AFTER JARED, AT LEAST FIVE MORE TRUMP STAFFERS OUTED FOR PRIVATE EMAIL USE
You may have already heard that President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been using a private email account to conduct official government business. You may have heard that Trump still mentions how me may prosecute Hillary Clinton for doing them same while working for a different administration. Did you hear that most of Trump’s staff also use private email accounts for official business? Well, now you have. And it’s just another piece of lace to fall in the worst strip tease ever of the Emperor with No Clothes.
IVANKA TRUMP AMONG NEWLY OUTED HYPOCRITES, ONE DAY AFTER HUSBAND BUSTED FOR SAME
One day. Just one day after news broke that Jared Kushner has been using a personal email account hosted under a family domain, the New York Times reports that at least five other senior administration officials have been doing the same. The list, so far, is former chief of staff Reince Priebus, National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller and, last but not least, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump. Seriously.
“GIVES THE IMPRESSION SAID OFFICIALS ARE TRYING TO AVOID PUBLIC SCRUTINY IN THE COURSE OF THEIR DUTIES”
As the Times noted, it’s not illegal for White House staff to use personal email accounts as long as they forward all private communications to their official emails to be archived—but the practice is generally discouraged, as it gives the impression said officials are trying to avoid public scrutiny in the course of their duties.
NEW LEVELS OF HYPOCRISY LEAVE PRESS SCRAMBLING FOR SENSE OF DIGNITY, CONTEXT, AFTER IRONY KILLS SELF
In fact, attentive people may remember that all of these individuals except for Cohn were key players in running a presidential campaign that relentlessly focused on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s similar use of private email during her tenure as secretary of state. To this day, Trump has continued to suggest he may have Attorney General Jeff Sessions prosecute Clinton over the matter.
While Clinton stored classified data on her server, which she used to transmit tens of thousands of emails, it’s unclear where on the scale the Trump officials’ use of private email fell. Per the Times, sources say Ivanka Trump used a private email account both before and after becoming an official administration adviser. Politico reported her husband, Kushner, set up a private family domain “late last year before moving to Washington from New York.”
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Focus Groups in Pittsburgh Slam Trump From All Party Affiliations
DEFINITION OF IS, IS, IS CURRENT STATE OF LEGAL SEMANTICS
Jared Kushner’s lawyers issued Politico a very specifically worded statement saying “Fewer than 100 emails from January through August were either sent to or returned by Mr. Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal email account”—though that did not foreclose the possibility Kushner used his private email to contact people outside the administration.
Given how much team Trump whooped up the Clinton email controversy, all of officials involved should have been at least aware of the fact that using their private emails for official job functions would open them up to embarrassing accusations of rank hypocrisy and incompetence. If they used the private accounts to send messages they wanted to keep on the down low, the outcome could be much worse.
That leaves two options, really. Either they really are that stupid—or they just don’t care, because they think they’re above the consequences.
