I'm just the messenger. I was hoping somebody would diary this but haven't seen anything about it here. I posted a comment in the open thread but didn't get much attention.
Fire Dog Lake is reporting that Anonymous Liberal found a Goodling email in the DOJ Friday document dump that REQUESTS DELETION of previous documents after the investigation was started.
I'm not that well-versed on the subject to be writing a diary or feel comfortable reporting what others have found. I have little experience at diary skills to do the proper links and technical thingies. I'll try. Sorry this is a shell of a decent diary but please read, I'm not a lawyer but this seems important. The word is OBSTRUCTION. No?
from Anonymous Liberal
As a litigator, I can tell you, that's a real no-no. You never instruct people to delete documents that are relevant to a pending investigation. Never. That's true even when the investigating body hasn't yet got around to requesting those documents. It smacks of obstruction. Indeed, the Obstruction of Congress statute, 18 U.S.C § 1505, specifically prohibits any attempts to obstruct "the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress." The penalty is up to 5 years in prison.
http://www.anonymousliberal.com/ there's a copy of the email here
from Fire Dog Lake
Suddenly, all those e-mails in the custody of the RNC take on an even more urgent context — because there may well be a number of documents which have been deleted from the DoJ included in the e-mail stream in and out of the White House political shop which were sent back and forth through the RNC servers.
And, in the context of a potential attempt to obstruct an ongoing Congressional investigation and, now, a very real question of criminal obstruction? Well, that claim of executive privilege just lost a whole lot of lustre, didn't it?
http://www.firedoglake.com/...