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The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the apparent creep of politics and undue White House influence into the operations of the US Justice Department.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., revealed during a committee meeting Thursday that the White House found an undisclosed number of e-mails it previously said had been lost, as ThinkProgress reported.

The White House has until June 28 to comply with a subpoena issued earlier this week demanding all relevant documents related to the investigation, committee spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler told RAW STORY.

The House and Senate judiciary committees have been examining the firing of at least eight federal prosecutors who did not work to advance White House political goals. Administration critics allege top White House aides, including political guru Karl Rove, were behind the firing of the US Attorneys.

An attorney for the Republican National Committee told congressional staffers in April that the RNC was missing four years worth of e-mails Rove sent using an RNC e-mail account instead of his government e-mail address, the Washington Post reported at the time. Investigators want to know if he was using that e-mail to circumvent rules about executive branch record keeping while injecting political considerations into the Justice Department.

Leahy said Thursday that was vindicated with the revelation of the e-mails' existence because he had said on the Senate floor earlier this year that e-mails' could not be completely destroyed.

"To their credit, the White House has now told me ... I was right; they were wrong," Leahy said during a markup meeting. "The e-mails are found ... although they have yet to give them."

There have been no discussions between White House officials and Judiciary Committee members since Leahy's comments yesterday, Schmaler said. It is not clear whether the White House intends to comply with the Judiciary Committee's document demand. The White House did not return RAW STORY's request for comment Friday. Republicans have said US Attorneys serve strictly at the pleasure of the president, and there is nothing wrong with firing them.

The Senate Judiciary also has subpoenaed the testimony of Sara Taylor, who was Rove's top aide, and the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for former White House counsel Harriet Miers, both of whom have been implicated through Congressional testimony in what has been dubbed the "Attorneygate" scandal, as RAW STORY reported previously.