White House advisers used private email accounts to discuss government-related issues: NYT
Some senior White House advisers including President Donald Trump's son-in-law used private email accounts to discuss government-related issues, a report in The New York Times said.
On Monday, a US House of Republican and Democratic Representatives asked the White House to provide information about the concerns raised in the report.
In a letter addressed to the White House counsel, the committee’s chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy, and top Democrat Elijah Cummings said they would examine whether senior Trump administration officials were “deliberately trying to circumvent (federal) laws by using personal, private, or alias email addresses to conduct official government business.”
Kushner's emails comprised of communication on media coverage, event planning, and other matters. However, Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, claims that his client abided by government record-keeping rules as he forwarded all the emails to his official account.
Trump had attacked Hilary Clinton, his Democratic rival, during the 2016 election campaign for using a private email server for official correspondence. At the time, Clinton was secretary of state under President Obama.
It was discovered that some of those messages contained classified information.
Politico claims that other senior Trump advisers had also used private email accounts, including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and economic adviser Gary Cohn.
The New York Times on Monday reported that private accounts were also used by Ivanka, Trump's daughter, after she became an adviser at the White House and by Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser.
“All White House personnel have been instructed to use official email to conduct all government-related work. They are further instructed that if they receive work-related communication on personal accounts, they should be forwarded to official email accounts,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.