Jared Kushner's Coronavirus Task Force Is Using Private Email Accounts To Conduct Official Business
from the only-illegal-if-Democrats-do-it dept
If you're a public official, your communications and documents are supposed to be accessible by the public. That's not me being an absolutist on open government. That's the law. And yet, here we are, watching an administration that rode into office on chants of "Lock her up!" once again conducting government business off the grid, using the same sort of private email accounts Trump repeatedly declared should have landed Hillary Clinton in the slammer.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has taken note of the latest violation of multiple laws by the Trump Administration and wants to know what the White House is going to do about it.
Jared Kushner’s shadow coronavirus task force appears to be violating both the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by using private email accounts with no assurance their communications are being preserved and by meeting in secret, according to a letter sent today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The failure of the White House to comply with any of the PRA and FACA requirements leaves the public in the dark about the work the shadow task force has done and the influence of private industries on the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
We the taxpaying people deserve to know what, if anything, Jared Kushner is doing to fight the spread of the virus. Kushner was put in charge of handling the business side of the pandemic response based on his impressive pandemic-fighting resume, which includes marrying Trump's daughter and spending several years as a slumlord. Sure, this isn't the first time important government work has been handed over to underqualified sycophants/relatives, but this time there's actually life and death on the line.
What's being done with our tax dollars by Kushner's task force is being hidden from view through its members' use of private email accounts. We all know history is written by the winners, but history can also remain unwritten by losers whose sole contribution to the effort appears to be making businesses feel better about endangering the lives of their employees and customers. Stashing away official communications on private email servers cuts the public out of the loop.
History is being unwritten as we speak. Here's a senior White House official's brutal summary of Kushner's task force:
We don’t know who these people are. Who is this? We’re all getting these emails.
At least they're getting the emails. It's still unclear whether any of us in the general public will. That's what CREW is trying to find out. Its letter to the White House's legal rep, Pat Cipollone, reminds the lawyer of the law and the obligation the White House has to the American people.
We recognize the extraordinary emergency our nation faces and the need for the federal government to act quickly and decisively. At the same time, however, the need for transparency could not be greater. Americans need to know that our government is acting in our best interests; they need the kind of reassurance that full transparency in how and what the White House is doing brings. Of equal importance, we must have access in the future to a full record of how the President and his staff handled this crisis to learn from any mistakes made and improve on how we address future pandemics. Now, more than ever, we must be vigilant in complying with laws like the PRA and the FACA that were enacted to protect our nation’s interest in transparency and a full historic record. We therefore respectfully request that you ensure that the shadow task force complies immediately and fully with its statutory requirements under the PRA and FACA.
This is CREW basically telling the White House Counsel, "Hey, we don't want to tell you how to do your job but, you know, do your damn job!" This would have been inexcusable even if the Trump administration hadn't used "but her emails" as a platform plank. It's unforgivable when it's these hypocrites standing knee deep in a swamp they never intended to drain, running a behind-the-scenes corporate welfare effort under the guise of keeping the nation's citizens alive and healthy.
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Filed Under: coronavirus taskforce, email, jared kushner, pandemic response, secrecy, transparency
Reader Comments
The First Word
“When all you have is lies, the people telling the truth will seem to be in lockstep because the truth doesn't change on the whims of whoever is stating it.
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'Lock... him... up?'
The best case scenario I can think of is this is just hypocritical incompetence, where they're using private email accounts because doing otherwise would take work, and the whole point of nepotism is to avoid that, with it only getting more damning from there such as the potential they are trying to keep the public in the dark because they know full well that something they are doing would not go over well with the public(can't imagine what though, I mean it's not like there's an absolutely staggering pile of money up for grabs...).
Given the point raised in the article about how hard Trump ragged on Hilary for using a private server during the election I don't see that they deserve any 'maybe they just didn't think about it?' benefit of the doubt here, such that the assumption should be the worst case scenario, full blown corruption, until proven otherwise.
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hmmm sounds like FAKENEWS
You Never Trumpers NEVER give up . . . sad!
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Sadly, no surprise. The Trump administration does things weekly, sometimes daily, that would have been a major career-killing scandal in most prior administrations, but nothing seems to come of it. Even the naked hypocrisy is sadly all too familiar.
