Latest In

News

Waxman v. Watchdog

Jul 31, 2020155 Shares155K Views
The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington suedthe White House last May for millions of missing White House e-mails. In moving forward with their case- now in D.C. district court- they’ve appeared to be of the same mind as Democrats on Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s (D-Calif.) oversight committee. The oversight committee has held hearingsand released reports that document the archiving incompetence that a CREW reportdid much to first publicize.
But on the issue of what to do about future White House archiving, CREW and the committee are far apart. Yesterday afternoon the committee fired off a press releasetouting their introduction of the Electronic Communications Preservation Act. The bill would direct the National Archives and Record Administration to develop a standard for capturing and retrieving White House e-mails.
In the hour, CREW put out a press releaseof their own, calling the committee’s legislation “anemic” and stuck in the 20th century.
CREW’s opinions stem from a larger report called “Record Chaos,” which documents archiving problems throughout the federal bureaucracy (available on their Web site).
Karen Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for the oversight committee, respondedto the Washington Post that the legislation is a “good start” to the archiving problems.
It will be interesting to see if the spat over the legislation will affect CREW and the committee’s ongoing pursuit of millions of still unaccounted for e-mails.
Hajra Shannon

Hajra Shannon

Reviewer
Latest Articles
Popular Articles