Democrats seek details on private emails by officials
House Democrats pressed Republicans to join them in trying to obtain documents about the Trump administration’s use of private email for government work, saying the White House general counsel’s office refused to oblige in a meeting this week.
Among the information being sought is whether top presidential advisers — including Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law — complied with the Presidential Records Act, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee wrote in a letter Friday. That act requires official records to be forwarded and preserved from their personal email accounts to their governmental email accounts within 20 days.
In a letter Friday, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight panel, urged Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, to join him in writing the White House to demand “full compliance with our bipartisan request” by Oct. 26.
“If you decide not to do so, then I ask you to place this matter on the agenda for our next regularly scheduled business meeting so all committee members will have the opportunity to vote on a motion to subpoena the White House for the documents and information it is withholding from the committee,” Cummings wrote.
Gowdy disputed the Democrat’s account, saying it’s “false” because the White House has committed to follow up on the committee’s request.
“As recently as this morning I was on the phone with a Cabinet-level official to ensure their full compliance. We need the documents — not the drama,” Gowdy said in a statement.
Gowdy later Friday released a letter sent to White House Counsel Donald McGahn — dated Friday — noting the meeting earlier this week and stating his committee “would appreciate” the White House sharing the results of its “internal review” of allegations of recordkeeping noncompliance there “as soon as practicable.”
A sterner tone was adopted by Gowdy in a separate letter, also sent Friday, to four agencies — the departments of Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior and NASA — similarly seeking previously requested material from them on the use of private email accounts.
In that letter, Gowdy said there has not been sufficient communication received from them and he threatened to subpoena the agency information if a good-faith commitment to comply fully has not occurred by Nov. 3. In yet a third letter Friday, Gowdy reminded 12 other agencies that material is also being sought from them, but no subpoena threat was included.
The standoff with the White House began to boil over Monday, when White House congressional liaison Marc Short wrote a letter to Gowdy and Cummings sidestepping their earlier bipartisan request for that information on nongovernmental email use and other communications.
Short didn’t identify “a single White House official who used a non-governmental email account, failed to identify a single non-governmental email account that was used, and failed to provide any information whatsoever about White House officials who used personal text messaging, phone-based message applications, or encrypted software for official communications,” Cummings wrote.
On Wednesday, Oversight panel staff members received a briefing from Stefan Passantino, and Uttam Dhillon, deputy counsels to the president, and Daniel Epstein, an associate counsel, Cummings said.
“Throughout the course of this briefing, they continued to refuse to identify any White House officials who used personal email accounts, any personal email accounts they used, or any individuals who used personal text messaging, phonebased message applications, or encrypted software for official communications,” he wrote.
Cummings said they did disclose that several White House employees came forward and “confessed” that they failed to forward official records from their personal email accounts to their governmental email accounts within 20 days, as the Presidential Records Act requires.
“However, the White House officials refused to identify these employees. Asked whether Senior Adviser to the President Jared Kushner complied with the Presidential Records Act, these White House officials replied, ‘You should talk to Mr. Kushner’s counsel about that,’” Cummings wrote.