Sunday, August 23, 2009

Emailgate


First the White House tries to deny any knowledge of the pro Obamacare emails sent in David Axelrod's name to people who didn't sign up.

Gibbs and Garrett Argue Over Email from White House



Then, they admit they paid a company to send these emails, but try to deny responsibility.
The White House has now disclosed the company it uses to send out mass e-mails. It's Govdelivery, a Minnesota-based private communications busniness. The details are revealed in a new Foxnews.com article.

Several other federal agencies have hired Govdelivery, and it has been used by both democrats and republicans. Macon Phillips, the White House new media director, says the company was hired in January.

Fox News has done extensive reporting about individuals who were receiving e-mail correspondence about health care reform from the White House, but never requested to be added to its list.

Critics raised questions about privacy and what the White House was doing with the list of personal e-mail addresses. Fox News Correspondent Eric Shawn first reported Monday that Govdelivery was a possible company involved.

This week the White House acknowledged it was sending unsolicited e-mails, and suggested a third-party could have played a role. The administration has since changed Whitehouse.gov's e-mail policy in an attempt to fix the problem.

Now, the company Team Obama tried to blame for sending the emails is throwing the White house under the bus.
The White House blamed the dissemination of unsolicited e-mails on the firm they hired to manage its e-mail communications on political issues, but GovDelivery apparently doesn’t want to play along with the Oval Office. Verum Serum notes that the company is denying that it supplies e-mail addresses to any of its clients, and insists that it just manages address books:

Many pundits are now claiming the White House broke the law.
Here’s what we believe also occurred regarding the White House political spam emails.

Contrary to what the White House claims on its website, it did, indeed, add the estimated 13 million OFA member’s email addresses, or OFA email list, to the WhiteHouse.gov mailing list-a clear cut case of the White House using a political group to supply email addresses. To top it off, the White House then used the OFA email lists to lobby, or spam, Americans on healthcare reform. The White House, using a government website, WhiteHouse.gov, to lobby or spam on its position on any policy is illegal.

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