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Shortly before Mitt Romney departed the governor’s office, 11 of his top aides purchased 17 state-issued hard drives, purging the Romney administration’s email records in advance of his presidential campaign. The move has no precedent among modern Massachusetts governors, including Romney’s recent Republican predecessors.
Late last week, Romney refused to explain the missing hard drives, and when asked why they were purchased, the Republican would only say his aides “all followed the law exactly as it’s written.” That, of course, wasn’t the question.
Today, as Alex Seitz-Wald noted, Romney offered a rather amazing explanation during an interview with the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire.
“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.”
Wait, what?
Let me get this straight. Romney is admitting, on the record and on video, that his team purchased government hard drives and deleted untold thousands of emails in order to keep official correspondence hidden? He was worried about opposition researchers? That’s Romney’s defense?
I can only imagine how devastating those emails must have been.
This is, by the way, the same Republican campaign that issued a memo last week attacking the Obama White House for having “turned its back on his campaign promises of openness and transparency.”
That was last week. This week, Romney is comfortable admitting that he and his team bought 17 hard drives so he could keep officials’ email correspondence hidden from the public because it might have proved politically embarrassing.
Wow.
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kevo on November 21, 2011 3:01 PM:
Maybe Mitt's calling for more transparency by President Obama simply because he himself is incapable of the same!
The ultimate political chameleon - a moniker Mitt is all too willing to wear! Why do Mitt and his Republican ilk have so much contempt for the real world, and for real middle and working class Americans? -Kevo
Josef K on November 21, 2011 3:01 PM:
I can only imagine how devastating those emails must have been.
You mean "will be", right? I'm willing to bet one or more of his competitors is searching for any back-ups or stored copies of those emails. It seems to be a truism that nothing gets completely erased in cyberspace anymore.
Then again, if they're that bad, we might not see them anyway as they'd be great blackmail material. I wouldn't put it past anyone in this freakshow of a caucus from stooping that low.
Curmudgeon on November 21, 2011 3:06 PM:
Mitt has demonstrated once again that he is in no way qualified for any public office whatsoever. How someone so clueless could have succeeded at anything at all is beyond my powers of comprehension.
martin on November 21, 2011 3:07 PM:
Oh, why even bother looking for them. A really good hacker can probably forge some, and then Romney would be in the position of having to prove the forgeries aren't real.
Just ask, What Would Karl Rove Do?
Josef K on November 21, 2011 3:27 PM:
From martin at 3:07 PM:
Oh, why even bother looking for them. A really good hacker can probably forge some, and then Romney would be in the position of having to prove the forgeries aren't real.
That's actually not that bad an idea. Wonder how many others in the freakshow caucus are thinking of doing this?
More immediately however is the perrenial question: what in the hootanhanny were Romney's staff thinking and/or hiding by doing this?
I'll readily admit I know next to nothing about his term as Governor of the Commonwealth. Anyone know if there was a major scandal or three around that time? Mysterious goings-on? Any disappearances?
square1 on November 21, 2011 3:32 PM:
So why did Democrats ignore this issue for years? Even now, it is presumably getting press because it is being pushed by a GOP competitor and not by the Democrats.
I mean, it isn't like the Romney candidacy sprung up out of thin air. The guy has been running for President forever. Deval Patrick never thought, "Gosh, Romney's staff sure went through a lot of trouble to cover this up. Maybe we should send out a few subpoenas. My good buddy, Obama might like that."?
Remember, just because Romney's staff purchased the physical drives does not mean that they had a right to exclusive control of all the data. Subpoena the fucking hard drives for copying and, if ALL 17 can't be produced, then you make it into Romney's Rose law firm billing records.
I swear to God, are Democrats really this stupid and lazy?
Midland on November 21, 2011 3:38 PM:
I swear to God, are Democrats really this stupid and lazy?
Yes. For those who haven't been following politics for that long, they've been like this for thirty years, since the Carter and Mondale campaigns, playing patsies to corrupt, cynical Republicans and never seeming remotely aware of how weak it makes them look and how much it hurts the country for them to pretend they are dealing with honest opponents.
