Democrats to investigate Ivanka Trump's private email use for work
A Congressional committee will investigate Ivanka Trump, U.S. President Donald Trump's daughter and a White House adviser, following reports that she repeatedly used a personal email account for government work, a House Democrat said on Tuesday.
A White House review of Ivanka Trump's email found that she used her personal account up to 100 times last year to contact other Trump administration officials, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the review.
Use of a personal account for government business potentially violates a law requiring preservation of all presidential records.
President Trump, a Republican, repeatedly criticized his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election campaign over her use of personal email and a private server while she was U.S. secretary of state.
Representatives for U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said the panel will investigate White House communications when Democrats take over the U.S. House of Representatives in January.
"We plan to continue our investigation of the presidential records act and federal records act, and we want to know if Ivanka complied with the law," his office said in a statement.
Cummings, in a separate statement, said the White House has not complied with previous document requests.
The current House Oversight committee chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy, also asked the White House for documents and information related to Ivanka Trump's use of private email in a letter on Tuesday.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Trump said his daughter's use of her personal email account was different from Clinton's.
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump's ethics lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the Post the emails occurred before she was aware of government record-keeping regulations.
Since then, she has turned over all her government-related emails to be stored with other White House records, the Post reported.
Ivanka Trump's emails came to light when White House officials began reviewing them in response to a lawsuit from watchdog group American Oversight, according to the Post. The paper said she used the personal account for official business fewer than 100 times in 2017.
The New York Times also reported on Ivanka Trump's email use.
Clinton's email practices as secretary of state prompted a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe in the run-up to the 2016 election that still draws ire from Trump and calls from some of his supporters to "lock her up."
