Romney Staff Wiped Records Before '08 Bid

Just before Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governor's office and launched his previous bid for the presidency, 11 of his top aides took the unusual step of buying their state-issued hard drives, and the administration's emails were wiped from a server, the Boston Globe finds. The Democratic National Committee has filed a huge Freedom of Information Act request for Romney administration emails relating to the destruction of records, and for emails containing terms like "flip-flop, "move to the right," and "ranked 47th in job creation."

The Romney campaign, in turn, has filed an FOIA request for correspondence between the office of Deval Patrick, Massachusetts' Democratic governor, and senior President Obama aides. In the request, Romney's campaign manager slams Patrick's chief legal counsel for providing the Globe with details of the hard drive purchases, and labels the governor's office an "opposition research arm of the Obama re-election campaign." (More Deval Patrick stories.)