CREW FILES TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER IN LAWSUIT AGAINST THE WHITE HOUSE

11 Oct 2007 // Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a temporary restraining order with the court in CREW v. Executive Office of the President, the lawsuit in which CREW is challenging the White House's failure to preserve and restore millions of emails deleted from White House servers from March 2003 forward. CREW filed this motion in the face of the White House's refusal to give CREW assurances that all back-up copies of the deleted emails are being preserved. The White House has refused to identify what back-up copies of the deleted emails currently exist and has refused to commit to preserving all existing back-up copies.

UPDATE: On October 12, the White House defendants opposed CREW's emergency request for a temporary restraining order arguing that they have given adequate assurances that back-up copies of the millions of deleted emails are being preserved. In fact, they have stated only that they are preserving those disaster recovery tapes in the possession of the Office of Administration (OA) as of September 25, 2007, and have refused to explain what is included in that body of tapes and what, if anything, the OA is doing with back-up copies on other mediums. Magistrate John Facciola, to whom this matter has been referred, has set a hearing on CREW's motion for Wednesday, October 17 at 2:00.