Ivanka Trump Used Private Email For Government Communications
In news replete with irony, it's being reported that Ivanka Trump used a private email account to communicate about government business.
Ivanka Trump, in addition to being the President’s eldest daughter also serves as a Senior Advisor to the President and is arguably one of the most powerful people inside the West Wing, apparently used a private email account to communicate with other White House and government officials in apparent violation of Federal record-keeping lawyers:
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.
Some aides were startled by the volume of Ivanka Trump’s personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned about the practice. She said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.
The White House referred requests for comment to Ivanka Trump’s attorney and ethics counsel, Abbe Lowell.
In a statement, Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for 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.
“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 in a statement.
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.
“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 as secretary of state, bypassing government servers entirely.
Both Trump and Clinton relied on their personal attorneys to review their private emails and determine which messages should be retained as government records.
(…)
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.
“There’s the obvious hypocrisy that her father ran on the misuse of personal email as a central tenet of his campaign,” Evers said. “There is no reasonable suggestion that she didn’t know better. Clearly everyone joining the Trump administration should have been on high alert about personal email use.”
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.
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.
Another category of less-substantive emails may have also violated the records law: hundreds of messages related to her official work schedule and travel details that she sent herself and personal assistants who cared for her children and house, they said.
People close to Ivanka Trump said she never intended to use her private email to shroud her government work. After she told White House lawyers she was unaware that she was breaking any email rules, they discovered that she had not been receiving White House updates and reminders to all staffers about prohibited use of private email, according to people familiar with the situation.
Using personal emails for government business could violate the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all official White House communications and records be preserved as a permanent archive of each administration. It can also increase the risk that sensitive government information could be mishandled or hacked, revealing government secrets and risking harm to diplomatic relations and secret operations.
(…)
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, people familiar with the review said.
After his review, Lowell forwarded emails that he had determined were related to official business to Ivanka Trump’s government account, a move he viewed as rectifying any violations of the records law, they said.
Lowell’s review found fewer than 1,000 personal emails in which Trump shared her official schedule and travel plans with herself and her personal assistants, according to two people familiar with the review.
Separately, there were fewer than 100 emails in which Trump used her personal account to discuss official business with other administration officials.
The scope of her personal email use had not emerged in response to American Oversight’s records request, which sought Trump’s correspondence with Cabinet agencies in early 2017. Most internal White House communications are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
“I’m disappointed — although not entirely surprised — that this administration disregarded clear laws that they more than anyone should have been aware of,” Evers said.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of the seriousness of her violation of the Presidential Records Act, the revelations about Ivanka’s use of a private email account to conduct government business carries with it no small degree of irony due to the fact that the same practices by Hillary Clinton played a central role in his campaign for the Presidency and they have come up repeatedly since he became President. The rallies that President Trump held as a candidate and in the past year and a half, for example, have often devolved into chants of “Lock Her Up!” from the crowd in reference to Clinton. Given that, the fact that the President’s daughter did essentially the same thing as Secretary Clinton, albeit with the caveat that she did not utilize a private email server and there has, as of yet, been no allegation that she may have mishandled classified in the process of using her non-government, insecure, account to conduct business. At the very least, the fact that the President, who also happens to be her father, spent so much time talking about the Clinton matter and that the issue received significant coverage during the campaign makes it somewhat hard to believe that Trump was unaware of the problems that might be created by using private email in this context. In any case, the truth of the matter is that there doesn’t appear to be any kind of criminal or civil penalty associated with failing to comply with the records keeping laws at issue here, so it’s not clear that Trump faces legal trouble here. Nonetheless, given that ignorance of the law is generally not an excuse and that it seems utterly implausible in this case, one does have to chuckle at the obvious schadenfreude that Democrats must be feeling at the moment.
Ivanka Trump is hardly the first person to fall victim to this provision of Federal law, of course. In addition to the problems that Clinton created for herself when she decided to set up a private email server and use it for official State Department business, a decision that at the very least was a serious lapse in judgment from my perspective, there have also been reports over the years of other government officials who have done the same thing. One of the most notable examples other than Clinton, of course, is Colin Powell, who admitted years after the fact to having used his private account to communicate regarding government business. That happened, though, in the early days of email when the State Department’s internal email system was primitive to say the least. Nonetheless, one has to wonder why it is that government officials cannot get it through their heads that government business should not be discussed on private accounts except perhaps in an emergency situation and even then only sparingly.
In the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t seem like an egregious error on Trump’s part. Given the extent to which her father has used this issue as a political cudgel, though, it’s clear that she should have known better and that this repooft is likely to be something that Democrats are likely to want to know more about when they take control of the House in January.
