So, it appears that Romney simply destroyed records of his work a Governor

[1-Old-Man]

John Wonderlich, Policy Director for the Sunlight Foundation, is being interviewd on Cspan and he mentions this about Willard. During his years as Governor Romney used his personal E-mail for government business. That made the records of his transactions his personal property, not the states, and so when he left office he was able to simply destroy all of the records - making them unavailable for freedom of information requests. So the public has no access to records of the public's business. Nice.

[Firebrand Gary]

1. There is much more to this story.

He and his staff purged the drives on all of their work computers, then purchased them to verify the drives could not be recovered.

It should also be noted, it was not just his "personal" email that was wiped.

In other related news, his potential VP Kelly Ayotte DID THE EXACT SAME THING before running in the Senate race (she was the AG in New Hampshire.

[1-Old-Man]

8. That is simply astounding

[evilhime]

16. According to some reports

he was following precedent in Mass - other governors etc. did the same thing and Politifact said it was not unusual or illegal. It stinks IMO, but <shrug> may not hold political water. https://www.google.com/webhp?rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS473US474&sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS473US474&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=romney%20staff%20purged%20hard%20drives&oq=&gs_l=&pbx=1&fp=b4c92a2d29177826&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1301&bih=821

[Skidmore]

25. We need an ad about how trustworthy this guy would be.

He tries to obliterate his trail but leaves too much scorched earth to hide deception. Seriously, would you trust this man with the wellbeing of the nation? What is he hiding besides dollars in overseas accounts?

[Greybnk48]

32. Scott Walker did that when he left Milwaukee

as County Exec. He and his people emptied all the file cabinets too. I remember the pics in the paper. I think Huckabee destroyed all records too.

edit: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/huckabee-arkansas-destroyed-records

[spanone]

2. ...and that's the kind of president he would be....

[malaise]

3. In a fair world he'd be in prison for that

How could people contemplate putting him in the White House

[NNN0LHI]

4. In a sane world this alone would be enough to disqualify someone from the presidency

In a sane world ...

Don

[Jackpine Radical]

22. Aw, Jeez, Don. In a sane world, we'd have a real 2-party system:

The Liberal Dems and the Greens.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. IOKIYAR nt

[DCKit]

7. Hugs to Manny. nt

[madashelltoo]

6. Just another reason why he should not

be president.

[SoutherDem]

9. To Republicans this is the mark of a good President

Remember Nixon, shredded documents and missing time on tapes? He is simply standing on the shoulders of giants.

[WI_DEM]

10. That shouldn't even be legal! to use your personal e-mail for state business.

[ohgeewhiz]

11. This is Nixon on steroids...

"Romney Admits He Destroyed Government Records To Keep Them From Political Opponents"

Last week, a Boston Globe investigation uncovered that former Gov. Mitt Romney’s administration destroyed emails, purchased hard drives, and otherwise obliterated all digital records of his time as governor of Massachusetts. This happened as Romney was leaving the state to campaign for president (the first time), and observers immediately speculated that the systematic destruction was politically motivated to hide embarrassing data.
Romney and his campaign have so far denied this, with the candidate saying this weekend in New Hampshire that his staff took the highly unusual step of purchasing their work hard drives because they might contain “confidential and private” information. Meanwhile, he’s made calls for greater White House transparency a part of his campaign message.
But in a fairly stunning admission today during an interview with the editorial board of the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire, Romney suggested that his administration deleted emails because they didn’t want “opposition research teams” to have access to them:
ROMNEY: Well, I think in government we should follow the law. And there has never been an administration that has provided to the opposition research team, or to the public, electronic communications. So ours would have been the first.
Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/11/21/373627/romney-admits-recordsdestruction/

[Lionessa]

12. You should re-post this in good reads and perhaps GD even.

Nice archive. I'm wondering though how it was only in 2011 that anyone went looking for this stuff. Hasn't he been campaigning for president for the past six years or so overall? He stepped down from gov in 2007, why the 4 year wait to look into it? I guess perhaps because before he never made it out of the primaries, now he has?

[ohgeewhiz]

18. I'm not sure, but I suspected that it had been posted long ago.

There's tons of articles and there was lots of discussion in Mass back last fall/winter on this.

Another article on this, from the same source, talks about how Rmoney spent $100,000 (when he was leaving the the state of Mass Govship with a 2 Billion dollar deficit), spent $100,000 on new computers for the Gov's office, so as to get the hard drives of his office's old computers out of the public ownership, where traces of deleted files could have been done by computer forensic experts.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, as it was on MSNBC, Rachel, etc last fall.

[Lionessa]

21. Never hurts to refresh everyone's memory.

[ohgeewhiz]

23. OK DONE! n/t

[Lionessa]

26. Excellent, Thank you, and Welcome to DU.

I just noticed your post count.

[dtom67]

24. Detroit must be a foreign country to Willard....

Ole Romney might wanna ask Kwame Kilpatrick about emails and text message precedent...

[Kalidurga]

13. This should be brought up in the first debate.

So, Mittens why did you destroy all your records of what you did as governor in MA?

