As a follow-on to Nick’s post about the missing White House emails, I should point out that there’s another email scandal brewing—this one in Missouri, where the former deputy legal counsel to Governor Matt Blunt (son of House Minority Whip Roy Blunt) has alleged that the governor and four of his aides schemed to destroy potentially damaging electronic communications. According to a suit filed yesterday by Scott Eckersley, Blunt’s one-time legal counsel Henry Herschel instructed staffers to destroy email records related to the politically-motivated firing of a state official, rather than turn them over to the press under a public records request. Ed Martin, then serving as Blunt’s chief of staff, subsequently “instructed the governor’s office to delete e-mail in inbox and trash files ‘to ensure they did not have to be turned over to the press or the public in response to Sunshine requests,'” according to the Kansas City Star.
And this is what happened when reporters confronted Blunt about the allegations earlier today:
At the governor’s annual prayer breakfast, Blunt declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about Eckersley’s lawsuit but pledged to discuss it at a later news conference on drunken driving laws. At that news conference, however, Blunt devoted barely 2 minutes to questions about the lawsuit—refusing to discuss it any detail—and then turned his back on reporters and walked out of the room while ignoring continued questions.