Investigate!!!!!!

Investigate Ivanka Trump’s Emails

A top White House official shouldn’t get away with breaking the rules just because she’s the president’s daughter.

By BRADLEY P. MOSS

What should we make of the revelation Ivanka Trump primarily used a private email account (hosted on a private email domain, no less) to conduct official U.S. government business in 2017?

After a presidential election in which her father routinely lambasted Hillary Clinton for her reckless use of a private email server while secretary of State, the fact that the first daughter and senior presidential adviser arrived at the White House and engaged in the exact same type of conduct as Clinton is mind-boggling. The explanation for why Ivanka Trump would think she could do something like this, however, can be summed up in one simple word: nepotism.

It seems quaint to recall it now, given everything that’s happened since, but the selection of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in 2017 to serve as senior White House advisers hit Washington, D.C., like a shock wave at the time. After decades of institutional policy forbidding nepotism hires—a policy that found its foundation in an anti-nepotism law passed in the wake of President John F. Kennedy selecting his brother, Robert, to serve as the attorney general—the president relied upon a narrow loophole in the law to bring his daughter and son-in-law into the White House. Neither Ivanka Trump nor Kushner had any government experience, let alone any recognizable expertise in matters that would otherwise qualify them for their respective roles, aside from their familial positions. What they did have, of course, was the trust of the president.

Critics of the move have long had other reasons to question the wisdom of hiring Ivanka Trump and Kushner. Both have been drawn into the Russian investigation—albeit more directly in the case of Kushner, who testified before Congress and the special counsel’s investigators—and their continued retention of security clearances despite numerous red flags in their respective backgrounds has rankled legal and ethics experts.

The cavalier use of private email to conduct U.S. government business, however, is particularly galling given the prominence of the issue throughout the campaign. According to the Washington Post—building on previous reporting by POLITICO—when confronted about the issue in late 2017, Ivanka Trump’s defense was that she was unaware of the relevant procedures and did not realize she could not use her private email account in that manner.

To which the only possible response is: Oh, come on.

While there might have been a time when this defense would have been believable, particularly for someone who had not previously served in government, Ivanka Trump would have had to literally have slept through the entirety of the presidential campaign to not be aware of how much a similar use of private emails cost Clinton politically.

Trump was there at campaign rallies where her father led “lock her up” chants. She was at the Republican National Convention, where “lock her up” chants took place during virtually every speech. She was at the presidential debates, during at least one of which President Trump stated point-blank that as president he would seek to have Clinton prosecuted for her email practices. There is no way Ivanka Trump was unaware of the seriousness of the issue.

That leaves two possibilities. One, Ivanka Trump is egregiously incompetent and honestly did not comprehend what the entire email scandal was about at its core. Two, she walked into the White House with the air of entitlement and invincibility that could only come with being an untouchable nepotism hire for whom the rules did not apply.

All other things being equal, the second possibility appears to be far and away the more likely of the two options.

Now, to be fair, Ivanka Trump’s actions may not have been as reckless as Clinton’s. However, we do not know all the details about Trump’s emails at this point. A review of the explanations put forth by her legal team is eerily similar to those that Clinton and her team put forth when news of her email habits first came to light.

Clinton, like Ivanka Trump, originally claimed there was no classified information in her emails; the subsequent investigation found otherwise. Clinton, like Ivanka Trump, claimed that thousands of the emails were personal and not government-related; to this day, the president still claims on Twitter that there was a conspiracy to hide relevant emails that were deleted from Clinton’s server.

Ivanka Trump is one of the president’s closest advisers, potentially privy to any number of important government secrets. Did she allow classified information to spill into some of her emails? Was she as reckless in her behavior as Clinton? Has her account been hacked by any foreign adversaries of the United States?

It took an exhaustive government investigation to get to the bottom of things with Hillary. For the sake of transparency and accountability, no less than the same should be done with Ivanka Trump’s emails.