I know that all of our resident Trump supporting IT experts will immediately seize on the “private server” thing to say that this isn’t a comparable act. However, let’s also remember that Ivanka’s choice (and yes, this was an intentional choice) comes after a campaign declaring:
A) how completely unacceptable anything like that was, and
B) a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and be better
The act is less significant in an absolute technological security sense, but moreso in demonstrating hypocrisy. If the issue that people have is that Hillary Clinton said one thing and then did something different, relying on privilege to get by, how is this any different?
Of course, people who were against Hillary because of legacy issues probably have already reconciled electing a president who has brought multiple members of his immediate family in to handle critical policy issues as being entirely a different thing.
LOCK HER UP!!! LOCK HER UP!!! LOCK HER UP!!!
Waiting for the sycophants to come and tell us how this is sooooo much different than Clinton.
Every day the con becomes ever more obvious. And yet, the Cult45 members are still oblivious.
Watching Dennison get beat with his own cudgel…criminy…my freude is going to be so over schadened.
The Trumpkins have already established that the WaPo invented this story to take the heat off Hillary Clinton.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Oh, it’s obvious: Dennison doesn’t have a crush on Clinton.
I hereby nominate “repooft” as the new English word of the year:
repooft- noun
1. an embarrassing account given of a particular hypocrisy, especially in the form of an official misbehavior, after thorough investigation or consideration by a member of the news media.
2. a sudden loud noise of or like a fart.
Because people higher up don’t like it when the rules inconvenience them. If the official server is slow, or delays presenting emails, or bounces messages, or requires a password for every session, I can see lots of people would avoid it.
There’s a much bigger issue here…this chick has absolutely no oversight. On anything.
She’s as deep into Russia as Donnie Jr. is…and yet she is apparently skating. Did she testify to Congress?
She’s getting all these copyrights out of China, conveniently timed to critical US policy decisions…and there is bubkis made of it.
Does this mean that Democrats will open 5 or 6 consecutive congressional inquiries? I think what we’ll find is that Ivanka had something to do with ‘Benghazi!’ don’t you?
This administration IS the swamp.
Rake her up!!! Rake her up!!!
Doug, since you brought it up, just how was the email system of Clinton’s time more sophisticated than of Powell’s?
#awkward
@OzarkHillbilly:
Change approved!
One of the most notable examples other than Clinton, of course, is Colin Powell, who admitted years after the fact to having used his private account to communicate regarding government business. That happened, though, in the early days of email when the State Department’s internal email system was primitive to say the least.
Additionally, the cyber threat environment was also primitive. Hackers didn’t have anywhere near as broad an attack surface as they do today.
one has to wonder why it is that government officials cannot get it through their heads that government business should not be discussed on private accounts except perhaps in an emergency situation and even then only sparingly.
The same reason private-sector employees cannot get it through their heads: Most people are completely, utterly ignorant of basic cyber security hygiene. Sixty-four percent of working adults don’t know what ransomware is (you know, that thing that took down the City of Atlanta’s systems). Over half of employees whose employers give them a device for work allow friends and family to use it. Read it and weep, folks:
https://www.techradar.com/news/more-than-half-of-working-adults-dont-know-what-ransomware-is
Weren’t we assured by all right-thinking Republicans that such abuse of e-mail is the most heinous crime in the history of crimes, going all the way back to when humans first descended from the trees?
Shouldn’t we expect, then, righteous and full-throated calls for Ivanka’s imprisonment?
Because all I’m hearing from over there is lamely transparent excuses and chirping crickets.
I am enjoying the “But her Emails” crowd outrage over this.
Let me know when they find classified information in those emails.
I will support Ivanka Trump deciding what emails she will share and will delete just like Hilary Clinton did.
I am sure this will all be dismissed as WhatAboutism.
@Paul L.:
It’s not whataboutism, it’s just flat-out hypocrisy. You Trumpists cried out daily for Clinton’s imprisonment, despite her not even being charged with anything (so much for “innocent until proven guilty” which apparently only applies to male sexual abusers in GOP-world), but now that a Trump has been found doing exactly the same thing–and whether or not she was sent a couple of post-facto classified items is irrelevant, because she could have at any time–you’ve nothing but, as I said above, lamely transparent excuses.
If banal hypocrisy didn’t already exist, you fools would have invented it.
These are pretty big caveats, since were the two biggest issues involved: the ability to destroy what should have been public records in defiance of FOIA, etc. and the potential mishandling of classified info. If Ivanka did either of things, they are comparable. If not, it’s still wrong (and ironic) but not in the same league. We keep this garbage over and over again — trying to conflate the use of a private e-mail with what Clinton did. They are not the same.
And I’m sure that makes me a MAGA-hat wearing Trumpaloon in the eyes of the commentariat. But being anti-Trump doesn’t mean I have to obediently jump down every rhetorical rabbit hole.
