Rep. Trey Gowdy, the outgoing Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has asked the White House to provide more information about how it handled first daughter and presidential adviser Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account for government business.
Gowdy requested information pertaining to how many emails Trump sent from her personal account relating to government business, how many of those emails were archived in accordance with record-keeping laws, and whether the emails contained sensitive or classified information. The South Carolina lawmaker also asked for documents that would show the White House has warned staffers about the use of private email being prohibited.
“The Committee must assess whether the White House took adequate steps to archive Ms. Trump’s emails and prevent a recurrence,” Gowdy said in a letter to chief of staff John Kelly on Tuesday.
Gowdy gave the White House a Dec. 5 deadline to respond and has also asked for the committee to be briefed on the matter.
[Opinion: 3 big distinctions between Ivanka Trump and Hillary Clinton’s email conduct]
The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump used her personal account through much of 2017 to exchange messages with White House aides and Cabinet officials.
Trump’s attorney said the use of the email account was used “almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family.”
President Trump defended his daughter amid the scrutiny.
“They weren’t classified like Hillary Clinton. They weren’t deleted like Hillary Clinton,” the president said Tuesday. “She wasn’t doing that to hide her emails.”
