Retiring Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) once led the House investigation into former Hillary Clinton that helped uncover her improper use of a private email server. Now, he wants to know more about the email scandal embroiling the president’s eldest daughter.
Gowdy wrote to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Wednesday asking for more information about Ivanka Trump’s use of a private email server during her first year at the White House.
“In light of the importance and necessity of preserving the public record and doing so in a manner that is reflective of relevant statutory and regulatory requirements, the Committee must assess whether the White House took adequate steps to archive Ms. Trump’s emails and prevent a recurrence,” Gowdy wrote.
Gowdy wants answers
The Washington Post reported last Monday that Ivanka, who is an unpaid White House adviser, used a private email account in 2017 to relay hundreds of messages to “White House aides, Cabinet officials, and her assistant.” Gowdy said that Ivanka’s use of a private email server could have implications for record-keeping laws.
“Ms. Trump’s use of a personal email account for official communications may implicate the Presidential Records Act and other security and recordkeeping requirements,” Gowdy wrote, asking for a response by Dec. 5.
The former prosecutor was in charge of the House committee that led the primary congressional investigation into the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The investigation helped uncover Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to share classified information, and Gowdy later called for Clinton’s prosecution.
News that Ivanka Trump used a private email server to carry out White House business led to comparisons to her father’s former rival and cries of hypocrisy. But some, including the president — who called the claims about his eldest daughter “fake news” — were quick to note key differences between Clinton’s case and the first daughter’s.
“They aren’t classified like Hillary Clinton. They weren’t deleted like Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “What Ivanka did, it’s all in the presidential records. Everything is there.”
Impending investigation?
Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Gowdy criticized President Trump for dismissing concerns about his daughter’s emails.
“I am concerned any time any president prejudges the outcome of an investigation,” he said. And it isn’t the first time Gowdy’s “bipartisan” approach has found him on the other side of the president: the South Carolina congressman has been both a defender and critic of the president, and has been criticized by Trump allies in the past for pushing back against the “Spygate” theory that the Democrats spied on Trump’s 2016 campaign in an attempt to thwart his candidacy.
Moreover, Gowdy, who did not seek re-election this year, will leave behind a Democratic House that is eager to investigate potential conflicts of interest involving Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. The Republican even joined long-time committee rival Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who sparred with Gowdy as the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee, in calling for an investigation into Ivanka’s emails.
“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,” Cummings, who will likely become chairman of the House Oversight Committee when Gowdy leaves, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Is Ivanka’s case different?
Still, pushed on why he is not calling for Ivanka’s prosecution as he once did for Hillary, Gowdy appeared to echo the president’s defense of Ivanka and denied ever calling for Clinton’s prosecution.
“There are two separate issues: the divulging of classified information is a crime,” he said. “Using personal email upon which to conduct public business is not a crime.”
The Washington Post article did not report whether Ivanka Trump shared classified information. A spokesman for her lawyer said that the emails were mostly used for scheduling and other logistical matters and that Ms. Trump, unlike Clinton, did not send classified information and did not delete any emails.
Regardless, Gowdy is satisfied with what has been done to probe Ivanka Trump in just a short time span since the initial report, which he said has been much more than Democrats were willing to do during the entire investigation into the former first lady-turned-secretary of State.
“So we’ve taken steps, we’ve done more in the last week than some of my House Democrat colleagues did the entire time we were looking into Benghazi,” he said. “So I’m at peace with what we’ve done, but we need the information and we need it quickly.”
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