With this, his cult will find some way to explain away how they're somehow different situations therefore acceptable, while others will be too fatigued by all the other scandals to care about what is sadly one of the more minor transgressions, even among the things Kushner has been involved with personally. Our only hope is that the fatigue does not carry through to November.
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...with enormous legitimate (even if abused) exceptions. There's a great deal of material that is not supposed to be released--the most likely exception here would be for pre-decisional communications, which would mean that little, if any, of the material you're talking about would ever be eligible for release under FOIA. If you don't think that should be the law, well and good, but you're claiming to discuss what the law is.
You're ignoring a critical distinction here, and that's that Hillary's private servers held classified information. That's a crime. The issue of using private resources for official business is also an problem, but that isn't why people were saying "lock her up."
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How do you know the private email accounts of the coronavirus task force aren’t doing the same — and how loud will you be yelling “lock them up” if said accounts are proven to be holding classified information?
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Your are flogging a dead donkey trying to advocate a line like that, this is an echo chamber, unless you parrot the Group Think you will get no traction here.
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Lock them up
This is our information and needs to be controlled accordingly. I'm all for locking whoever mishandles information this way, especially if it's classified. I guess I would never make a good partisan, because I don't throw my principles in the toilet when it's someone in 'my party' misbehaving. People like this need to be charged and penalized.
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Transparency
If the current White House administration had any interest in being transparent, then they would not have made their meetings about their COVID-19 response classified (meaning we probably won't be able to find out about how badly off track they were for maybe 20 years or so). I suspect that they are either trying to weasel in some backhanded economic stimulus (which won't mean a hill of beans if the spread of the virus does not take a drastic downturn) or they are seriously worried about documenting their missteps in their reaction to the crisis.
Of course, if they were seriously worried about their missteps in reaction to the crisis the really should put a muzzle on the Missteper in Chief.
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People can both think the Trump administration is hypocritical for doing something similar to what Trump has excoriated Hillary Clinton for in the past and believe Clinton did something ignorant by using private email servers for classified correspondence. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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Yeah, we know exactly why dumb cult members were chanting a meaningless slogan from a conman.
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Using state.gov email servers to house classified information would also be a crime. Public facing email servers should never be used to transmit or receive classified information, regardless of whether on a public or private server.
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"You're ignoring a critical distinction here, and that's that Hillary's private servers held classified information."
Unless I'm mistaken, the only email proven to have been held there are emails that were classified after they were received. Plus, you actually know the content of Kushner's emails? Please share your source.
"The issue of using private resources for official business is also an problem, but that isn't why people were saying "lock her up.""
True, they were saying it because they've been programmed by 30 years of propaganda to oppose her for any reason. The emails were just a dumb slip-up that allowed them to have a justifiable reason to do so for once.
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When all you have is lies, the people telling the truth will seem to be in lockstep because the truth doesn't change on the whims of whoever is stating it.
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Re: Re:
Trump was a poor choice for president but Hillary was arguably just as bad. Even worse than Biden.
Why can't we get a candidate, from any side of the aisle, worth voting for?
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You're ignoring a critical distinction here, and that's that Hillary's private servers held classified information. That's a crime.
Ahh, I see - so just to be safe, Jared's using a private email server why?
The issue of using private resources for official business is also an problem, but that isn't why people were saying "lock her up."
I'd like to point out that despite 4+ years of you morons chanting it, you still haven't fucking locked her up. Besides impotence, why hasn't he done so?
I've been hearing that a Clinton is going to be locked up for the last 25 fucking years. When are you dipshits actually going to do something other than talk about it?
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Well, we already know Hillary's server had lots of Classified e-mail on it. We also know she wiped out around 30,000 e-mail on it. Who really knows what those were.
We don't know what is on this server. But I do agree it should be run on Government servers. I do know Trump has LEAKS, LEAKS, LEAKS which has been an issue. Maybe this is why it's on a Private Server? Hopefully, everything on it will be saved and moved to Government servers later after t his crises is over?
I still think it's not a good enough reason and that it should be fixed. Trump though as President has more important things to do then know what Server all this stuff is going through. That's what all the people below you are supposed to handle. As President, of a country or a business, you are seeing the overall Big picture. It's the minions under you that are running the day to day things.
