Officials demand details on Trump aides’ emails
WASHINGTON — A top House Republican has demanded details on the use of private emails by some of President Trump’s closest advisers.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina conservative who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the top Democrat on that panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings, cite a recent Politico report that Jared Kushner set up a private email account after the election to conduct workrelated business.
The New York Times reports that at least six of Trump’s closest advisers, including son-in-law Kushner, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, used private email to discuss White House matters. Bannon and Priebus no longer work at the White House.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly attacked Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for setting up a private email server as secretary of state, a decision that prompted an FBI investigation that shadowed her for much of the campaign. Gowdy is best known for his two-year investigation into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in which he focused heavily on Clinton’s role as secretary of state.
In letters Monday to the White House general counsel and State Department, Gowdy and Cummings said they want details on all employees.
“With numerous public revelations of senior executive branch employees deliberately trying to circumvent these laws by using personal, private, or alias email addresses to conduct official government business, the committee has aimed to use its oversight and investigative resources to prevent and deter misuse of private forms of written communication,” the lawmakers wrote.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had no immediate comment Tuesday on the request by Gowdy and Cummings.
“All White House personnel have been instructed to use official email to conduct all governmentrelated work,” she said. “They are further instructed that if they receive work-related communication on personal accounts, they should be forwarded to official email accounts.”
Sanders told reporters Monday that the use of private email accounts by staff was “to my knowledge, very limited.”
Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, on Sunday confirmed Kushner’s use of a personal email in his first few months of the administration. He said the emails usually involved news articles and political commentary. Lowell also said any non-personal emails were forwarded to Kushner’s official account and “all have been preserved in any event.”
Sanders would not say whether the White House would release Kushner’s private emails that dealt with government business.
While the Trump aides’ private email accounts spurred accusations of hypocrisy from Democrats, there are differences. Clinton stored classified information on a private server, and she exclusively used a private account for her government work, sending or receiving tens of thousands of emails. The content and frequency of the Trump advisers’ emails remain unknown, but Trump administration officials described the use of personal accounts as sporadic.
The New York Times contributed to this report.