Two of the top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice to explain an “unusual email” she sent on the day of President Trump’s inauguration.
On January 20, 2017, hours before she left the White House for good, Rice emailed herself a report of a meeting that had happened more than two weeks before. That meeting concerned potential Russian collusion with the Trump campaign and was attended, according to Rice’s email, by President Obama and senior Department of Justice officials, including then-FBI director James Comey and then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates.
“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book,’” Rice wrote. “The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating, or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective…. From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
The email, which surfaced through a Senate Judiciary request for records of White House meetings concerning the nascent Russia investigation, raised questions for Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham.
“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation,” Grassley and Graham wrote in a Monday letter to Rice. “In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials in the FBI, as well as the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book.’”
In their letter, the senators served Rice with a slate of questions regarding the email and the meeting it concerned. “During the meeting, did Mr. Comey describe the status of the FBI’s relationship with Mr. [Christopher] Steele, or the basis for that status?” they asked. “Did President Obama have any other meetings with Mr. Comey, Ms. Yates, or other government officials about the FBI’s investigation of allegations of collusion between Trump associates and Russia? If so, when did these occur, who participated and what was discussed?” They have asked her to answer those questions by February 22.
Grassley and Graham are right that the email raises eyebrows. Did Rice simply want to refresh her own memory about the contents of a meeting from weeks before—using an email address which, as an outgoing White House staffer, she would lose access to in mere hours? That would seem unlikely even if the meeting had been notable—which, in Rice’s account, it wasn’t. All by the book!
Or was the email Rice addressed to herself not actually for herself? Using email to write memos to the file—to create a time-stamped piece of evidence in case of later oversight—is, as my colleague Eric Felten has noted, a time-honored Washington practice. Was Rice simply offering any future scrutinizers of the Congressional Record a helpful account of just how squeaky-clean the Obama White House was in handling their business?
There seem to be only a couple reasons why Rice might have decided to pen such an email.
Perhaps Rice simply left the meeting with Obama and Comey aglow with pride over her colleagues’ strong conviction that, no matter how they felt personally about the election of Donald Trump, they would never allow their personal feelings to overrule their duty to wield their power responsibly, following all appropriate investigative procedures. As she prepared to leave the White House, Rice sent the email as an eternal testament to the Obama White House’s regard for process.
Or perhaps Rice left the meeting feeling jittery about the White House’s involvement in an investigation concerning a successor Obama had repeatedly said was unfit for office. She may have grown worried about the new Republican government scrutinizing such meetings, and hurriedly thrown together an account replete with assurances that everything was above-board on her way out the White House door.
Or perhaps it was just a dumb, pointless email, which acquired its apparent memo-to-the-file resonance only as an unfortunate coincidence.
The Senate Judiciary Committee would like to know which of these possibilities is the truth. Susan Rice has until February 22 to get her story straight.