@Mikey:
No, no. Since God created Man, and Eve got us kicked out of paradise when she used the snake’s email server.
@Mikey:
It is banal hypocrisy.
If according to the left, Hilary Clinton’s emails are a non issue then Ivanka Trump’s emails are a non issue.
BTW, Federal Judge Orders Hillary Clinton To Answer Long-Evaded Questions About Her Secret Server http://minx.cc:1080/?post=378157
@Paul L.:
And if, according to the right, Hillary Clinton’s e-mails are an issue worthy of imprisonment-without-trial, then…well, I would hope you could complete that thought on your own.
@Paul L.: And don’t get me wrong–I certainly don’t think Clinton’s e-mails situation was a non-issue. It was, quite rightly, investigated, and that investigation concluded that she acted with poor judgment but charges were not warranted. That should have been the end of the discussion, but Trump made her e-mails a centerpiece of his campaign, even calling on a hostile foreign power to assist in “finding” them.
So please don’t put on airs of offense when we point out how you Trumpists are doing your best to brush Ivanka’s similar problems under the rug…
So you all agree Hillary should be prosecuted and sent to jail. Why so late to the party?
K-Thug.
We all agreed that she should be investigated, which was done. So would you agree that we now need an investigation for Ivanka? You were unwilling to accept Clinton’s word of that of her lawyer, which I could support. The investigation was appropriate. Tell us why we should just accept the word of Ivanka and her lawyer, especially as they really can’t claim ignorance.
Steve
@Nightcrawler:
Powell used an AOL account. Hacks of such accounts was relatively trivial even in those days. The key point is that no email system, state department or otherwise, is ever to be used for classified information. We know exactly what was in Clinton’s private account because she turned them over, and there was very, very little that was in any way classified at the time and that little was trivial in the extreme. On the other hand, we have very little idea what was in Powell’s because he destroyed them after leaving office. (I accept that it could have been an inadvertent destruction, but it was a violation of the law nonetheless.)Ditto for Condoleeza Rice’s senior staff who also used personal emails.
@Paul L.:
Snark aside, all senior officials since long before email existed have decided which of their correspondence was government related and which was private. Whether Ivanka qualifies as a senior official is an open question, since it is not clear what she or Jared actually do.
Would it be wrong to have her brought before a house oversight committee, asked lots of questions about whether she received the official IT training, and whether she noticed the constant refrain from her father’s campaign?
And then can all the Democrats on the committee go for a round of “Lock her up! Lock her up!”?
I know it would be petty, but sometimes petty is all you can get. Do we expect her father’s justice department to properly investigate? Of course not.
After months of national coverage on proper email policies, I don’t think the “I didn’t know” excuse can work anymore, or the “but everyone does it” excuse.
@Guarneri:
Ya know… ya so trollish, I imagine you chortling in your mom’s basement when you type.
So sad.
I will never understand how using a private server is worse than Powell or Trump’s general email service.
But surely the issue is the content of the emails much more than the general activity. Powell’s we will never know about. Let’s see what Trump was sharing on on essentially an open line (like her dad’s phone calls).
Here’s what I believe:
– Clinton shouldn’t have conducted government business with a private account.*
– Having followed in the footsteps of her predecessors and done so, she should have turned over all government related emails without asking. It should be noted that the policy she followed, waiting until she was asked before turning stuff over, was exactly the same as what her predecessors did (except for Powell, who deleted his account).
– The supposition should be that she did so correctly. However if, by examing the emails received from her, it turns out that she withheld significant emails, then there should be a deeper investigation. It should be noted that Clinton appears to have erred on the side of caution, including, for example, many emails about her daughter’s wedding plans because her official travel schedule was discussed.
The exact same should hold true for any government official, including Ivanka Trump.
*It’s also true that you are not allowed to conduct personal business from a government account. Separating these out for a senior official is not easy. If a SOS replies to a friend who asks “when will you be in the US?” by sending her official schedule, is that an official or private email? Lest you think I’m splitting hairs, these same hairs were split by the Republicans trying to find “classified” material she had not turned over.
It’s only hypocrisy if you think Republicans have actual beliefs. They don’t. They just have hate. They are very clear on what they hate, and not at all clear on what they believe, other than their belief that they should hate.
Every other core Republican “belief” – the rule of law, small government, balanced budgets, respect for the military, NATO, one-man-one-vote, free trade, decorum and process – has been abandoned because they never really believed those things. Those were just noise to cover the insistent whine of racism and misogyny and greed that are the only true Republican beliefs.
@Guarneri:
So you agreed that Clinton should go thru 10 investigations over her emails. Why shouldn’t Ivanka?
@Paul L.:
Ivanka’s staff already did exactly that, in case you thought you were being clever.
