Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
As Shareblue reported Tuesday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the outgoing chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stonewalled an investigation into Ivanka Trump’s potentially improper email use a year before it became a public scandal.
But now that he can’t avoid it anymore, Gowdy is finally admitting Ivanka may have broken the law when she used a private email account to conduct government business.
“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 in a letter to the White House requesting a briefing on the email issue.
The Presidential Records Act requires government business to be conducted through proper government channels, so that the record can be preserved for future reference.
The Washington Post reported Monday that Ivanka Trump, along with her husband Jared Kushner, used a private email system to send hundreds of messages to government officials. Ivanka Trump did this while serving in her capacity as an aide to her father, and sent messages pertaining to government business.
The White House initially tried to hide that she had done this, minimizing the extent of the problem and placing the blame on Kushner.
And Republicans in Congress, led by Gowdy, helped enable the cover-up.
Gowdy knew about the potentially illicit email exchanges over a year ago, but he dropped a bipartisan investigation into the issue after taking the White House’s unverified word for it that everything was on the up-and-up.
But now we know that it wasn’t — and that congressional Democrats on the Oversight Committee, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), were right to object to Gowdy’s actions and push for the committee to do its constitutional duty.
Donald Trump tried to cover for his daughter on Tuesday by weakly arguing that the reporting on her email use was “fake news.”
For years, Trump has attacked Hillary Clinton for using a private email server and led his supporters in chants of “lock her up” at rallies. But now that Trump’s daughter is under fire after he gave her a senior position in his administration, he suddenly sees things differently.
And only now that the White House’s deception has been exposed by the Washington Post is Gowdy starting to do the follow-up work that he should have done over a year ago.
Gowdy has already announced he is leaving Congress, and Democrats will be taking over leadership of the House after sweeping Republicans out of power in the midterms.
Cummings’ office has said the Ivanka Trump email scandal will be one of many investigations that will be conducted under Democratic leadership in the new Congress.
Ivanka Trump is going to be held accountable for her actions, even though her fellow Republicans failed to make that happen when they had the chance.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
