If they want to go completely over the top, add another month for writing a report and factor in the cost of the tech guy into that extra month.

Now, that's to recover and back up the data. That doesn't necessarily include time to search for specific items (which, believe it or not, isn't nearly as hard as they're implying if you know what you're doing). Suffice it to say, it's only probably another month or so of search time, but that's a project outline for another day. It's still probably well within budget.

Now, be aware I'm taking Payton's testimony at face value. If there's some level of weird encryption on those machines, if the data has to be cracked or otherwise penetrated, that'll take a lot more time.

And if some rogue, overzealous employee (and yes, every organization has one) has done something dastardly (like trying to wipe the drives, destroying them with magnets, or giving them to a dog to chew on), there's definitely no telling how big a project this is.

Bottom line: They can probably create forensic copies for well less than Payton claims.

Are they looking in the right place?
This article is long, because the story is complex. But as I mentioned in the introduction, there's more to the story than reading the court documents would imply. Let's look at where email records might be found:

• On White House computers
• On hard drives from White House computers in storage
• On hard drives in storage, separated from White House computers
• On computers or hard drives that were once in the White House and might be still be stored in another Federal facility.

But what about all the mail that went through the RNC, because most political email is sent outside the White House systems in accordance with the Hatch Act? Where might all that be found? Here are some ideas:

• On servers operated by SMARTech in Chattanooga
• On backups stored by SMARTech in Chattanooga
• On computers, servers, and hard drives taken out of service by SMARTech, but stored away

Looking for email on the SMARTech servers is a good idea, if one that's been unexplored by the plaintiffs. In Where Have All The Emails Gone?, I estimated that 103.6 million White House email messages went through SMARTech, rather than White House systems. That number probably has another 10 million or so since some time passed since I made that estimate.

All of those are unaccounted for -- and they're not being pursued by either the plaintiffs or even the House Oversight Committee.

Oh, and if you're going to get creative, there are more places to search. These are harder, but not impossible. A lot of email goes through providers like AOL, Google's Gmail, and Microsoft Hotmail. We know, based on testimony, that Karl Rove had an AOL account.

It is likely, because all three companies are well-run IT operations, that somewhere, those companies have backups that could be provided to a Magistrate Judge.