Reince Priebus (Getty)

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns held a conference call this afternoon to discuss a report released yesterday by the Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee, which revealed former White House deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina (who is currently President Barack Obama's campaign manager) used his personal email to conduct official business and White House staffers conducted meetings outside the building to avoid being included in the official record. Mr. Priebus said this represented a hypocritical failure of the Obama administration to live up to their promises of transparency and suggested it may indicate illegal activity.

"We got more news today that the self-proclaimed 'most transparent administration in history isn't transparent at all. They've been using the Caribou Coffee shop across the street from the White House as an executive branch annex to hold secret meetings with lobbyists and political cronies," said Mr. Priebus. "These newly uncovered emails showed one White House staffer explicitly asking an industry insider to meet him at Caribou so that he wouldn't have to appear on the White House visitor logs. The White House doesn't want the American people to know who they're meeting with on a day-to-day basis. They've had hundreds of meetings at Caribou, so we have no way of knowing what insider deals they're cutting."

Mr. Priebus described the "stunning revelations" in the report as part of a pattern of the Obama administration "cover[ing] up their own ethical lapses."

"These are stunning revelations. They show the Obama administration has not only found loopholes in their own self-imposed transparency rules," Mr. Priebus said. "They're also failing to follow the law under the Presidential Records Act. This supposedly transparent administration has spent the last three-and-a-half years actively trying to cover up their own ethical lapses. They've tried to hide from the GSA scandal, 'Fast and Furious,' politically motivated intelligence leaks and stimulus-funded crony capitalism like Solyndra."

Both Mr. Priebus and Mr. Stearns said they wanted to see a "full scale investigation" into White House staffers' use of personal email addresses and off-site meeting locations. Earlier today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended Mr. Messina by saying he always forwarded official emails from his personal account to his White House address.

"In an effort to comply with all the regulations pertaining to emails, he would forward emails to his White House account or copy his White House account so that those emails would be part of presidential record. And that is per guidance provided by counsel," said Mr. Carney.

Mr. Carney said he and other White House staffers often have meetings "off campus." The White House has also argued House Republicans' interest in the transparency issue is politically motivated.

On the conference call, Mr. Stearns, who complained the White House had been stonewalling attempts to investigate the issue, said there's no proof Mr. Messina forwarded his emails to his official account.

"They say that they CC'd to the White House, but that's their word. We haven't seen the fact that they did CC the White House," Mr. Stearns said. "Theyr'e saying they CC'd the White House, we'd like some corroboration of that fact."

Mr. Priebus said an investigation would help determine whether "a crime" had been committed.

"If you are using your personal email account to forward to yourself to and from the White House in order to make multi-billion dollar deals with lobbyists using taxpayer money, don't you think something smells a little funny here? I sure do," he said. "Certainly there is smoke and smoldering fire here and my suspicion is that there will be a lot more uncovered once an investigation commences."

Initially, when the report about the emails and off-site meetings was released, Mr. Stearns included an accompanying statement saying he was simply pointing out the Obama administration had failed to live up to promises of transparency and he wasn't alleging illegal activity. On the conference call reporters asked Mr. Priebus why he was now suggesting a crime may have been committed. He answered that it was hard to say for certain since the White House hadn't released all the documents requested by the House Republicans.

"I think it's hard to question whether it's illegal because we haven't seen the documents and they haven't complied with our request, whether it be subpoenas or a simple request under the presidential act for freedom of information," said Mr. Priebus. "They have not complied, so we really can't say."

Mr. Priebus said the main issue raised by the report was the president's "hypocrisy."

"If anything, of all the issues here today, it's the Obama hypocrisy that I want to highlight. The fact that he said that he was going to be different than everybody else, that he was going to be the most transparent guy that ever was President of the United States and here we go again," Mr. Priebus said. "The Obama White House is actively deceiving the American people and they're doing it over at Caribou Latte."

(Photo: Getty)

On The Capitol Pressroom this morning, the host, Susan Arbetter, pressed Governor Andrew Cuomo on whether he values the end product of legislation is more important than having a democratic and open process when passing it. Mr. Cuomo, who worked with the Legislature to pass a massive set of bills while you were probably asleep last night, said he wasn't especially worried about the issue.

"The issue of transparency always comes up in Albany," Mr. Cuomo admitted. "It's true, you can always have more transparency. On the other hand, I think you can become overly fixated with observing ... process with no product."

Mr. Cuomo has seen criticism of his administration's transparency increasingly grow in recent months, especially with his sudden and unexpected overhaul of the state's tax structure, but he points to his legislative accomplishments in order to justify Albany's often-obscure processes.

"For many years, the complaint in Albany was, 'It doesn't perform, nothing ever happens,'" he told Ms. Arbetter. "And you look at the issues that we just acted on, finally. Susan, what could you possibly want more discussion or transparency on? You want to talk about redistricting more? You and I have had the same conversation on redistricting five times."

"Transparency, backroom dealings, they talk about this in Albany all the time," he later added.

"You can't live your life in a goldfish bowl."

Governor Andrew Cuomo (Getty)

In a Q&A session with reporters following his executive budget presentation in Yonkers this morning, Governor Cuomo addressed criticism he hasn't been transparent enough during his first year in office.

"You know, I think you will always hear a critique that you could be more transparent and it's probably always true for any of us in any occupation," Governor Cuomo said in response to a question from The Politicker.

During his campaign, Governor Cuomo pledged to increase transparency in the governor's office by posting his meetings on the internet, but his online schedule rarely contain more detail than a single sentence identifying the city where the governor will spend the day. Some critics have argued this lack of detail as well as the closed door nature of the budget process represent a failure to provide true transparency.

Governor Cuomo said he will always do some things away from prying eyes, but he assured us he's making a real effort to increase transparency in his administration.

"There are some things I do alone and there are some things I do in private, and by the way, there are always going to be some things I do alone and in private," Governor Cuomo said. "You do the best you can, but you're always going to hear the point, I think, well, you could be more transparent."

Under the new legislation, beginning next month the administration will have to submit newly-enacted executive orders to the City Council as well as posting them on the city’s website.

“The public should have access to how the City operates and not have to go through an arduous process just to get to information that they want,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “Now, with a click of a button that information will be right at their fingertips instead of waiting for weeks to get information that they are entitled to.”

MOUs that would hamper law enforcement or emergency response operations are exempt from the new bill.