Now is this server is Trump's House like Hillary's was in her own basement? Still, once again, I'm not a fan of this stuff on a Private Server. When will people in Government ever learn as it all seems to get out at some point? Just like what they all say is forever on the Internet. They ALL seem to forget this.
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Really they prove that standards of accountability are a sliding scale and humans are so fundamentally broken that sheer shamelessness and a relentless lack of human decency allows for an absolute a deluge of crimes and get ignored.
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Do you think Hillary Clinton would be bragging about her TV ratings during a global pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people? Do you think Hillary Clinton would have disbanded the U.S. Pandemic Response Team? Do you think Hillary Clinton would have ignored expertise both scientific and governmental because her gut said “I’m right and everyone else was wrong and they’re out to make me look bad before my reëlection campaign”?
Hillary Clinton likely wouldn’t have made a great president. But she would certainly have been a better president than Donald “don’t give federal aid to states with governors who don’t kiss my ass” Trump.
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"Why can't we get a candidate, from any side of the aisle, worth voting for?"
A combination of the effectively binary system not allowing true independents to have a chance, a primary system that tends to favour the status quo, and a shift to the right politically over the last few decades which means that even a true centrist will appear to be hard left-wing to a lot of people.
Meaning that, if your politics are truly centrist or centre-left there's not really any representation, and you're completely out of luck if you're an actual left-winger. I just hope you realise that a vote is still necessary, even if it's not for your ideal choice.
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"But I do agree it should be run on Government servers. I do know Trump has LEAKS, LEAKS, LEAKS which has been an issue."
So, you're saying that the reason why he's hypocritically and potentially illegally (can you be sure Kushner isn't also storing classified documents?) using a private email server is because Trump's too incompetent to prevent leaks?
"Trump though as President has more important things to do then know what Server all this stuff is going through."
Nobody's expecting him to. But, the guy he personally installed in this position should know what this, and be very aware that the reason his father-in-law got elected was because of his attacks on Clinton for doing this very thing.
Do you honestly expect that if Clinton had Chelsea's husband do the email stuff rather than doing it herself that she's have had any less flack? If not, why should Trump be shielded because he just picked the unqualified idiot who's doing it?
"Now is this server is Trump's House like Hillary's was in her own basement? "
Going by the actions of other Republicans, it's probably on some corporation's server over which they have no direct control. Which is actually worse.
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Trump though as President has more important things to do then know what Server all this stuff is going through. That's what all the people below you are supposed to handle. As President, of a country or a business, you are seeing the overall Big picture. It's the minions under you that are running the day to day things.
Horse shit.
Someone who ran his campaign on "but her emails" doesn't get to act in the same stupid way. You do remember his feckless cunt of a daughter was also doing the same thing, got called out for it, and said "duh, I didn't know."
That's too much stupid in one family. They should fucking know better, and if they don't they should fuck off like the incompetents that they are.
He hires the best people, don't you remember? You'd think the best people would fucking know better - perhaps he should fire them!
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this is an echo chamber, unless you parrot the Group Think you will get no traction here.
Yeah, trump and his family of morons couldn't have possibly known better. They really are that stupid.
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I am shocked someone appointed to an endless array of government roles they are not qualified and can't get security clearance for is doing shady, hypocritical things.
When Trump is finally removed from power, the Whitehouse is going to be buried beneath a mountain of shredded documents that they were legally required to preserve, we're unlikely to know the true extent of the corruption and incompetence... But hey, but her emails, right?
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Phishing...
Since these aren't official government accounts, any mail from these people should be treated as phishing attempts by any government employee who receives one and reported as a security incident accordingly. There should be no requirement to share information or respond to this task force outside of the .gov email domains.
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"He hires the best people, don't you remember? You'd think the best people would fucking know better - perhaps he should fire them!"
Exactly. Whether or not you expect Trump to know this stuff personally, it is his job to install the best people for the job. But, he decided to install his son-in-law. So, it should reflect on him when Kushner not only uses private email services in the way they attack Clinton for, but doubly so when it's been done so incompetently people receiving email don't understand where they're coming from as a result (as suggested above).
