Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) have called for the Trump White House to disclose by Oct. 9 the names of any top administration officials who use a private email address for government work. | Evan Vucci/AP House Republican demands details on Trump aides' use of private email The request comes after POLITICO revealed that Jared Kushner used a private email account for White House business.

A top House Republican investigator on Monday demanded details on any senior aides to President Donald Trump who have used private email addresses or encrypted software for government business, following a POLITICO report that Jared Kushner used a personal address.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, along with his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, called for the Trump White House to disclose by Oct. 9 the names of any top administration officials who use a private email address for government work and to identify any accounts and cell phone numbers that may have been used to transmit encrypted messages.


"With numerous public revelations of senior executive branch employees deliberately trying to circumvent these laws by using personal, private, or alias email addresses to conduct official government business, the Committee has aimed to use its oversight and investigative resources to prevent and deter misuse of private forms of written communication," Gowdy and Cummings wrote in a letter to White House Counsel Don McGahn.

The request echoed a similar inquiry the committee made in March, when it was chaired by Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, who has since left Congress. At the time, a top administration official, Marc Short, responded that "there are no senior officials covered by the [Presidential Records Act] with multiple accounts."

But POLITICO reported on Sunday that Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, has traded work-related emails using a private domain. His attorney insisted that fewer than 100 relevant emails were exchange on the server from January through August.

The request for details on any encrypted communications is a new avenue for the committee. POLITICO reported in February that administration lawyers and then-press secretary Sean Spicer admonished staff members that using encrypted messaging apps like Confide or Signal would be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The letter Monday shows how an issue Republicans used against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign has come back to haunt them. Congressional Republicans grilled Clinton for using a personal email server while leading the State Department, investigating well into the 2016 campaign. Trump also suggested she be charged, though the FBI found no criminal wrongdoing.

House Democratic investigators earlier Monday said they intended to probe Kushner's use of a private email address, a development that threatens to escalate the Russia-related controversies already surrounding President Donald Trump's son in-law.

Cummings sent a separate letter to Kushner asking him to preserve all his personal emails. The Maryland Democrat also suggested he will eventually request all copies of work correspondence that passed through Kushner's personal account.

“Before requesting copies or calling for the public release of all official emails you sent or received on your personal email account, I first request that you preserve all official records and copies of records in your custody or control and that you provide the information requested below,” Cummings wrote. “Your actions in response to the preservation request and the information you provide in response to this letter will help determine the next steps in this investigation.”

Asked if lawmakers should conduct oversight of Kushner’s emails, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the matter could fall under the jurisdiction of Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Trump’s ties to Russia.

“I know that Mr. Mueller is in the middle of a very intensive investigation, and so I have very little doubt that that will be thoroughly looked at,” McCain said.

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POLITICO reported Sunday that Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, created a private family domain and that Kushner had been using personal email to communicate with top White House officials in early 2017. Kushner’s attorney confirmed the report, suggesting the messages totaled fewer than 100 from January through August.

Democrats, however, are seeking more information about their content — and emphasizing that Republicans had previously demanded the content of Clinton's personal emails to attempt to determine whether she mishandled classified information.

The oversight committee has jurisdiction over record-keeping laws, which require all work correspondence to be completed on government accounts subject to Freedom of Information Act document requests.

Cummings' letter highlights Republicans' actions surrounding Clinton, seeking to pressure them into joining his inquiry or risk looking hypocritical. Cummings quotes Gowdy, in a March 19, 2015 letter involving the Clinton probe, arguing that the public "has a right to access public records" and "to certainty that no classified or sensitive information was placed at risk of compromise."

One GOP investigative source in Congress told POLITICO that Republicans won't be able to ignore the matter. They're privately hoping Kushner's attorney was correct that there were fewer than 100 emails sent and received on his personal account. That would suggest, the source argued, that Kushner's email wasn't created to dodge federal record keeping laws — particularly if he was simultaneously using a work account and forwarding those emails to his work email address.

Kushner is already under a microscope for attending a June 2016 meeting with Kremlin allies promising dirt on Clinton. He also failed to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador and the head of a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions during the transition. And he reportedly omitted numerous meetings with foreign leaders from his security clearance form, which Democrats have noted is a potential criminal offense.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested that his panel might look into Kushner's private emails, depending on their content.

"The scope of the inquiry is not focused on emails. But if these were in any way used to hide anything that might have had something to do with Russians that would obviously be relevant," Warner said.

Kushner testified earlier this year in front of the Senate intelligence panel and insisted at the time that he had turned over all relevant correspondence pertaining to his contacts with Russia.

"I hope that through my answers to questions, written statements and documents I have now been able to demonstrate the entirety of my limited contacts with Russian representatives during the campaign and transition," he said in a statement to the committee.

Some Democrats indicated that while historically the use of private email by a government employee has not been seen as inherently inappropriate, Republicans had set a new standard by running a national campaign on the issue.

"Especially after the whole experience with Hillary’s email and how the Trump campaign kept hammering that this was illegal and she should be locked up, the hypocrisy of doing this now is stunning," said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.). "This ought to be investigated by the FBI."

Nadler, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he intends to urge federal authorities to pursue the matter and to ask committee Republicans to investigate the extent of private email use by senior government officials. He said that although lawmakers might typically have a "presumption of trust" in Kushner's insistence that he traded relatively few work-related emails from his private address — and that all were innocuous — previous questions about his conduct make that impossible.

Cummings noted in his letter that he and former Oversight Chairman Chaffetz this spring sent a letter asking the White House whether any top officials used a non-official email for government business. On April 11, White House legislative liaison Marc Short responded saying "there are no senior officials covered by the [Presidential Records Act] with multiple accounts."

“This statement appears to be inaccurate,” Cummings wrote, adding: “Although it is possible that Mr. Short was referring to senior officials with multiple official governmental email accounts and that he did not know about your personal email account at the time he wrote this letter to the Committee.”

During a White House news conference Monday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Kushner's use of private email was “to my knowledge, very limited.”

“White House Counsel has instructed all White House staff to use their government email for official business, and only use that email,” she said.

Asked whether Counsel had reminded them of these rules recently, she added: “I think we get instructed on this one pretty regularly.”

Burgess Everett and Elana Schor contributed to this report.