Ivanka Goes Silent After Congress Announces Major Federal Investigation

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Another day, another Trump scandal. In a new letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has laid out alleged violations of federal record keeping law on the part of none other than Ivanka Trump. He says that during a meeting with Abbe Lowell, who’s a lawyer to Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, he learned that she allegedly has not saved emails about official business that have come to a personal account if she did not respond to them. The Presidential Records Act demands that entire classes of written communication be preserved, not just some of them.

Cummings wants information from the Trump team on their electronic communication practices, including how the number of emails dealing with official business on a personal account of Ivanka’s relates to the number of those emails that have actually been preserved.

The Ivanka email issue has been simmering for some time. Late last year, The Washington Post revealed that she’d used a personal account for hundreds of pieces of government business, which poses a number of issues besides that of possible illegally inadequate record keeping. To that end, Cummings also wants to know whether or not she transmitted any sensitive or classified information via her personal account — and the fact that there’s even the possibility she did indicts the Trump team for hypocrisy yet again. President Donald Trump has led countless chants of “Lock Her Up!” while stirring his rally crowds into frenzies over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State. The implication was that she’d endangered national security, even though years of investigation did not produce a single criminal liability on her part.

The danger they touted remains, though — thanks to the Trumps. At the same time he shared that Ivanka has allegedly not been complying with record keeping law, Cummings asserted that Kushner’s lawyer also told him that his client had been continuing to use WhatsApp for government business. Cummings claims Lowell said the question of whether Kushner has ever transmitted classified information via WhatsApp is “above my pay grade.”

Lowell has unsurprisingly denied the claims, asserting he was significantly more vague than Cummings lets on, only referring to Ivanka’s use of personal email in the comparatively distant past and refusing to comment on Kushner’s WhatsApp use at all. He did admit, though, that he suggested they approach the White House counsel for more answers — so if Lowell was trying to undercut the legitimacy of Cummings’ latest quest, he failed.

Cummings acknowledges that Lowell pointed him towards the White House, connecting the comment to his still standing question of whether Kushner had been authorized to use a civilian messaging system for government business.

Up until this point, the administration has refused to comply with Cummings’ various inquiries, refusing to produce a single document or witness that they requested. Cummings has been seeking information on this issue since 2017, when he was the ranking member on the committee in light of House Democrats’ minority status.