House Democrats plan to investigate Ivanka Trump’s use of private email for White House communications

Democrats are to investigate the use of a private email address by White House officials Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

The investigation follows after a recent report that Ms Trump— President Donald Trump’s daughter — had used private email addresses last year to conduct on White House business, which may be have violated federal law. Mr Kushner’s use of a private email address had previously been reported.

Mr Trump has repeatedly blasted his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election campaign over her use of personal email and a private server while she was US secretary of state.

Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, who is set to take over as chairman once Democrats officially take control of the chamber in January, announced Ms Trump's emails would be under review.

“We plan to continue our investigation of the presidential records act and federal records act, and we want to know if Ivanka complied with the law,” his office said in a statement.

“We launched a bipartisan investigation last year into White House officials’ use of private email accounts for official business, but the White House never gave us the information we requested,” Mr Cummings added. “We need those documents to ensure that Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and other officials are complying with federal records laws and there is a complete record of the activities of this Administration”.

He continued: “My goal is to prevent this from happening again— not to turn this into a spectacle the way Republicans went after Hillary Clinton. My main priority as Chairman will be to focus on the issues that impact Americans in their everyday lives.”

Federal investigations ultimately found no criminal wrongdoing by Ms Clinton's use of a personal email, but the issue was nevertheless covered constantly during the 2016 campaign.

Mr Trump said his daughter's use of her personal email account was different from Ms Clinton's.

“For a little period of time, Ivanka did some emails. They weren't classified like Hillary Clinton. They weren't deleted like Hillary Clinton ... She wasn't doing anything to hide her emails,” Mr Trump said.

“There was no servers in the basement like Hillary Clinton had,” he added later.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump's ethics lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the Post the emails occurred before Ivanka Trump was aware of government record-keeping regulations.

Since then, she has turned over all her government-related emails to be stored with other White House records, the Post reported.

Democrats will enjoy subpoena power once they take over the House of Representatives next year, following a decisive victory in the 2018 midterm elections earlier this year.