounting evidence the Obama White House has flouted disclosure and archiving requirements under federal law.

At issue most recently are hundreds of meetings at a Caribou Coffee close to the White House between high-ranking administration officials and top K Street lobbyists. The meetings were reported by the New York Times on June 24.

The Times reported that the coffee-house lobbyist meetings were often initiated with e-mails from White House aides’ personal e-mail accounts – bypassing an archiving system – and appear geared towards hiding the meetings from being disclosed in a published list of visitors to the White House.

At issue legally is whether administration officials are conducting “official business” outside of record-keeping requirements in federal law. At issue ethically is an apparent attempt to hide from disclosure hundreds of lobbyist contacts by a White House that pledged to be the most transparent in history.

The article continues at The Daily Caller.

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