Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records 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 to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.
The discovery alarmed some advisers to President Trump, who feared that his daughter’s practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton, an issue he made a focus of his 2016 campaign. He attacked his Democratic challenger as untrustworthy and dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” for using a personal email account as secretary of state.
[...]
She said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.
WaPo
Literally unbelievable. The entire country knew about those rules. And James Comey famously screwed Hillary's bid for the presidency by opening, closing and reopening an investigation into the matter.
Trumpettes still chant "Lock her up!" at every rally.
Ivanka Trump and her husband set up personal emails with the domain “ijkfamily.com” through a Microsoft system in December 2016, as they were preparing to move to Washington so Kushner could join the White House, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
The couple’s emails are prescreened by the Trump Organization for security problems such as viruses but are stored by Microsoft, the people said.
[...]
In a statement, Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for [Ivanka'slawyer Abbe] Lowell, acknowledged that 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.
[...]
Mirijanian said Ivanka Trump turned over all her government-related emails months ago so they could be stored permanently with other White House records.
And he stressed that her email use was different from that of Clinton, who had a private email server in the basement of her Chappaqua, N.Y., home. At one point, an archive of thousands of Clinton’s emails was deleted by a computer specialist amid a congressional investigation.
He's right. But Ivanka is lying if she says she didn't know about the rules.
Trump used her personal account to discuss government policies and official business fewer than 100 times — often replying to other administration officials who contacted her through her private email, according to people familiar with the review.
So did Jared also send government information through that service? Oh, yes.
Her husband’s use of personal email for government work drew intense scrutiny when it was first reported by Politico last fall. The revelation prompted demands from congressional investigators that Kushner preserve his records, which his attorney said he had. At the time, administration officials acknowledged to news organizations, including the New York Times and Politico, that Ivanka Trump had occasionally used a private account when she joined the White House.
But Trump had used her personal email for official business far more frequently than known, according to people familiar with the administration’s review — a fact that remained a closely held secret inside the White House.
“She was the worst offender in the White House,” said a former senior U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal dynamics.
After discovering the extent of her email use in September 2017, White House lawyers relied on Lowell, Ivanka Trump’s attorney, to help review her personal emails to determine which were personal and which were official business, according to the people.
The White House Counsel’s Office did not have access to her personal account and could not review it without invading her privacy and possibly violating privileged communications with her attorneys.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment