November 20, 2018

Oversight Group Asks Congress to Investigate Ivanka Trump’s Private Email Use

The first daughter and senior adviser to the president said she didn’t know about the rules.

Michael Brochstein/ZUMA

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One day after the Washington Post reported on Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account to send hundreds of emails concerning official government affairs, the ethics watchdog group that initially triggered the discovery is asking Congress to investigate the apparent breach of protocol by the first daughter and senior adviser to the president.

The group, American Oversight, sent a letter Tuesday to members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, urging lawmakers to probe several issues surrounding Ivanka Trump’s use of personal email, including whether she sent classified information through the account. “The president’s family is not above the law. There are serious questions that Congress should immediately investigate,” executive director Austin Evers said in a statement. “Did Ivanka Trump turn over all of her emails for preservation as required by law? Was she sending classified information over a private system?”

American Oversight first obtained emails revealing Ivanka Trump’s personal email use back in September 2017.

The report that the president’s oldest daughter used a personal email account to conduct government business has prompted a fierce backlash among Democrats and even some of President Donald Trump’s allies, many of whom have noted the deep irony of one of the administration’s most prominent faces attracting her own email scandal after more than two years of Trump’s “lock her up” attacks against Hillary Clinton for her own use of a private email server.

“It’s hypocritical and certainly it looks bad,” Marc Short, former legislative director for the Trump administration, told CNN. While Short claimed that there appeared to be some distinctions between Clinton and Ivanka Trump’s email controversies, he admitted that it “looked bad, for sure.”

Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump is reportedly nonplussed about the controversy. The New York Times reported that she has since told White House officials that she had been unaware of the rules regarding government communications.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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