House panel wants details on private White House emails
Six Trump advisers used own accounts for official business.
WASHINGTON — A top House Republican has demanded details on the use of private emails by some of President Donald 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, cited a recent Politico report that Jared Kushner set up a private email account after the election to conduct work-related business.
The New York Times reported that at least six of Trump’s closest advisers, including Kushner, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, used private email to discuss White House matters. Bannon and Priebus no longer work at the White House.
In addition, Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, who is married to Kushner, used a private account when she acted as an unpaid adviser in the first months of the administration, Newsweek reported Monday. Administration officials acknowledged that she also occasionally did so when she formally became a White House adviser.
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.
“All White House personnel have been instructed to use official email to conduct all government-related work,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “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.”
“White House counsel has instructed all White House staff to use their government email for official business, and only use that email,” she said.
Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, on Sunday confirmed Kushner’s use of a personal email account 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.
Sanders would not say whether the White House would release Kushner’s private emails that dealt with government business.