What boggles my mind is her apparent explanation that she didn’t fully understand the rules. I mean, seriously, how can a Trump family member, after the 2016 campaign, NOT understand that government business on private email = bad?
PS: I think both Hillary and Ivanka showed poor judgement but not criminal behavior. Only one of them is a total hypocrite though.
At least we can rest assured knowing that Ivanka will never be elected President, and that the Trump dynasty will stop before it gets a chance to be a dynasty. Mismanaging email is a disqualifying sin.
Huzzah.
Also, we might need a special prosecutor for this, to avoid the conflicts of interest the justice department would have. Maybe a former FBI head.
What is Comey doing these days? A small taste of hell for him, investigating the (presumably unimportant) emails of Ivanka Trump, sifting between appointments to get a massage or get her car serviced (or whatever) and whatever her official responsibilities are. Maybe he can produce a report letting us know what her official responsibilities are.
@Nightcrawler: While I will agree that the statistic on ransomware is disturbing–I don’t even work anymore and still have a rudimentary understanding of it–I do wonder how many of those 64% of working adults work in jobs where their use of technology is beyond the level of being the person who scans in the bar code at the cashier station. How much cybersecurity training should Staples be giving the cashiers anyway?
@Paul L.:
Your sarcasm meter is in dire need of recalibration.
@Paul L.:
Yeah, me too… but for FAR different reasons. Sorta like Crooked Vanka’s Emails
(for full Wonkette goodness, clicky here too: https://www.wonkette.com/russia-if-youre-listening-we-hope-you-can-find-ivankas-33-000-missing-emails — Russia, if you’re listening! we hope you can find Ivanka Trump’s 33,000 missing emails!!! )
I can’t wait until CNN’s Acosta asks Trump about it. I look forward to POTUS’s rational well thought out explanation.
Nate Silver tweeted the correct take on this:
However, I’ll not be holding my breath waiting for the NYT apology.
I am fascinated how Ivanka oscillates between “I am a powerful, professional person fully capable of executing my role as a policy advisor to the President” to “I am a confused naif only trying to help my Daddy! Your poopy-head rules make my tummy hurt!” as conditions dictate.
Today, she is a Margaret Keane big-eyed waif.
Margaret Keane, The Stray
https://theartstack.com/artist/margaret-keane/stray-5
@Liberal Capitalist:
I adore Wonkette.
@One American:
All right. We can make this work.
You are obviously a super-freak and don’t lose that, but you may want to be slightly more accessible stylistically. Perhaps try to be slightly more coherent next comment.
This is literally nonsense. You’re jamming 18 ideas into 12 words and your brain goes Whatevs! and leaves out all of the connective bits that make a story a story or an argument an argument and you just stop when it makes no sense to stop there.
You just do this thing where you sneeze out words and then stop when it makes no sense to stop right now after that particular word. I quite enjoy odd communication styles, but I find your take unapproachable and opaque. To me, it’s just disjointed words and phrases you would find in the comment section of Althouse randomly expelled.
And saying “Blessings!” at the end doesn’t absolve you.
Oversight and Government Reform chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) wrote a letter to chief of staff John Kelly Tuesday requesting a briefing on Ivanka Trump’s private email account usage, including identification of any emails containing classified information.
Futile plea of the day: de Stijl, can you please stop trying to argue with 1 American? This goes beyond “Don’t feed the trolls.” You are marshaling all this intellectual firepower to engage someone who literally has trouble putting together a coherent sentence. It is embarrassing, not revealing.
Let us not forget that the W administration did government business with their RNC email accounts. IIRC some 33 million emails which, when questioned, turned out to have mysteriously evaporated off the RNC servers.
@MarkedMan:
Perhaps non futile.
I have a tendency to beat the dead horse.
If you think I’m being a jack-ass enough to comment on it, I am def being a jack-ass, and need to self-regulate my behavior.
@MarkedMan: I’m using a technique here I developed during 13 years of moderating a biology/evolution website. When some Creationist short-buser came around I seldom read their OPs (they’re usually extra-verbose to boot) but I would read anything a knowledgeable person excerpted to dispute. That way i could skip thousand of words of “blah blah blah tornado in a junkyard blah blah blah second law of thermodynamics blah blah blah why do you hate Jesus…” and utilize the fact that someone else had taken the time to scan all of it to find some particularly choice nugget.
I do the same thing here. I skip the paragraphs of “blah blah blah Whatabout Robert Byrd blah blah blah North Korea Gave Up Their Nukes blah blah blah…” and let someone like de stijl go through it pull out any choice bits like Michelle Obama is a Man or whatever.
I’m 42 and historically no stranger to substances. I have to be efficient with my remaining time. 😛