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Ivanka Trump used personal email for official White House business [arstechnica.com]

First daughter and presidential advisor Ivanka Trump used a personal email account [washingtonpost.com] dozens of times to conduct official White House business, The Washington Post reports, citing an internal White House investigation. It's an ironic revelation given her father's obsession with Hillary Clinton's own use of a private email server [arstechnica.com] during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Federal law requires government officials to preserve written records of their activities—and that includes email. Government email systems are set up to comply with these laws, and federal IT guidelines require government officials to use their official email accounts for all official business. The use of official email accounts may also reduce the risk of sensitive communications being intercepted by foreign intelligence agencies.

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails [arstechnica.com]But senior government officials have not always been scrupulous about following these rules. Hillary Clinton famously did work as secretary of state using a personal email address linked to an email server located in her home in Chappaqua, New York. Republicans turned this records-management snafu into a prominent issue in the 2016 campaign.

But it seems that Trump's own daughter—who joined the White House last year as an unpaid presidential advisor—has run afoul of the same record management regulations. In December 2016, Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, set up a new email account at the domain ijkfamily.com. The account was managed by the Trump Organization and was hosted on Microsoft servers.

According to The Washington Post, Ivanka Trump sent "fewer than 100 emails in which Trump used her personal account to discuss official business with other administration officials." She also sent "hundreds of messages related to her official work schedule and travel details that she sent [to] herself and personal assistants who cared for her children and house"—emails that could also be subject to federal records laws.

A spokesman for Ivanka Trump's attorney acknowledged the practice to The Washington Post. "While transitioning into government, after she was given an official account but until the White House provided her the same guidance they had given others who started before she did, Ms. Trump sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family," he said.

Ivanka Trump's use of a personal email account was discovered in September 2017. Ivanka said she was simply unfamiliar with rules requiring official business to be conducted via official email accounts—despite the fact that her father had made Hillary Clinton's violation of the same rules a central theme of his campaign.

Last year Politico reported [politico.com] that Ivanka Trump's husband, Jared Kusher, had been conducting official business using an email address on the same ijkfamily.com domain. But at the time it wasn't known if Ivanka was doing the same thing. We learned [arstechnica.com] about Ivanka's use of the ijkfamily.com domain for government business last November, but until now we didn't know the extent of Ivanka's use of this activity.

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