Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

House Panel Expands Probe Into Kushner, Ivanka Trump Working With Private Email

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee said Monday that he was expanding his investigation of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and other White House employees who reportedly used personal emails, cell phones and apps for work communication, in violation of federal record-keeping laws.

Chairman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, wrote in a letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone that his request, seeking all communications that violated such laws and policies, was decided upon “after six months of White House stonewalling.”

The White House has refused to tell Congress about the results of its own internal investigation into the use of private communications, or produce any documentation that they uncovered.

Politico reported in 2017 that Kushner and Trump used their own private email accounts for White House business, including messages with government employees. The Washington Post reported in 2018 that Trump, who reportedly sent hundreds of such messages, claimed she did not know that doing so was against the rules.

During the 2016 election, Trump’s father, President Trump, repeatedly slammed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s decision to use a private email server while serving as Secretary of State.

Cummings’s original request for documentation last year was supported by the House committee’s top Republican, the now retired Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, as well as Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.