Judge orders Cheney to preserve records of administration

RAW STORY
Sunday, Sept 21, 2008

A federal judge ruled against the Bush administration’s closed-door policy on internal documents by ordering Vice President **** Cheney to preserve a large amount of records during his time at the White House, the Associated Press reported Saturday.

The decision is meant to prevent many records from being destroyed before they can be made public under the Presidential Records Act, which the Bush administration has attempted to narrowly define.

But U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the administration’s reluctance to hand over the documents “heightens the court’s concern” that they would not be preserved without judicial intervention.

A Washington watchdog group filed a lawsuit against Cheney early this month, challenging his refusal to hand over a majority of his papers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Given the unlawful policies and directives of the defendants, there is an imminent threat that even before the end of this administration, Vice President Cheney and the OVP will destroy, transfer, or otherwise dispose of many of the vice president’s records under the theory they are personal records and therefore not covered” by the law, the lawsuit stated.

The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, was motivated to sue after Cheney argued he is exempt because his office is not part of the executive branch of government, the Associated Press reported.

The Presidential Records Act was instituted in the wake of the Watergate scandal as a means of safeguarding sensitive documents from the executive office for eventual release to the public.

Cheney chief of staff David Addington told Congress that Cheney doesn’t belong to the executive or legislative branches of government, but rather is attached to Congress by the Constitution.

Like he gives a $hit what a court says.

He's already prepared to bail, he's dumped his dollar holdings, he's got an apartment down the street from Haliburtons new HQ in dubai, Cheney is lowering his life raft as we speak.

His assets are supposed to be in a "blind trust." If what you contend is true, it may be a criminal act.

Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney’s financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly.

The article is called “Cheney’s betting on bad news” and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in “a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation.”

Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in “Old Europe”. As Blackburn sagely notes, “Not all bad news’ is bad for everybody.”

They're hiding something....
No big surprise on that. I worked for the Gov't for 4 years.

Thats very very interesting, all accounts of Cheney's buying an apartment in Dubai seems to have magically disappeared, except for blogs...

I'll keep digging.