Chieftain joined other news outlets noting new state GOP director, but not his role in White House email probe

Summary: Reporting March 14 on Mike Britt, a "former organizer for GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney," taking over as executive director of the Colorado Republican Party, The Pueblo Chieftain omitted that Britt is one of numerous former Bush administration White House staffers identified in a congressional investigation related to the use of GOP email accounts for official government business. Colorado Media Matters has pointed out that three other Colorado news outlets similarly have misled about or failed to mention Britt's role.

In a March 14 article about Colorado Republican Party chairman Dick Wadhams' formal announcement that he will manage U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer's campaign, The Pueblo Chieftain reported that "Mike Britt, a former organizer for GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney, has been hired to be executive director of the state GOP party." (sic) But the article did not mention that, as Colorado Media Matters has noted, Britt is a former White House staffer scrutinized in a congressional investigation seeking to uncover "whether White House officials violated the Presidential Records Act by using e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee [RNC] and the Bush Cheney '04 campaign for official White House communications."

Since Wadhams announced his official position with the Schaffer campaign on March 11, Colorado Media Matters has documented three other Colorado news outlets -- the Rocky Mountain News, The Gazette of Colorado Springs, and the political news website PolitickerCO -- that have misled about or omitted Britt's role in the emails investigation.

The Chieftain article by Peter Roper reported, "Colorado Republican Chairman Dick Wadhams ... announc[ed] Tuesday that he will be managing the U.S. Senate campaign of former Rep. Bob Schaffer in his contest against Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo." The article further reported, "In announcing his role as Schaffer's campaign manager, Wadhams also said that Mike Britt, a former organizer for GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney, has been hired to be executive director of the state GOP party."

As Colorado Media Matters has noted, a June 2007 interim report by the majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform listed Britt among White House officials, including former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, who "averaged more than 100 e-mails sent or received each weekday" that their RNC email accounts were active. Britt was associate director of the White House Office of Political Affairs. According to the interim report:

Mr. Rove and six other White House officials -- Mike Britt, Jonathan Felts, Korinne Kubenna, Mindy McLaughlin, Cliff Rosenberger, and Nick Sinatra -- all averaged more than 100 e-mails sent or received each weekday that their accounts were active.¹¹ In 2007, Mr. Rove frequently sent more than 100 e-mails per day through his RNC e-mail account and received more than 200 per day.

A chart included in the report indicated that among emails preserved by the RNC, Britt from February 2, 2007, through April 27, 2007, sent 3,589 emails and received 5,147 through his RNC account. Of those, 830 were sent to, and 1,218 received from "official '.gov' email accounts."

As Media Matters for America has noted, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2007 directed the RNC and the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign to preserve email messages to or from accounts held by White House officials, and has said that as a result of several of the committee's investigations, it "has reason to believe that many e-mails related to official government business may have been deleted from the RNC's servers." The committee's majority staff also said in its interim report that "[t]he evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in a manner that circumvented" the requirements of the Presidential Records Act.

—C.H.