Ivanka faces inquiry for private email use
WASHINGTON • Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many in violation of federal rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.
White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five cabinet agencies.
Throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.
The discovery alarmed some advisers to President Donald Trump, who feared the practices bore similarities to the email use of Hillary Clinton, an issue he made a focus of his 2016 campaign. Trump attacked her as untrustworthy and dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” for using a personal email account as secretary of state.
Some aides were startled by the volume of her personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned. Trump said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, acknowledged the president’s daughter occasionally used her private email before she was briefed on the rules, but he said none of her messages contained classified information.
“While transitioning into government, after she was given an official account but until the White House provided her the same guidance they had given others who started before she did, Ms. Trump sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family,” he said.
Mirijanian stressed that her email use was different than that of Clinton, who had a private email server in the basement of her home. “Ms. Trump did not create a private server in her house or office, no classified information was ever included, the account was never transferred at Trump Organization, and no emails were ever deleted,” Mirijanian said.
Like Trump, Clinton also said she was unaware of or misunderstood the rules. However, Clinton relied solely on a private email system, bypassing government servers entirely.
Austin Evers, executive director of the liberal watchdog group American Oversight, whose record requests sparked the White House discovery, said it strained credulity that Trump’s daughter did not know that government officials should not use private emails for official business.