Whether or not Trump should know the fine details, it's absolutely his fault that his nepotism installed someone incompetent in this role.
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Perhaps Trump has found a way to funnel some of the funds from the Coronavirus relief package to his businesses...
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I’d be more surprised if he didn’t.
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It might be reasonable to presume that if White House meetings about the corona virus were classified that all White House functions concerning the corona virus are also classified. It would then follow that at least some of Kusher's emails contain classified information. It isn't his fault that the information was classified, but he was put in the position of dealing with it, and it would be entirely his fault that classified information wound up in private emails. That Kushner was not competent enough to handle the position is Trumps fault for putting him in that position. Both are culpable.
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What's good for the goose...
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Re: What's good for the goose...
It's always someone else's fault with you guys, isn't it?
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Just charge both Jared Kushner and Hillary Clinton with Espionage Act violations now, and let the courts sort it out. Let the chips fall where they may.
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They already charged Hillary in multiple lawsuits and all of them came up empty. Charge anyone else with whatever's appropriate at any time, but don't pretend nothing's been done. It's like Benghazi - no matter how much Republicans want her to be guilty of something, it always fails the test of actual law.
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Re: What's good for the goose...
Maybe if Hillary was in the slammer, for endangering national security and worse by putting classified info there, Kushner, the other swamocrats, and the GOP would care about playing by the rules.
I thought you guys were going to lock her up? What was all that? Just bullshit?
Why in the fuck didn't TRUMP do something to lock her up? Is this just the sad state of affairs that Trump, with his best words, best people, and all his fucking blabbering can't get his AG to charge her with something?
Why are you republicans all such limp-dick blowhards?
Protip - when you're the party in charge, it makes you look pretty fucking stupid when you blame the other party for NOT doing something, jackass.
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Democrats doing shitty things neither excuses nor justifies Republicans doing shitty things, and the reverse holds true as well. Hillary Clinton didn't make Jared Kushner use a private email account for government business. He made that decision himself. Anyone using “but her emails!” to justify his bullshit behavior — including you — rings hollow as a result.
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"it always fails the test of actual law."
...so did the impeachment, that didn't stop anyone. Keep fanning the flames of bipartisanship, it's really worked well so far.
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Of course Hillary wouldn't have done those things. She has her own brand of Super Awful™ and would have, on a scale of 1-10, been just as bad.
You have this habit of dragging out very specific things one person in someone else's comparison have done as if to show that the other compared person isn't at all like that. It's rather disingenuous and not terribly hard to see through. 2 very different people can be equally good, bad, whatever without actually doing the exact same things.
And no, I don't believe Hillary would have been a better president than Trump, not in terms of national embarrassment, lives lost, damaged economy or just about any other metric.
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Re: What's good for the goose...
Meanwhile Trump is using an unencrypted cellphone to carry out government business, purging qualified people and appointing people who can't pass background checks to important whitehouse roles, announcing imminent military action to members of his club and running government business from there in full view of members... Man really cares about national security and draining that swamp.
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Keep fanning the flames of bipartisanship, it's really worked well so far.
I agree - we won back the house, and it's clearly obvious that shit for brains is way over his head.
I could care less about bipartisanship - you morons want a civil war? Have a glass of metamucil and bring it, boomer.
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Only because, y’know, Trump and the Republicans to which he is a cult leader did everything they could short of whacking witnesses to stymie the impeachment hearings and (potentially) obstruct justice. I would hardly describe the impeachment as “fair” and “thorough” when one of the jurors said he had made up his mind on the matter and he would work closely with the defendant to ensure the outcome desired by the defendant.
