The e-mails that brought down a Republican Governor

[chat_noir]

The controversial e-mails that brought down the administration of Missouri's Republican Governor, former GOP golden boy Matt Blunt, were finally released to three media outlets this week, and this past weekend the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post Dispatch issued their first stunning reports on the more than 60,000 pages of e-mails. The e-mails back up the claims of whistleblower Scott Eckersley, who said he was fired because he advised the Blunt administration to save e-mails from the governor's office workers in compliance with Missouri's Sunshine Law. The 22 boxes of printed e-mails reveal plenty of other hanky panky by Blunt administration officials, including extensive efforts by Blunt’s then-chief of staff, Ed Martin, to orchestrate with outside political groups using government resources while on the taxpayer's dime. The e-mails offer a fascinating and disturbing glimpse inside a corrupt Republican governor's administration doing its best to imitate the Bush White House.


The Blunt e-mail controversy started on Aug. 27, 2007, when Tony Messenger, then a columnist for the Springfield (MO) News-Leader, filed a formal Sunshine Law request with Blunt's office for any e-mail correspondence from or to Ed Martin regarding Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon’s defense of a new state law on abortion clinics. At the time, Democrat Nixon was presumed to be Blunt’s general-election opponent the following year (and in a case of sweet justice, Nixon was in fact elected Missouri's new governor on Nov. 4). Nixon was widely distrusted by pro-life groups, and Messenger was investigating whether Martin was trying to rally anti-abortion groups to bad-mouth Nixon.

On Sept. 4, Martin wrote Messenger that he had "no documents that were responsive — e-mail or otherwise" regarding Nixon and the abortion clinics law. But in a column published five days laters, Messenger reported that he had obtained one such e-mail from another source, thus proving that Martin had lied. That's when Blunt and his cronies began a series of lies and cover-ups that would prove fatal to Blunt's administration.

In the following days, Blunt spokesman Rich Chrismer insisted to reporters that "there is no statute or case that requires the state to retain individual’s e-mails as a public record." Blunt himself told reporters that his staffers would not be required to save e-mails for three years, as was widely understood to be state law.

But the newly released e-mails reveal that behind the scenes, Blunt's deputy chief counsel, 31-year-old Scott Eckersley, was in fact warning all Blunt staffers to save their e-mails. On Sept. 10, the day after Messenger's column appeared, Eckersley e-mailed his boss, legal counsel Henry Herschel, a passage from the state’s employee handbook that stipulated that "every record made ... in connection with the transaction of official business of state government ... shall be retained in accordance with Missouri law." In many cases, that means saving e-mails for up to three years. That's when things started going downhill.


http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/17/9114/4584/205/661880

[galloglas]

1. This has been a long time coming...

... but Blunt will be a long time gone.




Good job, Chat! :thumbsup:

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. So what about his boy toy?

Where are those emails? :)

[cornermouse]

3. It wasn't the emails specifically.

Although they were a contributing factor. It was his policies and the growing multitude that he alienated by implementing them.