Social media users dredged up an ABC News report Thursday during a hearing on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, dinging a Republican congressman for his use of a personal Gmail account.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, headed a congressional hearing Thursday featuring FBI Director James Comey, who recommended this week that no charges should be pursued in Clinton’s use of an unauthorized and unsecured email server when she worked at the State Department.
As lawmakers pressed Comey to explain his agency’s investigation, some social media users pointed to an ABC News report from 2015 showing Chaffetz owns business cards listing his personal Gmail address.
“We all know Jason Chaffetz would never use his personal email for work,” Abraham White, press secretary to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said sarcastically on social media.
White’s tweet included a picture of the business card:
We all know Jason Chaffetz would never use his personal email for work. pic.twitter.com/e4jaOXkvgT
— Abraham White (@abwhite7) July 7, 2016
Other social media users noted the same.
The picture tweeted by White comes from a March 3, 2015, report by ABC’s Jonathan Karl.
“Hillary Clinton isn’t the only official who uses a non-government email address,” Karl wrote, adding, “a business card obtained by ABC News shows [he] lists his Gmail address on his official House card.”
Chaffetz responded at the time to the ABC report, which came one day after it was revealed Clinton conducted all State business from personal email accounts, by explaining cards like the one featured in the story were not purchased with taxpayer dollars.
On Thursday, the congressman’s press secretary, M.J. Henshaw, explained Chaffetz uses two separate sets of business cards.
“He has a set of official cards, and he has campaign cards that he gives out at any point,” she told the Washington Examiner’s media desk.
The card obtained by ABC was one of his so-called “campaign cards.”
“To be clear,” Henshaw added, “the campaign card is a business card paid for by his campaign. Members of Congress are not allowed to use their official email address for campaign use. They have to use their House accounts for official business.”
She said the congressman regularly uses his House and Gmail accounts.
But there is another issue with the ABC report.
Unlike like when Clinton headed the State Department, members of Congress are not beholden to the Federal Records Act.
Only federal agencies are required to follow the regulations detailed in the FRA, and those agencies are defined in the law as, “any executive agency or any establishment in the legislative or judicial branch of the Government (except the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Architect of the Capitol and any activities under the direction of the Architect of the Capitol).”
In short, as summed up by PBS, there’s no requirement for members of Congress to, “use official email accounts, or to retain, archive or store their emails, while in office or after.”
It is unclear, then, what Karl saw as newsworthy in his 2015 report on Chaffetz’s use of a personal Gmail account.
“That news report is what seems odd. Should be a non-story. ‘Clinton isn’t the only ‘official’ to use a non-governmental email address’? The issue with Clinton isn’t that she’s an ‘official’ using a non-governmental address, it’s that she was an employee of the executive branch who went out of her way to avoid the strictures of the federal records act (and possibly the Hatch act) by having her own server,” one former Hill staffer told the Examiner Thursday.
“What classified information is at risk by Chaffetz having a Gmail account?” the staffer asked.
