Remember the chants at Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign rallies of “lock her up!” as Trump made Hillary Clinton’s use of private emails a constant refrain?
Remember Trump’s contant jibes about “crooked Hillary”?
Well in a breaking story that is bound to expose the paertisan hypocrisy of conservative America, it turns out that the first daughter and official adviser to the 45th President of the United States has been using her personal emails for communication on government affairs too.
Freedom of Information Act requests by ethics watchdog American Oversight has revealed the use of hundreds of personal emails to and from officials by Ivanka Trump.
After the watchdog threatened a court action when their requests for email correspondence between Ivanka Trump and officials were ignored, the emails they finally received appear to have part of her email redacted and a .com visible showing that they were from a private email.
“For more than two years, President Trump and senior leaders in Congress have made it very clear that they view the use of personal email servers for government business to be a serious offense that demands investigation and even prosecution, and we expect the same standard will be applied in this case,” said Austin Evers, Executive Director of American Oversight.
He added: “when we went to court last year, we expected to find the president’s daughter had an unusual role in the White House, but we didn’t anticipate this kind of extensive use of a personal email server or the panicked damage control effort that unfolded after we started asking questions.”
Using personal emails for government business may be a violation of the Presidential Records Act, which requires that a record is kept of all official White House communications for posterity. It also risks espionage and security breaches.
Peter Mirijanian, spokesman for for Ivanka Trump and her legal representative, attempted to distinguish between her use of private emails for official correspondence and the emails her father liked to call Hillary Clinton “corrupt” over.
“Ms. Trump did not create a private server in her house or office, no classified information was ever included, the account was never transferred at Trump Organization, and no emails were ever deleted,” Mirijanian insisted.
He added:”like most people,before entering into government service, Ms. Trump used a private email. When she entered the government, she was given a government email account for official use. While transitioning into government, until the White House provided her the same guidance they had to others who started before she did, Ms. Trump sometimes used her private account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family.”
Clinton’s private emails prompted an investigation by the FBI and the notorious press conference weeks before the 2016 presidential election, which many blamed for helping swing the vote, where then FBI Director James Comey announced there was not enough evidence to ascertain that Clinton had broken the law but that she had been reckless with government information.
Whether Ivanka Trump’s breach is as serious as Hillary Clinton’s, it will be very hard for her to claim that she did not know it was against government protocol after following her father around a presidential campaign that centered on accusations over Clinton’s emails.
So far Donald has not mentioned his daughter’s emails yet. But the hypoocrisy of conservative America is set to be tested yet again.