Obama Health Official Instructed Staff To Delete Email Exchange With White House About Healthcare.gov

House Republicans on Friday released an email from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, a key Obama administration health official instructing the top CMS spokeswoman to delete an email exchange between CMS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House. The email exchange discussed how to handle calls from people asking about Obamacare.

The email is dated October 5, 2013, five days into the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. and the first line of the email reads "please delete this email but see if we can work on the script" (See above-red box was added by me).

Republicans House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders today sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner asking why Tavenner wanted the email deleted, and whether she has asked for other emails to be deleted.

Over 10 months after sending this request, last week your staff informed the Committee on Energy and Commerce that copies of your e-mail communications could have been lost. CMS also informed the National Archives and Record Administration that it was possible that some of your email records ‘may not be available to HHS.’ This unusual development is unfortunately part of a pattern of this administration’s inability to properly preserve records. In the letter to the National Archives, CMS represents the potential loss of your emails as the result of the ‘extremely high volume of emails’ that are received daily.

The day after a CMS official informed the Committee about the potential loss of your emails, HHS provided the Committee with additional documents related to our review of HealthCare.gov. One of the e-mails in this production shows that you directed a subordinate to delete an email communication featuring a number of White House representatives.”

Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) added:

Right on cue, when the going gets tough, the Obama administration proclaims it can't find the documents. Time and again, the self proclaimed 'most transparent administration' has been anything but. And now we know that when HealthCare.gov was crashing, those in charge were hitting the delete button behind the scenes. What was the Obama administration trying to hide?

Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-PA) added:

It is troubling enough that it takes 10 months to provide documents pertaining to the failed implementation of the president’s health law, but now we’re told that some emails may be lost and another was asked to be deleted. We were told that this nearly $1 billion website didn’t work because of volume, but our investigation proved that was not the case. Documents from the administration continue to prove that what the administration boasted to the public did not line up with what it was saying internally. We will continue to demand answers and hold the administration accountable for these failures.

Along with Nixon's. this has to be the most corrupt administration in history. Nixon's scandals were different they were about retaining power. Obama's scandals were about covering up mistakes of managing the government and lying about them to the American people both are terrible. The difference is with Obama, the media is allowing him to get away with the scandals.

Somewhere tricky Dick is smiling.