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. Trump
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. Trump 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.
Ivanka Trump often discussed or relayed official White House business last year using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
“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 than 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.
Clinton originally said none of the messages she sent or received were “marked classified.” The FBI later determined that 110 emails contained classified information at the time they were sent or received.
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.
Revelations about Clinton’s personal email system led to an FBI investigation
of whether she had mishandled classified information. The scandal
shadowed Clinton throughout the 2016 White House race, culminating in
then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s controversial decision to hold a news
conference a few months before the election to announce his conclusion
that she had been reckless with government secrets but that there was
not sufficient evidence she had intended to skirt the law.
During
the campaign, Donald Trump said the Democratic nominee’s “corruption is
on a scale we have never seen before” and called her personal email use
“bigger than Watergate.”
Trump supporters
still chant “Lock her up!” at his rallies, and the president, nearly two
years into his administration, continues to tweet about Clinton’s
emails.
“Big story out that the FBI ignored tens of thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails, many of which are REALLY BAD,” he tweeted in
August, referring to a Fox News story about claims that the bureau did
not scrutinize all her emails. “Also gave false election info. I feel
sure that we will soon be getting to the bottom of all of this
corruption. At some point I may have to get involved!”
Ivanka
Trump first used her personal email to contact Cabinet officials in
early 2017, before she joined the White House as an unpaid senior
adviser, according to emails obtained by American Oversight and first reported by Newsweek.
In
late February 2017, she used her personal email to contact Small
Business Administration chief Linda McMahon and propose they meet to
explore “opportunities to collaborate.” The following month, she emailed
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, suggesting that their staffers meet to
discuss ways to collaborate on “locational/workforce development and
k-12 STEM education.”
While her messages were largely about government work, Trump was not then subject to White House records rules.
When
she joined the White House on March 30, Trump pledged to comply “with
all ethics rules,” responding to complaints that her voluntary role gave
her all of the access and perks of the White House — but none of the
legal responsibilities or constraints.
“Throughout
this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the
White House counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented
nature of my role,” she said in a statement at the time.
But
Trump continued to occasionally use her personal email in her official
capacity, according to people familiar with the review.
Her husband Jared Kushner’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, 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.
In many cases, government officials
contacted Ivanka Trump first at her personal email address. That was the
case with a note she received in April 2017 from Treasury Department
official Dan Kowalski, who was seeking to set up a meeting between the
president and the secretary general of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, an international economic group of which
the United States is a member.
“I apologize for
reaching out to you on your personal email for this, but it is the only
email I have for you,” he wrote, according to an email obtained by
American Oversight.
“For future reference my WH email is [redacted],” Ivanka Trump replied. “Thanks for reaching out and making this introduction.”
But other times, Trump used her private email to initiate official business.
In
April 2017, she used her personal email to write to Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin’s chief of staff, Eli Miller, suggesting that he connect
with her chief of staff, Julie Radford. The email chain, obtained by American Oversight, was copied to Radford’s government account.
“It
would be great if you both could connect next week to discuss
[redacted],” she wrote. “We would love your feedback and input as we
structure.”
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