The House Oversight Committee on Thursday inched closer to subpoenaing personal email and text messages sent by key White House officials.
The panel voted 23-16 along party lines to authorize subpoenas for all presidential records sent to or received by non-career aides, such as White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, via private email, text message, mobile messaging apps, and encrypted software that were not forwarded to their government accounts since President Trump’s inauguration.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said the documents “belong to the public,” according to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, enacted after the Watergate scandal.
“It is the law,” the Maryland Democrat said, adding it prohibits the use of personal platforms unless information is forwarded to official accounts in 20 days.
The prospect of subpoenas escalates the fight between Cummings and the Trump administration as he leads oversight efforts in the House. Cummings claims Trump staffers have stymied his investigation.
Ranking Member Jim Jordan said the Democrats haven’t wasted “any time” after special counsel Robert Mueller’s “total bust” testimony.
“Now they’re going to go after the emails of the first family in an attempt to create an appearance of some type of controversy,” the Ohio Republican said.
The private communications probe was triggered, in part, by disclosures from lawyers for White House senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. A lawyer for Kushner told the committee last year the presidential son-in-law relied on private email and WhatsApp to conduct aspects of official business, including with foreign contacts. Legal counsel for Ivanka Trump told lawmakers she did not preserve some emails sent to her personal account if she did not respond to them. Steve Bannon also used his Blackberry and private email when he was the White House’s chief strategist.
The resolution authorizing the subpoenas additionally captures communications to and from White House staff regarding whether the records were classified or may have contained classified information, as well as documents referring to reports, allegations, or evidence of misuse of information technology systems.
