House Oversight Committee Takes an Interest in the Kushner Private Email Report

So I covered a story several evenings ago about news of White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (along with his wife, Ivanka Trump) setting up a private email account and using it for official White House business.

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Just to be clear, it wasn’t a Hillary Clinton-styled private server, or anything on that level. It was a troublesome breach of professional protocol for communications, at most, it seems.

To paraphrase what someone else pointed out: The difference is that Hillary Clinton is corrupt. Jared Kushner is just dumb as a stump.

And while even the most innocuous questioning of a member of the Trump royal family tends to get some folks’ panties wadded up in very uncomfortable regions of their anatomies, it would seem that I’m not the only one who took notice of the Kushners’ email habits.

First of all, you had to know Democrats would be all over this. This is just the “A-ha!” moment they’ve dreamed of, ever since Hillary Clinton’s email scandal came to light.

Again, this isn’t on the same level, but it’s close enough to grab and run with.

What’s more, that Clinton email scandal is still fresh and raw in the minds of the members of the House Oversight Committee, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, to the point the desire to nip this in the bud is strong.

Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings authored a letter to the White House, requesting more information on the Kushner private email account.

In a letter, Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland asked Kushner to “preserve all official records and copies of records in your custody or control.”

He also asked that Kushner provide email addresses for all of private accounts used to conduct business, a list of all emails sent or received on those accounts that conducted official business and information about the security of the private domain used by Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump.

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The letter went on to suggest that they were seeking to understand if senior Trump officials were deliberately attempting to circumvent federal laws with the use of private email addresses, while conducting White House business.

Kushner’s attorney has suggested that between January, when the account was set up, to August, fewer than 100 emails were exchanged.

Then what was the point of setting up a private account on a private domain, exactly?

Other Trump officials using private email addresses include former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, adviser Stephen Miller, and economic adviser Gary Cohn.

“All White House personnel have been instructed to use official email to conduct all government related work. They are further instructed that if they receive work-related communication on personal accounts, they should be forwarded to official email accounts,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Cummings noted that the White House had previously told him there were no senior officials who had multiple accounts. Executive branch officials would be covered by the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of records.

“This statement appears to be inaccurate, although it is possible that Mr. (Marc) Short was referring to senior officials with multiple official government email accounts and that he did not know about your personal email account at the time he wrote this letter to the committee,” he wrote.

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The laughable part was Hillary Clinton chiming in.

“The hypocrisy of this administration, who knew there was no real scandal, who knew that there was no basis for all their hyperventilating. Republican members of Congress who politicized the deaths in Benghazi,” Clinton said. “No, we’re finding with the latest revelations ― they didn’t mean any of it. It’s just the height of hypocrisy.”

Lady, you got off real easy. Now is not the time for you to be saying a word. You seriously need to keep your mouth shut and your head down, on this one.

Kushner may be dirty. He’s definitely a dummy, but let’s not get it twisted. You’re still the queen of corruption.

 

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