A top Obama aide “appears” to have violated the law by conducting official White House business on his personal email account, the Romney campaign said Thursday.
It was revealed this week in a report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that Jim Messina, a former senior aide in the White House who is now running Obama’s re-election campaign, had used his personal email account to discuss the health-care overhaul with a lobbyist in 2010.
“On it’s face, this appears to be a violation of the law, which requires that all official communications be preserved,” Romney campaign senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said in response to a question from The Daily Caller during a conference call with reporters Thursday morning.
“He did it using his personal email, which suggests he wanted to hide the conversation,” Fehrnstrom said.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said administration officials who have used personal emails for business are known to forward those emails to their official account to comply with the law.
“What I can tell you is that Mr. Messina would copy his own emails into the White House account so that the record was established.”
The report from the House committee also included records showing administration officials taking official meetings to a nearby coffee house.
Carney wouldn’t comment on that. “I don’t have anything on this specific issue,” he said.
Republicans responded by calling for an investigation.
“We need to have a full-scale investigation so that we can in fact determine whether or not, under the facts and circumstances, that we have a crime,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus said Wednesday.