Ex-Clinton spokesman slams Ivanka Trump over defense of private email use: ‘Nothing short of outrageous’

A former spokesman for Hillary Clinton took aim at Ivanka Trump on Wednesday after the president’s adviser and eldest daughter defended her use of a private email account to do some White House business last year.

Nick Merrill called Trump’s defense of her personal email practices “outrageous,” pointing to her father, President Trump’s, frequent attacks aimed at Clinton over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of State.

{mosads}”We have so many other things to think about right now that are important to peoples’ lives and need solving, but this nonsense with Ivanka this morning was nothing short of outrageous,” Merrill tweeted Wednesday evening, referring to Ivanka Trump’s interview with ABC News earlier that day.

“This is the daughter of a man who marched around the country telling people that Hillary Clinton should go to jail over her emails, even after our nation’s law enforcement agencies concluded she had broken exactly zero laws. Ivanka Trump sat, smiled, & nodded complicitly throughout,” he continued.

Merrill also took aim at Ivanka Trump’s claim that her emails did not contain classified materials.

“Ivanka says her own emails weren’t classified. Ivanka has no idea if that’s true,” he wrote. “She means they weren’t marked as such. Neither were [Clinton’s]. Classification is an art, not a science, and two people reading the same email might have different views on the same mundane detail.”

The former Clinton spokesman went on to say that both Ivanka Trump’s and Clinton’s use of private email servers are “stupid scandals,” but said that Trump’s “deserves scrutiny.”

“This deserves scrutiny due to the sheer hypocrisy of it. Ivanka engaged in behavior when her father won an election in part by claiming such behavior should land a woman in jail,” Merrill wrote.

“The press should cover this and Congress should investigate, and we can see if anything is classified and determine whether Ivanka broke any rules.”

I hate talking about emails. I don’t want to talk about emails. We have so many other things to think about right now that are important to peoples’ lives and need solving, but this nonsense with Ivanka this morning was nothing short of outrageous.

— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) November 28, 2018

This is the daughter of a man who marched around the country telling people that Hillary Clinton should go to jail over her emails, even after our nation’s law enforcement agencies concluded she had broken exactly 0 laws. Ivanka Trump sat, smiled, & nodded complicitly throughout.

— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) November 28, 2018

Democrats have criticized Ivanka Trump over her acknowledgement this month that she used a private email account to send and receive hundreds of work emails in 2017, shortly after joining her father’s administration, pointing to similarities with Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of State.

Trump pushed back on that criticism Wednesday, saying that there was “no equivalency” between her actions and Clinton’s.

“All of my emails are stored and preserved. There were no deletions. There is no attempt to hide. There’s no equivalency to what my father’s spoken about,” she said, adding that there is “no restriction of using personal email” at the White House.

President Trump frequently suggested during the 2016 campaign that Clinton had committed crimes with her use of the private server.

The president has dismissed reports that his elder daughter may have violated federal law by using a personal email account to conduct government business as “fake news” and rejected parallels to Clinton’s private email setup.