Trump Calls Ivanka’s Private Email Use ‘All Fake News’
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - US President Donald Trump defended his daughter’s use of a private email account to conduct official business, telling reporters that the controversy was a “whole different” issue than what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was accused of during her presidential campaign.
The president was asked Tuesday about a Washington Post report that Ivanka Trump communicated with top administration officials through a private email account prior to her joining the White House last year and continued to do so throughout 2017, sending “hundreds” of emails relating to her government work on her personal email account.
“Just so you understand, Ivanka Trump did some emails, they were not classified like Hillary Clinton,” Trump said, echoing a defense put forth by a spokesperson for his daughter’s personal attorney, Politico reported.
The spokesperson told The Post that Ivanka Trump turned over all of her work-related emails upon learning about Presidential Records Act requirements that government emails be archived, and said that, unlike Clinton, whose presidential campaign was dogged by the email scandal from beginning to end, the president’s daughter never sent classified emails through her personal email or deleted any emails, as Clinton did with emails determined to be non-work related.
“They were not deleted like Hillary Clinton,” Trump told reporters Tuesday as he left for his Thanksgiving vacation in Florida. “She wasn’t doing anything to hide her emails. I looked at it briefly today and the presidential record, they are all in presidential records, there was no hiding.”
“There was no deletion, no nothing. What it is, is a false story,” the president said.
Trump railed against Clinton’s email use during the presidential campaign, and the scandal served as the genesis of his nickname for her — “Crooked Hillary” — and of the “Lock her up!” chants that are a mainstay of Trump rallies even today.
Though Clinton used a private email server exclusively during her time as secretary of State, compared with Ivanka Trump’s occasional use of a personal email account for government business, Clinton was never charged with any wrongdoing and was instead let off with a nationally televised scolding, which the president still complains about.
Trump said he wasn’t worried about his daughter, though there have been calls to open a congressional investigation of her email use.
“Ivanka Trump can handle herself. Ivanka Trump can handle herself. They are in the historical records, no deletion whatsoever,” the president argued.
“Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 emails, she had a server in the basement. Ivanka Trump didn’t. The calls were not classified, unlike Hillary Clinton, which were classified. It is all fake news.”
