Ivanka Trump repeatedly used a personal e-mail account to conduct government business in 2017

Ivanka Trump repeatedly used a personal e-mail account to conduct government business in 2017, a White House review found, a fact that raises the stakes on congressional oversight hearings the new Democratic House majority will hold.

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تاریخ: ۲۹ آبان ۱۳۹۷ - ۰۹:۲۰

Ms. Trump’s e-mail use, much of which first came to light last year, included exchanges on her personal account with Cabinet secretaries, as well as forwards of schedules to her assistant, a person familiar with the e-mails said.

Democrats will be in control of at least 232 seats when the new House is sworn in next year, according to The New York Times’ latest count. And the personal e-mail use of Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both serve as senior advisers to the president, have been expected to be among the topics the new leaders will address.

The subject has particular irony for Democrats, who bitterly point to President Donald Trump highlighting during the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. At rally after rally, Trump discussed her server, buoyed by chants of “Lock her up!” from his crowds.

The Clinton server was discovered amid a congressional inquiry in 2015. The FBI investigated her use of the server — which included sending e-mails that were classified — but declined in July 2016 to press charges.

“Oh Ivanka,” Ms. Clinton’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, posted on Twitter on Monday evening.

The Washington Post first reported on the scope of Ivanka Trump’s e-mail use, saying Monday that there were up to 100 related to government business, but hundreds of others related to schedules.

The New York Times reported in September, 2017, that Ms. Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, was one of at least six White House advisers using private e-mails in the early days of the Trump administration. Newsweek, that same month, reported specifically on Ms. Trump’s e-mail use, saying that it was mostly before she formally joined the administration, and that she “occasionally” did so after she was sworn in as a senior adviser.

A White House spokeswoman referred calls to Mr. Trump’s private lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, who did not respond to repeated calls seeking comment.

A spokesman for Lowell confirmed again that Ms. Trump had used personal e-mail for a time before she transitioned into government.

“To address misinformation being peddled about Ms. Trump’s personal e-mail, she did not create a private server in her house or office, there was never classified information transmitted, the account was never transferred or housed at Trump Organization, no e-mails were ever deleted and the e-mails have been retained in the official account in conformity with records preservation laws and rules,” the spokesman, Peter Mirijanian, said in a statement. “When concerns were raised in the press 14 months ago, Ms. Trump reviewed and verified her e-mail use with White House counsel and explained the issue to congressional leaders.”

Ms. Trump had told people in the White House that she was unaware of the rules when she was using her personal account.

But her repeated use of her personal e-mail on a private address, ijkfamily.com, which was set up by Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump during the transition, was a cause for concern within the White House Counsel’s Office, according to two people familiar with what took place.

The liberal watchdog group American Oversight said on its website that its freedom of information requests had led to the discovery of the volume of Ms. Trump’s e-mail use.

“The president’s family is not above the law, and there are serious questions that Congress should immediately investigate,” Austin Evers, the group’s executive director, said in a statement on the website.

After Ms. Trump’s personal e-mail use was discovered, Mr. Lowell helped sort out what e-mails qualified as official records that needed to be kept for posterity, The Post reported.

That was similar to the approach Ms. Clinton used when she was sorting through tens of thousands of e-mails.

Evers questioned whether Ms. Trump had turned over everything.

“When we went to court last year, we expected to find the president’s daughter had an unusual role in the White House,” he said, “but we didn’t anticipate this kind of extensive use of a personal e-mail server or the panicked damage control effort that unfolded after we started asking questions.”

Ms. Trump’s allies have stressed that the volume of e-mails she sent from her personal account that related to government work was relatively small.

Still, current and former White House officials have said it was characteristic of a repeated blurring of the lines between her government work and other aspects of her life, which used to include her namesake licensing and apparel businesses.