Donald Trump used Hillary Clinton's personal emails as a battering ram during the 2016 election, but that sure didn't stop his White House from turning around and using personal email for an extensive amount of official business. On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings informed the White House counsel that he planned to delve deeper into whether White House staff had violated by the law by failing to document their official correspondence.
In a letter, Rep. Cummings reminded White House counsel Pat Cipollone that the White House has yet to produce a "single document" in response to a request first made last December. "In the meantime," Cummings added, "the Committee has received even more evidence that White House officials violated federal law and the White House's own records policy." For instance, Cummings cited evidence in the Mueller report that former staffer Steve Bannon regularly communicated about official business using his personal Blackberry and email while taking "no steps to preserve these work communications." Some of that business included correspondence with Erik Prince, who made the now-infamous trek to the Seychelles islands in January 2017 to meet with the CEO of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, in another effort to establish a line of communication between the Kremlin and the incoming Trump administration.
Cummings called the White House's refusal to produce any information requested by his panel an "affront to our constitutional system of government." Therefore, Cummings said, he was now requesting access to specific emails and other correspondence to and from White House officials.
"As you know," Cummings reminded Cipollone, "the Committee has oversight and legislative jurisdiction over the Presidential Records Act."