Judge to Bush: Don’t delete that email
It’s a crime scene, after all…
Judge to Bush Admin: “You Rolled the Dice…and You Lost”
“You rolled the dice that you’d win, and you lost.” That’s what Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola told lawyers for the Bush administration at a hearing on Wednesday afternoon in the ongoing case over millions of missing White House emails. By this he meant that if the White House had followed the recommendations [PDF] that the judge had laid out last April–suggesting that the administration search workstations and portable media devices for the missing messages–it might not be in its current predicament. Instead, Bush officials apparently gambled that they would be able to get the case thrown out, an effort that was rebuffed in November. That bet came back to haunt the administration on Wednesday morning when, with days left before Bush officials vacate the White House, it was hit with a last-minute order (issued by Judge Henry Kennedy, who’s also presiding over aspects of the case) to search workstations and collect portable memory devices containing saved emails from departing staffers.