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Yes, I do. And it’s to show the unique vileness of Donald Trump — not only in his capacity as the president of the United States, but as a human being in general. I’m pointing out things Donald Trump has provably done as POTUS and asking if you believe anyone else would have done not one of those things, but all of those things. I can believe in the possibility that someone could do one or two things that Donald Trump has done. But I cannot and will not believe that anyone other than Donald Trump would have done all the things that Donald Trump has done. To wit:
Do you think Hillary Clinton would have…
practically pushed the United States to the brink of war with North Korea by posting on Twitter?
alienated all the allies of the United States out of ego and spite because said allies weren’t “doing enough for America”?
treated violent authoritarian dictators such as Kim Jong-Un with respect and acted like said dictators were decent human beings instead of, y’know, dictators?
all but done the bidding of Vladimir Putin by ignoring the Russian interference with the 2016 election and refusing to fund election security for 2020?
said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the White supremacist march on Charlottesville that ultimately cost Heather Heyer her life?
constantly deflected blame to other people, including the previous administration, and refused to take responsibility for any fuck-ups committed by her administration?
constantly referred to any news reports unflattering to her (i.e., the entirety of Fox News’s daily lineup) as “fake news” and hounded members of the press for asking her tough questions instead of kissing her ass?
practically cancelled the White House daily briefings because reporters were asking too many actual questions and not doing enough ass-kissing?
disbanded the U.S. Pandemic Response Team, ignored recommendations from the Obama administration’s top experts on how underprepared the U.S. is for a pandemic, and ignored the results of a pandemic simulation held by her own administration that said the U.S. is underprepared for a pandemic?
held up federal aid to states and territories in need of such aid until such time as the leaders of those states/territories had kissed the president’s ass to her liking?
threatened to sue numerous people because they said mean things about her in the press, even if what they said never rose to the level of defamation?
installed an avowed White supremacist into the White House and used his recommendations to enact an unmistakably racist immigration policy focused on cruelty and inhumanity towards immigrants of color (but especially Hispanic and Middle Eastern immigrants) regardless of their immigration status?
One or two things on that list, maybe I can believe she might have done as president. (Even that would be a stretch.) But would she have done all of them?
By the way: If I took more time, I could come up with far more things to put on this list. The evil of Donald Trump knows few boundaries and no depths. November is coming, and if you think he won’t do anything or everything he can to keep the power he has right now (or that the Republicans won’t help him keep that power), you haven’t been keeping up with the past four years.
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You're wrong about the law they can use any account they want.
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I look forward to your quotation of the relevant parts of the laws that provide exceptions regarding use of private emails to discuss official business because reasons.
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[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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...because both parties are part of an oligarchic power structure whose sole purpose is to remain in power. They don't care about character, intelligence, organizational ability or any of the features voters actually want except for the minimum amount of those things required to get themselves elected.
The only reason "checks and balances" worked in the government was because the free press was supposed to help voters distinguish BS from fact, and the voters were supposed to have enough self-interest to not allow corrupt officials to remain in office. When the parties, the press and even numbers the voters themselves collude to gaslight everyone else, this is what you get.
And yes, the Democrats have their own reality-distortion bubble, but it's more of an echo-chamber than the Republicans' technique of burying the truth in the middle of a thousand conspiracy theories.
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In the words of Tonto: Whaddayamean "we", white man? Is this a progressive vs. conservative war or a millennial vs. boomer war? You can't even figure out who's on your side.
Also "bipartisanship": I do not think that word means what you think it means. Maybe "partisanship"?
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"...so did the impeachment"
Erm, no it didn't. I'd read up on it if I were you.
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When Donald Trump starts telling the truth?
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"Why can't we get a candidate, from any side of the aisle, worth voting for?"
Because both parties know, by now, that their party chairman could walk up and take a dump on their seat of candidacy and as long as they could convince enough swing voters the opposing side was actually harmful the citizens would feel compelled to elect the turd.
In other words the reason you don't get decent candidates is because you haven't held them to account at the ballots. Neither party will change unless they receive the message, loud and clear, that their usual shtick of mudslinging the other guy until the "somewhat unoffensive" looks like the better choice, will no longer work.
And as long as what you have is an entrenched two-party system and only about 50-60% of the citizenry even bothers to vote that will never change.
It's not rocket science.
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"When Donald Trump starts telling the truth?"
No, he has been quite truthful at times, before he became POTUS and there were ramifications to saying what he actually thought.
"You can grab them by the pussy, it's great" was probably his true opinion. As was "I'd never trust a black man with money".
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Don't forget the greatest hits of his campaign, such as "I love the poorly educated" and "I could shoot a man on 5th Avenue and these people would still vote for me" (last one paraphrased, can't be bothered to check right now, but it's close.
