New documents indicate Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and an assistant to the president, used a private email address to conduct official government business, although it was before she technically became a government employee.
American Oversight, a government watchdog group, obtained an email chain from February between Linda McMahon, head of the Small Business Administration, and Trump through a Freedom of Information Act request showing Trump sent emails using a private .com address.
Government employees use a .gov address. The emails show Trump employed a chief of staff in the White House before the president’s daughter officially became a government employee at the end of March.
In the email exchange from February, Trump asked McMahon to connect her chief of staff, Julie Radford, with someone from the administrator’s office to “explore opportunities to collaborate” on McMahon’s women’s entrepreneurship initiative.
American Oversight received the emails in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in March asking for documents pertaining to Trump’s role with her father’s administration.
“Yet again we see that there’s one rule for the Trump family and another for everyone else. It’s simply breathtaking that both Ivanka and Jared Kushner would conduct government [business] on a personal email account after running a campaign centered on that very issue,” American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers said in a statement. “The fact that they would brazenly ignore rules governing email use raises even more questions about their judgement and fitness to hold positions in the White House.”
The emails with McMahon were sent one month before Trump decided to become an official government employee.
Trump announced in a statement at the end of March she would become an unpaid employee in the White House Office with the title of assistant to the president, which would subject her to the same rules as other government employees.
Even before Trump decided to join the ranks of the federal government, she said she would serve as an informal adviser to the president and had an office in the West Wing. Trump was also in the midst of receiving a security clearance and communications devices when she announced she would officially become a government employee, the New York Times reported in March.
Revelations about Trump’s use of a private email address come just one day after Politico reported her husband, Jared Kushner, used a private email address to correspond with government officials.
Kushner serves as a senior adviser at the White House, and he set up the email account in December.
The president’s son-in-law sent fewer than 100 emails to White House officials from January to August, including National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Kushner’s lawyer said most of the emails were sent to his private account from administration officials, and they mainly contained news articles or political commentary.
