Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s Emails To Be Subpoenaed, House Oversight Committee Rules
Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, are two of multiple people whose business and personal emails will be subpoenaed, as part of an investigation into whether or not Trump administration officials used private email servers to conduct government business.
As Yahoo! News reports, the House Oversight Committee voted on Thursday to authorize subpoenas for Trump and Kushner, as well as Donald Trump’s former senior adviser Steve Bannon, along with multiple other officials. The Committee wants to look at the emails to see whether or not officials committed any crimes in using private email accounts to conduct official business.
Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, the Chair of the Oversight Committee, says that the Committee has “direct evidence” that Kushner, Ivanka and other top aides were using private email accounts to conduct government business, according to PBS. That’s in violation of federal law as well as White House policy.
The vote to issue the subpoenas is part of an ongoing investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged use of private email apparatus in order to conduct government business. Cummings claims that the subpoenas are necessary because the administration has failed to produce “a single piece of paper” for the investigators. “What we do not yet know is why these White House officials were attempting to conceal these communications,” Cummings said.
Thursday’s vote, largely along party lines, was a procedural one to authorize the subpoenas and doesn’t actually issue them. That will be done by Cummings. When that happens, and when the subpoenas will be issued to any of the parties named in the resolution, remains unclear.
The use of private email apparatus to conduct private business was an issue during Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a fact not lost on some members of the committee. Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, for example, claimed that Ivanka and Kushner, though accused of the very same thing which Donald Trump constantly berated Hillary Clinton for allegedly doing, have handled the situation differently from the former presidential candidate.
“Ivanka Trump is complying with the law. Hillary Clinton never did,” said Jordan.
Similarly, Jordan accused the Committee of issuing the subpoenas simply for political gain. “You won’t hear them say it, but their real goal is to go fishing through the personal and private emails of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner,” he said.
Ivanka last year dismissed any connection between her use of private email accounts and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Similarly, Ivanka’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has said that since September 2017, Ivanka has always forwarded official business to her White House account.
