Private emails are not speech. Are you suggesting all private conversations should be public? That seems absurd to me. Do you subscribe to the "surveillance isn't bad if you have nothing to hide" concept?

Sending death threats or racial invectives by private message is as much speech as sending them by Twitter post.

All private conversations shouldn't be published. That isn't necessary to hold people accountable for dangerous or violent speech.

Publication and repudiation aren't the same thing.

There is no way to allow the verification of a death threat message without also allowing the verification of political dissidents, for example.

Yes, it might make it harder to punish death threats, but privacy is too important to sacrifice.

Let's see your mail spool. After all, how else can we know you're not having illicit conversations with politicians that we all deserve to know about?

Now you're just spouting non sequiturs. Publication and retention are two separate questions.

And not being a politician, and certainly not the one currently trying to hold the White House hostage, I don't see the public interest anyway.

I am not following... we are talking about gmail and email in general, not specifically the White House.

If you think White House emails should be signed and archived indefinitely, that is one thing. That is not what we are talking about.