Huckabee: No Love for Wiped-Out Hard Drive Story

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Mike Huckabee read the Mother Jones story on the destruction of the records from his time as governor of Arkansas. He didn’t like it.

Speaking to US News and World Report yesterday, Huckabee slammed Mother Jones. “[Mother Jones] doesn’t pretend to be a real news outlet, but a highly polarized opinion-driven vehicle for all things to the far left,” he said. “You expect that wolves will eat meat.”

Here’s part of Huckabee’s defense:

The absurd insinuation that my office “destroyed” state records or that records are “missing” is the same old political canard that was attempted years ago and failed then for the same reason it will fail now—it’s factually challenged.

As we reported, these are not “absurd insinuations.” What happened to Huckabee’s gubernatorial records was documented in this memo from the Arkansas Department of Information Systems. It confirms that the hard drives containing the records were erased and then destroyed. Copies of the records were placed in the hands of former Huckabee staffer Brenda Turner, who is now the communications director for a Christian greeting card company. Turner has not said what she did with the backups. She refused to talk to us. Here’s the relevant part of the 2007 document, which was addressed to the outgoing Gov. Huckabee:

We also reported that the state of Arkansas had to shell out $335,000 to replace the hardware that the Huckabee administration had destroyed. Huckabee doesn’t deny this. But he blames the decision to spend that money on his Democratic successor, Gov. Mike Beebe, who “wanted all new equipment, even though the existing hardware was operable and modern.” Again, Huckabee is contradicted by the above mentioned memo, which notes that “the drives have been subsequently crushed under the supervison of a designee of your office.” That is, the drives were destroyed on Huckabee’s watch, not Beebe’s.

The US News and World Report reports says the Mother Jones story “suggests a sinister motive,” which may well be true, to the extent that signing off on the destruction of political history seems a little shady. Can Huckabee—a potential presidential contender who extols the cleansing virtue of transparency—explain why these records were destroyed, and what happened to the backups handed to his aide? He’s scheduled to appear on The Daily Show tonight. Perhaps he ought to show up with Brenda Turner and tell all—whether it’s funny or not.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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