Key Dem: Lawyer Confirmed Worrying Ivanka, Jared Email Use

Rep. Elijah Cummings says Kushner also used WhatsApp for official business
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 22, 2019 6:17 AM CDT
Kushner Uses WhatsApp for Official Business: Report
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner talk with German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, center, at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2019.   (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)

The president's son-in-law is up to date with technology but possibly not with the Presidential Records Act. House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said Thursday that a lawyer for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner told him that Kushner, a White Houser adviser, used the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp for official business, the New York Times reports. That included contacts with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Cummings said lawyer Abbe Lowell also told him during a December meeting that Ivanka Trump was still receiving email relating to official White House business on a private email account and she wasn't consistently forwarding them to her White House account, reports the Washington Post.

Cummings said in a letter to the White House that the conduct Lowell described raises serious "security and federal records concerns," reports the AP. The Oversight Committee is demanding documents relating to the communications of Kushner and other officials and Cummings, a Democrat, might issue subpoenas if they are not received by April 4, Politico reports. Lowell, however, disputed Cummings' account of the meeting. In a letter Thursday, Lowell said Ivanka Trump now "always forwards official business to her White House account" and Kushner preserves WhatsApp conversations by taking screenshots and sending them to his White House account. Lowell also said he never told lawmakers that Kushner had used WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders. (More Ivanka Trump stories.)

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