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Ivanka Trump says ‘no equivalency’ between her use of private email server and Hillary Clinton

The president's daughter says 'lock her up' chants heard at Trump rallies do not apply to her

Mythili Sampathkumar
New York
Wednesday 28 November 2018 12:11 EST
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Ivanka Trump defends use of private email, brushes aside Mueller probe

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Ivanka Trump says there is “no equivalency” between her use of a private email server for government business and the scandal which plagued Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“All of my emails are stored and preserved. There were no deletions. There is no attempt to hide,” the White House advisor and Donald Trump’s daughter told ABC News.

Ms Trump reportedly used her personal account up to 100 times in 2017 to communicate with other administration officials about government business.

She insisted there was not “anything of substance, nothing confidential that was within them. So, there's no connection between the two things”.

The situation has drawn comparisons with Ms Clinton, who faced an FBI investigation over her use of a private server in her Chappaqua, New York, home for government emails when she was secretary of state.

Ms Trump's father has defended his daughter's actions, saying her emails from the private account are all saved on the White House server.

"There is no restriction of using personal email," she said about White House policy.

Ms Trump noted: "In fact, we're instructed that if we receive an email to our personal account that could relate to government work, you simply just forward it to your government account so it can be archived."

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While using a personal account may not be banned, it could potentially be a violation of the law requiring preservation of communications for the presidential record.

There are also security concerns, with the potential for confidential or sensitive information being shared on servers which could be hacked.

Ms Trump said the emails on her personal account relate "mainly [to] scheduling and logistics and managing the fact that I have a home life and a work life."

Ms Trump stressed that “everything has been preserved” on the White House system and claimed there was “no intent to circumvent” recording the emails.

However, Congress is still going to investigate the matter.

US House Oversight Committee chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican, has requested information on Ms Trump’s private email usage and Senate Homeland Security Committee chair Republican Senator Ron Johnson also wanted to briefed on the matter.

Once Democrats take over leadership in the House in January 2019, they have said the investigation will continue.

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A State Department investigation found Ms Clinton had violated agency rules on the use of private email but had done nothing criminal.

An FBI investigation ultimately found Ms Clinton had not done anything to prompt criminal charges, but that was only after then-FBI Director James Comey had sent a letter to Congress just 11 days prior to the 2016 US elections about the potential for re-opening the investigation.

Mr Trump has repeatedly called Ms Clinton "Crooked Hillary" over the discovery that her team had deleted several thousand emails deemed personal before she turned over the email archive to the FBI. Chants of "lock her up!" are a frequent part of rallies held by the president.

A recent New York Times report suggested the president had also tried to get the Department of Justice to prosecute Ms Clinton but was ultimately talked out of it.

Ivanka Trump has laughed off the suggestion her father's "lock her up" chants could apply to her. She simply responded, "no" when asked.

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