Ivanka Trump used a personal email account
WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump repeatedly used a personal email account to conduct government business in 2017, a White House review found, a fact that raises the stakes on congressional oversight hearings the new Democratic House majority will hold.
Trump’s email use, much of which first came to light last year, included exchanges on her personal account with Cabinet secretaries, as well as forwards of schedules to her assistant, a person familiar with the emails said.
Democrats will be in control of at least 232 seats when the new House is sworn in next year, according to the New York Times’ latest count. And the personal email use of Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both serve as senior advisers to the president, has been expected to be among the topics the new leaders will address.
The subject has particular irony for Democrats, who bitterly point to President Trump highlighting during the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. At rally after rally, Trump discussed her server, buoyed by chants of “Lock her up!” from his crowds.
The server was discovered amid a congressional inquiry related to Clinton in 2015. The FBI investigated her use of the server — which included sending emails that were classified — but declined in July 2016 to press charges.
The Washington Post first reported on the scope of Ivanka Trump’s email use, saying Monday that there were up to 100 related to government business, but hundreds of others related to schedules.
The New York Times reported in September 2017 that Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, was one of at least six White House advisers using private emails in the early days of the Trump administration. Newsweek, that same month, reported specifically on Trump’s email use, saying that it was mostly before she formally joined the administration, and that she “occasionally” did so after she was sworn in as a senior adviser.
Trump had told people in the White House that she was unaware of the rules when she was using her personal account. But her repeated use of her personal email on a private address, ijkfamily.com, which was set up by Kushner and Trump during the transition, was a cause for concern within the White House Counsel’s Office, according to two people familiar with what took place.