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Granted that Hillary was a tool tossed in by the dems in the belief that "Hey, a black guy worked, let's try with a woman next" - because at the end of the day that's what the Old White Men in the party leadership think - You forgot to bring the real reason the Trump SA were going after Hillary in a way they otherwise reserved only for Obama.
It's the logical reaction of the alt-right to the fact that after the unholy abomination of a black man in the white house they were now threatened by the concept of a woman holding power over men.
THAT is why so very many Trump adherents lose their shit completely whenever the topic of Hillary comes up. In the end all they want is to turn back time to a US in 1950 when women tended the kitchen and coloured people had the "decency" to sit at the back of the bus.
They won't listen to what Trump does or has done because as long as he takes the time to wipe disinfectant over every surface Obama touched, they'll forgive him anything.
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Yes. Trump is, in many ways, far more honest about his opinions than most politicians.
It's a shame his honesty of opinion doesn't extend to when he has to bring facts to the table.
Not that it matters. All our examples combined of when Trump spoke his honest mind only serve to underscore that the reason Trump wouldn't lose any voters is because most of those voters find his opinions about women, black people, and the badly educated fully positive.
And he's been properly grateful to those Very Fine People as well.
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Re: Re:
"Granted that Hillary was a tool tossed in by the dems in the belief that "Hey, a black guy worked, let's try with a woman next""
No, she wasn't. Sarah Palin was the "hey, let's try a women" manouvre. But, Clinton? Say what you want about her or whether you preferred Sanders, she was the most experienced statesperson with a wide range of popular plans, and was good enough to win the popular vote. It's just that a combination of decades-long misinformation campaigns and the electoral college stopped her being elected.
I understand not liking her or thinking she wasn't the right choice, but the reason she was selected was not just for her gender.
"You forgot to bring the real reason the Trump SA were going after Hillary in a way they otherwise reserved only for Obama."
They been conditioned since before Bill was president to hate everything about her. it's like "socialism" - they can agree with every plan you put to them but as soon as someone labels it socialism they act as if you're just proposed annexing Washington DC to the USSR.
"They won't listen to what Trump does or has done because as long as he takes the time to wipe disinfectant over every surface Obama touched, they'll forgive him anything."
Well, hopefully they'll understand that included dismantling all the protections they used to have for the exact crisis the US is in now. Probably not, but it would be nice if some of the people suffering realise that this is exactly what they voted for.
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"Yes. Trump is, in many ways, far more honest about his opinions than most politicians."
He's not even that. Everything he tweets, there's a prior tweet where he claims to have believed the opposite.
The thing with Trump is not that he's honest about his opinions, it's that he's a snake oil salesman who always tells the audience what they want to hear. The only difference between him and the typical politician is that he doesn't care about the long term. He'll say what pleases the crowd in front of him today, and if he has to say the opposite to get tomorrow's crowd on his side he'll do that.
There's never been long-term consequences to him doing that in business as he's always filed bankruptcy when they catch up, and he's doing the same now with the US. Until his audience demand logic and consistency in his positions, he'll get away with it.
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"You're wrong about the law they can use any account they want."
No, they literally can't.
It's also spelled out in their employment contracts, so there's both criminal and civil liability when it comes to deliberately using an unsecure connection to communicate.
Since they're using a private, 3rd-party provider it's arguably worse than Hillary since that means no one knows what security, if any, is provided.
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Re: Re:
"Since they're using a private, 3rd-party provider it's arguably worse than Hillary since that means no one knows what security, if any, is provided."
That needs to be stressed. What Hillary did was dumb, but it's only her and her staff that had access to the emails and there were no known breaches.
With a 3rd party provider, there is the potential for unknown numbers of people who are not government employees to access the emails, there is no direct control over how data on the server is managed or backed up, and most cloud providers have had some kind of breach within the last year or two.
The only way in which Hillary could possibly be worse is if there's no classified documents on the Kushner account (which I doubt, and of course the documents Hillary uses were not classified at the time she used them). But, since we don't even know the identity of the provider yet, that will probably have to be revealed with a FOIA request down the road.
Even then, these people are handing over archiving and control of the record of the US Government over to 3rd parties, which should be a major red flag for anyone not already a confirmed cult member.
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