Ivanka Trump has apparently done something that her father railed against Hillary Clinton for doing during his campaign in 2016. However No. 45 will more than likely not hold her to any account despite what he’s said about the former Secretary of State in the past.
Monday, the Washington Post reported (via the American Oversight) that Ms. Trump sent ‘hundreds’ of government emails to Cabinet officials, White House aides and her assistants from a personal email address during 2017. According to CNN, The Presidential Records Act requires that all government communications in the White House be preserved.
Via WaPo:
White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she 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 discovery alarmed some advisers to President Trump, who feared that his daughter’s practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton, an issue he made a focus of his 2016 campaign. Trump attacked his Democratic challenger as untrustworthy and dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” for using a personal email account as secretary of state.
White House officials were alarmed at the number of emails that Ivanka reportedly sent not only on a non-government server but a platform that was more than likely less secure than that of her government account. Of course this could open the door to hackers who more or less may have been jumping at the opportunity to obtain possibly classified or sensitive government material between Ivanka Trump and other White House officials. Moreover though, officials were probably cringing at the similarities with the aforementioned Hillary Clinton criticisms considering one of the rallying cries for the Trump contingent was ‘lock her up!’ in reference to Clinton’s email controversy.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump’s attorney, Abbe Lowell forwarded all the emails he believed were related to official government business to her government email account according to CNN. Furthermore, Peter Mirijanian, the spokesperson for Lowell and ethics counsel for Ivanka Trump released the following statement:
“Like most people, before entering into government service, Ms. Trump used a private email. When she entered the government, she was given a government email account for official use. 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 continued:
“To address misinformation being peddled about Ms. Trump’s personal email, she did not create a private server in her house or office, there was never classified information transmitted, the account was never transferred or housed at Trump Organization, no emails were ever deleted, and the emails have been retained in the official account in conformity with records preservation laws and rules,”
I’m not going to buy the notion that Ivanka Trump didn’t know the rules when it came to the email issues all things considered. Nor am I going to look the other way when Mirijanian tries to deflect by saying ‘oh well she didn’t use a personal email server’ unlike Hillary Clinton. Given what happened prior, Ivanka certainly knew better.
But in any sense, yes it’s probably true that most government officials get lax with their emails at some point during their time which goes to show just how stupid it was to slam Hillary for her email misdeeds.
If anything this is yet another example of the rules applying to everyone else but the Trumps.
