Ivanka Trump allegedly used a private email server to perform government work following the inauguration of her father, US President Donald Trump, according to a report by Newsweek Monday.
Trump used a private email account to contact Linda McMahon, the administrator of the United States Small Business Administration, in February. It is unknown if she had been given a government account at the time, as she worked in an unofficial capacity in the White House until March.
The report follows a Politico story that Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, also used a private email account to communicate with officials in the Trump Administration about White House matters instead of his government account.
Kushner acknowledged that he used a private email account. “Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business,” Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner, said in a statement Sunday.
“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. These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an email to his personal rather than his White House address,” added Lowell.
Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight and a former senior counsel at the Department of State, told Newsweek: "Yet again we see that there’s one rule for the Trump family and another for everyone else.”
“It’s simply breathtaking that both Ivanka and Jared Kushner would conduct government [work] on a personal email account after running a campaign centered on that very issue. The fact that they would brazenly ignore rules governing email use raises even more questions about their judgement and fitness to hold positions in the White House,” he added.
Hillary Clinton sent tens of thousands of emails using her private address while serving as Secretary of State, erasing many of them after her actions were discovered. The issue was dropped after she lost the elections.