In the interregnum between Jared Kushner’s decision to step down from his family real-estate business and his ascent to his father-in-law’s White House, the now-senior adviser found himself temporarily without an e-mail address. It was a picayune issue, but one rich with context. Like the rest of the republic, Kushner spent the elasticized primary and election season watching Donald Trump castigate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private e-mail server while running the State Department. Kushner would certainly be granted a bureaucratic e-mail address. After all, White House employees are supposed to use government e-mails for official matters so that the public, watchdogs, and historians have a window into the West Wing. It’s not illegal to use private e-mails to conduct business as long as officials forward work-related exchanges to their government accounts in order to preserve them. It’s just possibly a bad look, and bad politics. Nevertheless, Kushner, who supported his father-in-law in his decision to fire James Comey, a political failure of biblical proportions, set up a domain, IJKFamily.com, to host his family’s personal e-mail in December.

Once Kushner was sworn into his West Wing role in January, he continued to trade messages with other administration officials on issues related to the White House through this personal account, as Politico reported earlier this week, communicating back and forth about press coverage, planning events, and political commentary.

Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement that Kushner returned or sent fewer than 100 e-mails with White House colleagues from this private address from January through August. “These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an e-mail to his personal rather than his White House address,” he said. It is not against the law, what Lowell said Kushner did. It is unclear from Lowell’s statement whether those e-mails were forwarded contemporaneously or if Kushner had forwarded them at the time of the report.

While it might not be illegal, it is certainly a break from West Wing norms. As one person close to the Trump-Kushners explained to me, it is not that Kushner deliberately sets out to break rules, or that he is too arrogant to follow them. “He has only worked for his companies as the boss,” this person said. “He’s getting up to speed. He’s just never had to do this before.”

Politico noted that there is no indication that Kushner discussed any classified information on his private e-mail, and his attorney said he primarily uses his government account to conduct official business, as opposed to what Clinton did. And Kushner is not alone. The New York Times reported that at least five other White House officials, including Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, former staffers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, and current aides Gary Cohn and Stephen Miller, have used their personal e-mails to discuss White House-related matters.

It is a relatively easy policy to follow—using work e-mail to discuss work-related matters—especially given that their work is in the White House. These aren’t arbitrary corporate governance guidelines that can be ignored; they were established and made to be followed in order to preserve democracy, which is a mission, it would seem, anyone who takes a White House role would suffer through taking minor e-mail precautions to accomplish.

But this is not the first rule Kushner has failed to observe. He initially left any meetings with foreign officials off of his national security questionnaire when submitting it in January, though he has since amended it three times to reflect more than 100 meetings—including with Russian officials, while his father-in-law’s campaign was being investigated for potential collusion and Kushner’s own meetings were being looked into by investigators. The SF-86 document clearly warns that those who knowingly submit false or incomplete information could be charged with a federal crime and face up to five years in prison. This summer, before he testified on Capitol Hill as part of the congressional inquiries into possible Russian involvement in the election, Kushner said that the form was submitted early in error. His representatives have said that it is common for people to update the document with more information.