House Dems to investigate Ivanka Trump’s email use

Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are planning to look into Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account to determine whether she violated federal law.

A Democratic aide told The Hill on Tuesday that the committee is planning “to continue our investigation of the presidential records act and federal records act, and we want to know if Ivanka complied with the law.”

{mosads}The Washington Post reported Monday that the president’s daughter and White House aide had used her personal account last year to correspond with White House staffers, her assistants and Cabinet officials, in potential violation of federal records law.

A spokesperson for Trump’s lawyer told the Post that while she was transitioning into a government position, she “sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family.”

He said that the emails have since been forwarded to her official government account in order to comply with the federal records law.

Trump’s husband, White House adviser Jared Kushner, also came under scrutiny last year after Politico reported that he used a private email account to conduct official White House business after the election. The Post report stated that Trump had used an email account from a domain that she shares with Kushner.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the oversight panel and its likely chairman in the next congressional session, said in a statement later Monday that it had started a bipartisan investigation last year into White House staffers’ use of personal email and whether they were in compliance with records law, “but the White House never gave us the information we requested.”

“We need those documents to ensure that Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and other officials are complying with federal records laws and there is a complete record of the activities of this Administration,” Cummings said. “My goal is to prevent this from happening again— not to turn this into a spectacle the way Republicans went after Hillary Clinton.”

The House Oversight Committee had also requested information from the White House last year about Kushner’s use of a personal email account. The White House declined to provide further details at the time, citing an internal review that was underway.

The Democratic aide also noted on Tuesday that the committee had started a bipartisan investigation last year on whether White House officials were in compliance with the Presidential Records Act under then-committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who has since retired from Congress. GOP members are no longer actively pursuing it, however.

President Trump and Republicans had repeatedly slammed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server to conduct government business.

The president used the controversy to attack his then-Democratic opponent during the 2016 presidential race, leading chants of “lock her up” at campaign rallies that continue to break out during his more recent rallies.

–This report was updated at 2:10 p.m.