GWB43.com and the Presidential Records Act

News Type: Event — Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:15 PM EDT

politics, bush, white-house, scandal, snow, records, attorneys, gonzalez, jennings, gwb43, hazy-memories

So, like many scandals that we never really understood or cared to know about, the attorney firing scandal of the White House has garnered enough media attention to beat out FOXs pleas for Scooter's pardoning.
Much email correspondence has been released in regards to the firings, revealing a long-known plan of removing attorneys that were not 'team players'.
Once the emails were released it became obvious the Bush administration was being deceiving when they said they had no part in it. They had a bit of a tough time keeping all their stories together. Not really surprising, they blamed it on Miers, and now it turns out they're full of it.
As White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said:

"At this juncture, people have hazy memories."

I love it when the so-called brilliant people running our country suddenly develop amnesia.

Anyway, among the released emails, many astute observers (aka, those who can read) noticed they came from email addresses with a domain of gwb43.com.
What is gwb43.com?
Well, the domain happens to be owned by none other than the Republican National Committee.
Which means White House staffers were using RNC means to conduct official White House business. As the a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/newsrelease.php?view=214">Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics show, this is a violation of the Presidential Records Act:

In light of e-mails released by the House Judiciary Committee this week in response to the on-going U.S. Attorney firing scandal, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter today ... for an investigation into whether the White House has violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

This raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure.

I'm attempted to use sarcasm and cynicism and say "NO WAY! Deliberately avoid responsibilties?!" But I'll digress...

Anyway, I really want to know how others feel about gwb43.com (its been taken down as far as I can find). Does anyone remember when Gore got in trouble for using his cell phone for party business? At the very least, its unethical. At the most, its criminal. Neither of which is any longer surprising, but I want to get a feel for opinions out there.

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3.5

{"commentId":602286,"authorDomain":"uspolitics"}

Kathy Gill

Good job! Here's a screenshot of the Whois record - if anyone has doubts about the ownership of the server. Note it was set up prior to the 2004 election season -- probably *for* the election.

{"commentId":602286,"threadId":"87265","contentId":"622414","authorDomain":"uspolitics"}

1 vote

#1 - Thu Mar 22, 2007 5:55 PM EDT

{"commentId":604197,"authorDomain":"indecent"}

indecent

Thanks for that! Its helpful since they took down the page. I couldnt find a cache of it, either.

{"commentId":604197,"threadId":"87265","contentId":"622414","authorDomain":"indecent"}

#1.1 - Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:10 PM EDT

{"commentId":604785,"authorDomain":"uspolitics"}

Kathy Gill

And here's my post at About.com. :)

{"commentId":604785,"threadId":"87265","contentId":"622414","authorDomain":"uspolitics"}

1 vote

#2 - Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:19 PM EDT

{"commentId":611426,"authorDomain":"lele"}

Leah M

Too bad this only had a blip on the front page when you wrote it. Check out this blog where people have tried to find out all about the companies hosting the gwb43.com and other domain names involved. It's interesting.

{"commentId":611426,"threadId":"87265","contentId":"622414","authorDomain":"lele"}

#3 - Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:40 PM EDT

{"commentId":611782,"authorDomain":"uspolitics"}

Kathy Gill

Yeah, the mail servers are SmartTech which hosted the Ohio *election results* ... I talked to a database guy and he said he could see no reason why the state of Ohio would have needed to outsource the data (tables) from the election. I don't remember how big he estimated the data requirement would have been, but it was less than the 300GB hard drive I have on for data back up at home.

Ugh. :-/

{"commentId":611782,"threadId":"87265","contentId":"622414","authorDomain":"uspolitics"}

2 votes

#3.1 - Thu Mar 29, 2007 3:28 AM EDT

{"canLink":false,"threadId":"87265","isPrivate":false}

INDECENT

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GWB43.com and the Presidential Records Act

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