The suspicions that President Donald Trump’s daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, who is a White House senior adviser, are using their private email for White House businesses are now getting bigger after the news that hundreds of White House emails were sent to a previously unknown email account on Kushner and Ivanka’s private domain. According to Politico, the emails were sent this year, not from one, but from various White House addresses. Many of the messages ended up on an account that the couple shares with household staff.
The messages were reportedly sent from Ivanka, her assistant Bridges Lamar and other people who work with her and her husband in the White House. Allegedly, the messages include travel documents that are not public, official White House documents and internal schedules. One of the three people familiar with the matter says that the messages were sent mostly from White House accounts, but sometimes they were sent from private emails.
Some U.S. media reported last week that six or more employees in the White House have used their private account for White House work. They did this at least occasionally. The use of private emails in the White House is always a subject of debate in the U.S., but this time Kushner is in the spotlight. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote to Kushner last week to tell him they are not happy that he didn’t inform them for about the account when they started the investigation about the Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections. They expressed their concern and told him that they are not happy that they had to learn the information from the news.
Using a private email is not illegal as long as the messages are subsequently forwarded to the White House. According to The Times, Kushner established his own domain IJKFamily.com to host his family personal email. The domain is hosted by GoDaddy on a server in Arizona.
Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell said that less than one hundred emails from January through August were sent or returned by Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal account. According to the lawyer, the emails were mostly forwarded news articles and the initiators of the exchange were other people who emailed Kushner on his personal account.
The Politico reports that such usage is more widespread, and cites “a person familiar with the setup” as saying that some security measures were put in place. Most of the emails exchanged between Ivanka and Kushner came from Ivanka’s assistant. They were mostly work-related data. They were exchanged on daily basis.
“The extent of this coordination illustrates both full transparency and a desired separation between her work and personal functions,” a spokesperson for Ivanka said.
USA Today reported that internet registration records show that Kushner and Ivanka re-routed their personal email accounts to computers run by the Trump Organization as public scrutiny intensified over their use of private emails to conduct White House business. A spokesperson for Ivanka and Kushner denied reports indicating the couple had an email account that used Trump Organization servers.
The White House is investigating the use of private email by White House officials. The House Oversight Committee is asking for the names of the officials who have used private email, as well as encrypted message applications. The controversy is making the Democrats very angry. Hillary Clinton called the reports evidence of “rank hypocrisy” from the administration.
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