A member of President Barack Obama’s Auto Task Force, which conducted the 2009 auto industry bailout, used three different email addresses for official business – including two personal ones – documents The Daily Caller has obtained show.
Auto Task Force team member Harry Wilson used a Treasury Department email address, a personal Gmail address and a personal email address from Harvard University to conduct official business. Like all other Harvard University alumni, Wilson is granted lifetime access to a Harvard email address through the Harvard Alumni Association.
Wilson hasn’t responded to TheDC’s request for comment on why he used the three different email addresses for official bailout business, but a congressional source close to the investigations into the Delphi pension scandal told TheDC that Wilson’s use of multiple email accounts appears to be a tactic similar to that which was used by Department of Energy officials in the Solyndra scandal.
In that instance, in emails with coworkers, now former DOE Loan Programs Office head Jonathan Silver advised, “Don’t ever send an email on doe email with private email addresses. That makes them supoenable [sic].”
That and other evidence that DOE employees were using non-official email addresses for official communications sparked an expansion of the congressional probes into Solyndra and other similar failed loan guarantees. The expansion included House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa’s issuance of subpoenas requiring current and former DOE officials and contractors turn over such communications.
A congressional source close to the Delphi pension scandal investigation told TheDC that the use of personal email addresses by Obama administration officials appears to be a standard tactic to avoid oversight and accountability.
“As we saw with the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program for Solyndra, et al., this practice is nothing new for the Obama administration,” the source said.