In his letter, Issa cited the Times story and said “not only are administration officials intentionally circumventing [federal law] by using private e-mail accounts, but the White House staff are also skirting the president’s own transparency initiatives, such as the online publication of White House visitor logs, by holding meetings with lobbyists outside of the White House to avoid creating records of the meetings.”

By Jonathan Strong – The Daily Caller

Bolstered by the backing of key watchdog groups, top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa is pressing House oversight committee Chairman Edolphus Towns to help investigate a mounting number of technology-related ethics problems for a White House that has prided itself on both transparency and its technological savvy.

Issa’s latest move is a June 30 letter to Towns requesting the chairman join Issa in “launching a formal investigation” into numerous allegations the Obama White House has played fast and loose with its ethics rules and disclosure requirements under federal law.

The letter comes two days after Washington-based watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility (CREW) made the same request to Towns.

At issue most recently are hundreds of meetings at a Caribou Coffee close to the White House between high-ranking administration officials and top K-Street lobbyists. The meetings were reported by the New York Times on June 24.

In his letter, Issa cited the Times story and said “not only are administration officials intentionally circumventing [federal law] by using private e-mail accounts, but the White House staff are also skirting the president’s own transparency initiatives, such as the online publication of White House visitor logs, by holding meetings with lobbyists outside of the White House to avoid creating records of the meetings.”

The Times reported that the coffee-house lobbyist meetings were often initiated with e-mails from White House aides’ personal e-mail accounts – bypassing an archiving system – and appear geared towards hiding the meetings from disclosing them in a published list of visitors to the White House.

At issue legally is whether administration officials are conducting “official business” outside of record-keeping requirements in federal law. At issue ethically is an apparent attempt to hide from disclosure hundreds of lobbyist contacts by a White House which pledged to be the most transparent in history.

FULL STORY

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