[ohgeewhiz]

20. Great questions: I've got an idea

Let's develop 100 questions for Rmoney and his debates with Obama...to be submitted to the news networks a few weeks before the debates.

Let's make a web site, too, with questions for Rmoney to answer.

DU should do this.... I'm thinking of starting a thread with this idea in GD, what do you think?

[Kalidurga]

34. Great idea

Only problem I see is that I don't think our questions will ever be allowed in a debate, as they are very pertinent to the issues.

[ohgeewhiz]

37. Yee of little faith. Here's my first part of the project...

Right here on DU...

Check this out and add your best question(s).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002901256

I invite each and every one of you to post your top questions you would want to ask the x gov.

Then we move to step 2...

We have 1000 or more people submit the questions in an email to all the news folks who are going to ask the questions

Step 3

We have a small web site where we post all the questions, and link it to all our Facebooks, Twitters, etc etc, get 100,000 or 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 to share it on those sites.

Soon it's like Kony 2012... EVERY BODY WANTS TO KNOW THE ANSWERS!

Bottom line: we use 2012 social media to influence the news media before the debates, and have 50 questions Americans need answers to before they vote in November. Result: Romney is screwed !

And nobody has to occupy Wall Street or stand out in the rain or whatever to get the attention of the American voter regarding our best questions every voter needs an answer to before they vote!

[Kalidurga]

39. Ok good on you I submitted my questions.

Some will probably have to be reworded as they would seem inflammatory to some people. But, this is how I would ask the questions in real life.

[thc420]

14. But somehow...

...they can find a blue dress...

[Historic NY]

15. Just imagine how transparent his administration would be....

isn't that sort of illegal - destroying government property

[citizen blues]

19. It wasn't government property.

The whole point is that because it was his own personal email, it was his own personal property. He paid for those hard drives that he walked out the door with too.

Not cool!!!! I am a student and all professors and students on my campus have been directed to use the official university email whenever communicating about classes or about anything related to the university.

[RC]

29. Were these private E-mails sent and received on government computers?

If so, that makes them government and open to the same laws as using the government E-mail system.
The only reason for the wholesale deleting of them would be to hide malfeasance.

[Historic NY]

36. I'm replying on a government computer.......

I can delete my messages but i can't take the hard drive or wipe it without consequences. 85% of the time I use a different account for unrelated personal emails. He was conducting the people's business, even the mere discussion or message relating to it make it no longer his.

Didn't we go through with the government crackberry and non crackberry text messages in the previous administration?

[Kalidurga]

35. Well it was his personal email account...

but those emails were not generated on personal time. They were generated on tax payers dollar. So, I think the public still has a right to see what was in any email sent during his work time. Employers do it when you send an email from work if you are on the clock.

[ladym55]

17. That's how Republicans like to govern

Look at John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin. All this transparency stuff gets in the way of getting things done!!!!

Doesn't surprise me that Rmoney did the same thing. It makes it pretty clear that what he did in office would not stand up to public scrutiny.

I can't get over how he is a serious contender for the presidency. I guess fools wish to be governed by bigger and more corrupt fools.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

27. He won't release his tax returns

He won't release his records from Bain Capital
He destroyed his records as Governor
He won't release the names of his campaign bundlers
He refuses to go on press interview shows to answer questions
He refuses to release information on his offshore bank accounts

[lonestarnot]

28. For those depressed that a dickwad animal abuser corp. hugger could run for the highest office in

the land w/o a worry for this issue, you should go over here and watch then have a weiner dog.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002899536

[BootinUp]

30. Bush did the same or similar as I recall. nt

[snot]

31. I was about to say, yes, or officials in his admin, I'm thinking including Rove, Cheney,

maybe Leeza . . .

And then there was the fire in Cheney's office . . .

I think we need a law against the use of personal accounts for official business, with severe penalties for noncompliance.

[BootinUp]

33. I'm surprised MA didn't have something like that

Texas doesn't surprise me.

[davsand]

38. In Illinois officials' personal emails ARE subject to FOIA.

As public official, if I send an email on my personal account during the time I'm in my office, it is subject to a FOIA. I was told by the State's Attorney that even if I have my personal laptop in the office, and IF I send an email on my personal account over the public WI-FI in our building that an email could be subject to FOIA. There was even a recent court case here in Illinois where the court ruled that City Council members texting on a personal phone during a City Council meeting is subject to FOIA as well. (It will be interesting to see if that ruling holds up under a court challenge, BTW...)

There's a running joke that if you are gonna tell a dirty joke you gotta leave the building, but have any of you ever stopped to think about all the joke emails that circulate in some offices? Even if you don't think it's funny, or even if you hit delete without even READING it, that message is still subject to a FOIA.

Some folks hate it, but I figure I take the paycheck, I hold the office, FOIA is just part of the deal.

As corrupt as Illinois is, I'd find it hard to think that we'd be any better than anyplace else when it comes to transparency for public officials. If the Mittster and his minions have been that naughty, I'd think somebody could call them on it and make it stick.



Laura