Joe on November 21, 2011 3:39 PM:
Aaaand, absolutely ZERO will happen because of his admission. That's why he's admitting it. He knows that our laws are a joke when it comes to crimes committed by the rich and / or by those in office.
just bill on November 21, 2011 3:45 PM:
in vermont, emails are public records. i'll put the emphasis once again on the word public. in vermont what he did would be a crime.
square1 on November 21, 2011 3:46 PM:
Just ask, What Would Karl Rove Do?
The problem with that is that we already know what Karl Rove would do in response: Make the issue about the forgeries and not the substance of the emails.
This was the model almost certainly used by Rove in responding to Bush's Texas Air National Guards scandal. Rove (and if not Rove, then one of Bush's Texas buddies) almost certainly leaked the forged TANG documents in order to discredit the issue and the whistleblower, Lt. Col. Bill Burkett. Thus, when Bush's actual records confirmed what the forgeries showed, the media ignored it and the Democrats (naturally) were too afraid to touch it.
Daniel Kim on November 21, 2011 3:56 PM:
I don't understand why these hard drives were available for sale in the first place. For that matter, are there no intermediate servers that archive the data? How backward is Mass.?
Marko on November 21, 2011 4:10 PM:
Well, that's what he means by "openness" - he openly admits that the information was deleted on purpose.
Gummitch on November 21, 2011 4:37 PM:
I'm with Daniel Kim. It's baffling to me that a state government (or even the government of some backwoods city) would sell those hard drives to anyone. Maybe someone should find out who authorized the sale.
June on November 21, 2011 5:05 PM:
I don't make the mistake of strangely blaming Democrats for Republican Romney's cowardly behavior. Once again, Romney demonstrates he is congenitally incapable of having the courage of his convictions. He 'stands by his positions' as long as no one can actually revisit them. He castigates the current president on the topic of "transparency" while knowing full well his own former staff has hidden away stashes and stashes of records of Romney's only term in public office.
You can't make this stuff up. Another day, another reason to be proud to NOT be a Republican.
Daniel Kim on November 21, 2011 5:29 PM:
Again, I am forced to think fondly back to the Nixon days, when an 18 minute gap in a tape was considered a problem. Romney's staff has performed an act equivalent to setting fire to a room full of file cabinets.
square1 on November 21, 2011 5:55 PM:
Don't be obtuse, June. Nobody blames Democrats for Romney's behavior. Certainly not me. However, I unequivocally blame Democrats for failing to make him pay a political price for his conduct.
Perhaps if Democrats showed 1/100 of the motivation to go after Romney as they do going after Bradley Manning, I wouldn't laugh when Democrats claim to give a damn about "transparency".
Cha on November 21, 2011 6:23 PM:
@ square1
No, square1..it's you that's really that lazy and stupid..and, a fookin' spammer.
June on November 21, 2011 6:30 PM:
You continue to be a master of mis-direction, @square1. You take seemingly any topic and turn it around into an attack on the Democratic Party, no matter how unlikely the stretch. Romney has not held any political office since his governorship since it ended; he did not win the 2008 primary; he was irrelevant -- why would Democrats waste time and money on him then? He also was not bound by military law as was Manning - apples and oranges there, but not surprised by the attempt to conflate.
I prefer to keep to the topic at hand - how Romney is so terrified by his own "positions" that he goes to extraordinary lengths to hide them away from public view. That's not very transparent or presidential of him, to say the least.
Cha on November 21, 2011 6:31 PM:
June's not being "obtuse", square1.
You're a freaking spammer on this board..always blaming the Democrats ad nauseum everytime Steve has some expose' on the republicons.
Lazy ass spammer. Cheap ugly shots from the sucker section. limbaugh of the left.
jhm on November 22, 2011 9:06 AM:
There was probably some interesting discussion of the patronage hires vis-a-vis 9/11-relevant security at Logan (port authority), but I think the real damaging stuff would be documentation showing incontrovertibly a Gov. Romney who had dangerous inclinations toward sanity as regards public policy—wrongheaded, conservative policy, mind, but not O-zone, tea party lunacy either. Even worse, these flashes of lucidity might include recognition of reality, and failure to dismiss scientific facts as irrelevant and probably socialist.