White House staffer Ivanka Trump used a personal email address to send hundreds of emails last year relating to government business, including to other administration officials, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The Post based the news on the fruits of a records request by the liberal watchdog group American Oversight. A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump’s attorney Abbe Lowell confirmed the news.
“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,” the spokesperson, Peter Mirijanian, told the Post in a statement.
In some ways, the story echoes that of Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server during her time as Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Attacking Clinton’s handling of government business using personal accounts became a central theme of President Donald Trump’s campaign, leading to the chant “Lock Her Up!”
Though Ivanka did not use a private server, according to the Post, there are noticeable parallels. The paper reported: “Both Trump and Clinton relied on their personal attorneys to review their private emails and determine which messages should be retained as government records.”
Mirijanian noted to the Post: “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.”
The executive director of American Oversight, Austin Evers, called Ivanka’s private email account “obvious hypocrisy” in a statement to the Post.
“There is no reasonable suggestion that she didn’t know better,” he said. “Clearly everyone joining the Trump administration should have been on high alert about personal email use.”
Evers added: “I’m disappointed — although not entirely surprised — that this administration disregarded clear laws that they more than anyone should have been aware of.”
According to the Post, Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner — whose personal email use was reported last year — set up accounts using the domain ijkfamily.com in December 2016, the month after Trump won the presidency.
