Media Comparing Jared Kushner's Private Gov't Emails to Clinton's Private Server Are Dreaming

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, looks at a phone message with Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Philip Gordon as they wait in a conference room for a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President during the 48th Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich, southern Germany, on Saturday Feb. 4, 2012. The Security Conference is a three-day event bringing together top defense and diplomacy officials from around the world discussing the winding down of the NATO engagement in Afghanistan and other looming challenges. (AP Photo/Jim Watson,Pool)

Politico reported Sunday that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner used a private email address to conduct official government business, prompting a flurry of “I told you so’s” from the Left, but what liberals have forgotten is that while Kushner reportedly used a private email address, comparing his conduct to that of Hillary Clinton’s unusual email arrangement is like comparing apples to oranges.

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I can already hear the blowback I will undoubtedly receive for making this statement. “They both used personal emails. Are you stupid? How can you say it’s comparing apples to oranges,” critics will likely tell me.

The justification for my reasoning can be boiled down to two words: “private server.”

So far, there has been no reporting that suggests Kushner had his own private email server, as Clinton did, which means that while all of Kushner’s emails are not readily available to the government as correspondence sent to and from .gov email addresses are, government oversight officials can obtain those same private emails sent to and from Kushner by going directly to the host of Kushner’s private email address, meaning Google, Yahoo, or whatever other technology giant hosts Kushner’s private email address.

This arrangement is entirely different from Clinton’s in that, unlike the former secretary of state, there is no information currently to suggest that Kushner deleted any private emails and, even if he did, it’s unlikely that those messages are gone forever. Since Clinton had her own private server and deleted the emails, whatever was contained in those messages are gone. The chances of ever recovering them are slim to none.

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The overarching point I’m making here has to do with transparency. Should Jared Kushner have used a private email address? Of course not. No government official should — ever. On the other hand, it’s not as if the public can never or will never see those emails. In fact, I fully expect oversight officials will subpoena those messages from whichever technology company hosts Kushner’s emails, as they should.

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