Remember back in 2016 when Donald Trump started the 'lock her up!' chant about his presidential campaign opponent Hilary Clinton? She'd been found to use a private email server while Secretary of State, prompting two separate FBI investigations, one of which was announced a week before voting began for the US Presidential Election. Well, his daughter, and salaried employee as a senior advisor to the White House, Ivanka Trump has now been accused of using her personal email account for government business.
Yep, talk about hypocrisy.
According to the Washington Post, Ivanka reportedly sent hundreds of emails to the account, using a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner, relaying and discussing white house business for much of last year. With many violations of federal record rules, the White House senior advisor is said to have emailed aides, cabinet officials and her assistants.
Her excuse? Ignorance. Claiming she was unaware of the details of record rules, a spokesperson for Ivanka's laywer Abbe Lowell, told the Post:
'While transitioning into government, after she was given an official account but until the White House provided her the same guidance they had given others who started before she did, Ms Trump sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family.'
Denying that any of the messages contained classified information, many are calling for John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to explain how Ivanka and Jared's security clearances were granted despite knowing their email practices broke security requirements.
However, the main response to this scandal is bewilderment at the hypocrisy of the Trump family, given that Donald Trump condemned Clinton's use of a private email server as 'bigger than Watergate', a scandal that is said to have contributed to Clinton losing the Presidential Election.
'You can’t make this stuff up,' tweeted Havard constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, 'Not after that gang did the "Lock Her Up!" chant against Hillary for two solid years so Ivanka could become First Daughter. Above the law, just like daddy. Disgusting hardly says it.'
It's also thanks to the HUGE focus on Clinton's use of a private server during Trump's presidential campaign that Ivanka's claim to ignorance about the risks of using her own private email falls short of a decent explanation. Clinton's excuse at the time was that it was more convenient, as government-issued Blackberry phones were unable to access multiple email accounts and she preferred to only carry one device.
However, it meant that all of her emails while Secretary of State could be kept private, inaccessible by the US government and so of course led to mistrust of her dealings during that time. The doubt about her use of a private email server was fair, not necessarily enough to warrant voting Donald Trump into power but nonetheless, fair. And it's why Ivanka Trump's use of a private email should too be taken seriously, because not only should she have learnt from the scandal that her father capitalised on to become President, she can't be held above the law in the same way that Clinton wasn't.