The White House declined to provide information to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding the use of personal email and encrypted messaging apps for government work by White House staff.
President Trump’s congressional liaison Marc Short responded to leaders of the House oversight committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., but did not provide details about staff members’ use of private emails.
“The White House and covered employees endeavor to comply with all relevant laws,” Short wrote in a letter, according to Politico.
Although officials are supposed to use government email addresses to conduct business, it is not illegal for White House officials to use private accounts, provided they forward work-related messages to their work accounts.
Short also did not provide records Gowdy and Cummings had requested regarding the use of private air travel by officials in the administration.
“The White House response to both the email investigation and the charter plane investigation has been almost non-existent,” Cummings said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “We asked for documents on a bipartisan basis, and all they sent was rhetoric. The White House response is offensive, and it remains to be seen whether our Committee will do anything about it.”
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-VA, a member of the oversight committee, echoed similar sentiments.
“These were bipartisan requests to the White House related to the Administration’s private travel and email usage, and the White House has completely blown off the Committee,” he told Politico.
“The Committee needs to assert its jurisdiction and authority immediately to get this information. If the White House won’t provide documents to permit basic oversight, the Chairman should send subpoenas.”
The White House launched an internal investigation of private email use after news broke that members of President Trump’s family and several senior White House officials had been using private email accounts to conduct work-related business.
Kushner sent or received approximately 100 work-related emails from his personal account during the first seven months of the year.Former White House officials were also found to have used private accounts, including former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.
