Ivanka Trump Reportedly Used Personal Email Account For Official White House Business
Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser of President Trump, sent hundreds of emails to government officials through a personal email account last year, according to The Washington Post.
Ivanka Trump "often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner," the Post reports.
Many of those emails were "in violation of federal records rules," according to the newspaper.
Similar allegations dominated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential run — with then-candidate Trump frequently using the issue as a campaign talking point and encouraging his supporters at rallies in chants of "Lock her up!"
The Presidential Records Act mandates that all official White House communications be preserved. Using a personal email account instead of an official White House one might skirt that law.
Trump reportedly used her personal email account on fewer than 100 occasions to discuss government policies and official business with other Trump administration personnel. She also reportedly sent her official schedule to her own personal email and to her personal assistants fewer than 1,000 times.
She was "often replying to other administration officials who contacted her through her private email," the Post reports.
Trump also emailed officials "things about entrepreneurship and gender equity and women's roles in the workplace," the Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who broke the news, tells NPR.
White House ethics officials learned of Trump's repeated use of personal email in the fall of last year, when five Cabinet agencies were gathering emails in response to a public records lawsuit, the Post reports.
That discovery alarmed other advisers to President Trump, "who feared that his daughter's practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton," the Post reports.
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Trump's lawyer Abbe Lowell, said that the private email was used during the administration's post-election transition.
"While transitioning into government, until the White House provided her the same guidance they had to others who started before she did, Ms. Trump sometimes used her private account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family," Mirijanian said in a statement obtained by NPR's Tamara Keith.
Mirijanian said that the first daughter did not create a private server, delete emails or transmit classified information.
Clinton's private server based in her New York home during her tenure as Secretary of State was a problem throughout her campaign. The former presidential candidate initially said none of the emails she sent or received through the server were classified. However, months before the election, the FBI said 110 of the server's emails held classified information.
As recently as August, the president continued to bring up Clinton's emails.
"FBI ignored tens of thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails, many of which are REALLY BAD," he tweeted. "At some point I may have to get involved!"
[Copyright 2018 NPR]
