The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is demanding that President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner preserve all government-related business that he might have done on his private email account, and hinted that he might soon demand that Kushner give those emails to the committee.
The request from Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., came just one day after reports that Kushner had been using his personal email. Kushner’s attorney is on the record saying Kushner used the account less than a hundred times “from January through August” of this year.
Kushner’s use of the personal email drew instant comparisons from those on the left to the months-long campaign that Republicans like Trump waged against Hillary Clinton. However, Clinton used a private email that was managed on her own private server.
Cummings himself drew the comparison in his letter to Kushner asking for the emails. He pulled out a 2015 quote from Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who just took over as chairman of the oversight committee.
“The public has a right to access public records,” the quote from Gowdy began. “The public has a right to certainty that no classified or sensitive information was placed at risk of compromise.”
This year, Cummings, along with then-Chairman Jason Chaffetz, sent a letter to White House counsel Don McGahn asking if any senior White House officials were using non-official email accounts to conduct government business.
Cummings said the committee received a response on April 11 in which White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short said there were no senior officials with multiple accounts.
“This statement appears to be inaccurate, although it is possible that Mr. Short was referring to senior officials with multiple official governmental email accounts and that he did not know about your personal email account at the time he wrote this letter to the Committee,” Cummings wrote.
Cummings asked Kushner to immediately preserve as much information from the account as possible, and to give to the committee “a list of all emails you sent or received on non-governmental accounts in which you have conducted official business.”
