Posted by D. Cupples | Monday, federal judge Henry Kennedy ordered the President's Executive Office to preserve emails relevant to two lawsuits about whether the White House had violated federal law by destroying emails (Associated Press via Memeorandum).
Justice Department lawyers opposed the court order, instead wanting the court to simply accept a White House promise to preserve the emails. This opposition makes no sense -- if, indeed, the White House was already planning to preserve them. Apparently, the judge didn't think that a promise was enough. The AP reported:
"The judge's order 'should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don't know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It's a mystery,' said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive."
Two groups -- the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Government -- sued the White House over the reported disappearance of some 5 million emails, which came to light when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during the investigation of the outing of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame that emails were likely missing.
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