Members Of Trump's Admin Team Using Private Email Accounts Because Of Course They Are

from the winning-streak-continues dept

Making American Political Hypocrisy Great Again:

President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has used a private email account to conduct and discuss official White House business dozens of times, his lawyer confirmed Sunday.

Kushner used the private account through his first nine months in government service, even as the president continued to criticize his opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Democrat Hillary Clinton, for her use of a private email account for government business.

And, because once is never enough:

Ivanka Trump used a personal email account to communicate with a member of President Trump’s administration, a watchdog group said Monday.

American Oversight obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that show Ivanka Trump, a senior White House adviser to her father, used a personal email account to contact Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon in February.

It's not as though anyone isn't aware of their responsibility to use official government email accounts for official government business. There's a duty to preserve records that goes hand-in-hand with FOIA law. Those who choose to do business this way are either lazy or devious. And it doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other.

At this point, the criticisms that paved the way to Trump's win can almost all be levied against the new administration. All we're really waiting for is someone to show up with a birth certificate showing Donald Trump isn't a natural-born US citizen.

Clinton's excuse for her continuous use of a private email account was "convenience." Guess what Kushner's is:

Once in the White House, Kushner used his private account for convenience from time to time — especially when he was traveling or using a personal laptop, according to two people familiar with his practice.

As innocuous as the use appears to be -- at least according to obtained documents and unidentified sources' statements -- the point is people in government positions know better than to continue using private email accounts for government business. There's no excuse at this point -- not with more than 25 years of mainstream email use and a half-century of federal public records law.

That officials continue to do this highlights a flaw in public records laws: the fact that they're written by people with the most interest in keeping some communications secret. Private email accounts are used because there's a good likelihood courts won't force every email to be turned over in the event of a records request lawsuit. Even better, since the chance of an actual lawsuit being filed is low enough, many public figures feel these dice are safe to roll.

This isn't solely a Trump Administration problem, but it's definitely a case of double standards. We expect those from our politicians, sadly. But we don't expect them on the level we've seen over the past several months, where political opponents are savaged by administration officials (including the president) for behavior Trump's own team engages in.

Filed Under: convenience, email, foia, hillary clinton, ivanka trump, jared kushner, private email, transparency

Released Snowden Doc Shows NSA Thwarting Electronic Dead Drops By Using Email Metadata

from the 'just-metadata'-strikes-again dept

The latest batch of Snowden docs published at The Intercept cover a lot of ground. The internal informational sheets from the Signals Intelligence Directorate include info on a host of surveillance programs that haven't been revealed by previous document dumps. Nor do they discuss the programs in full. As such, some of the information is limited.

One of those published last week mentions the NSA's targeting of internet cafes in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries using a program called MASTERSHAKE. Using MASTERSHAKE, analysts were apparently able to drill down location info to which target was sitting in which chair at the cafes under surveillance.

Further down the page [PDF], past this brief mention of a program discussed more fully elsewhere, there's another interesting tidbit. Apparently, the NSA can suss out electronic dead drops using harvested metadata. (h/t Electrospaces)

[REDACTED] will be briefing on THERAPYCHEATER. This is a system that uses metadata analysis to detect and exploit the communication patterns of targets about whom the SIGINT system has no specific a priori knowledge. By identifying suspicious patterns in the access to draft folders of webmail accounts, THERAPYCHEATER will identify email addresses potentially being used in a form of covert communication known as a cyber dead drop. There are numerous examples in both SIGINT and collateral of terrorists using cyber dead drops to communicate operational information and plans.

Apparently, the tried-and-true surveillance workaround is no longer a secure option. One way to avoid surveillance of communications was to simply not communicate. Composing drafts in a shared email account was one to talk to others without risking interception.

As the paragraph states, this draft folder metadata is used to acquire new surveillance targets, based almost solely on the analyst's impression of account activity. Presumably from here, the NSA can move on to seeking access to the actual account to see what's hiding inside that's never been sent. Or, at the very least, keep an eye on traffic to and from the email account.

This was written in 2005 so access to email account metadata may be more limited, thanks to routine encryption. However, the metadata here refers to activity taking place within an account, suggesting the NSA does (or at least did) have access to certain types of account activity, rather than simply gathering metadata related to web-traversing communications.

Filed Under: dead drops, email, mastershake, metadata, nsa, surveillance

Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai's Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt

from the the-first-amendment-means-something dept

As you likely know, for most of the past nine months, we've been dealing with a defamation lawsuit from Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. This is a claim that we have disputed at great length and in great detail, showing how email existed long before Ayyadurai wrote his program. We pointed to the well documented public history of email, and how basically all of the components that Ayyadurai now claims credit for preceded his own work. We discussed how his arguments were, at best, misleading, such as arguing that the copyright on his program proved that he was the "inventor of email" -- since patents and copyrights are very different, and just because Microsoft has a copyright on "Windows" it does not mean it "invented" the concept of a windowed graphical user interface (because it did not). As I have said, a case like this is extremely draining -- especially on an emotional level -- and can create massive chilling effects on free speech.

A few hours ago, the judge ruled and we prevailed. The case has been dismissed and the judge rejected Ayyadurai's request to file an amended complaint. We are certainly pleased with the decision and his analysis, which notes over and over again that everything that we stated was clearly protected speech, and the defamation (and other claims) had no merit. This is, clearly, a big win for the First Amendment and free speech -- especially the right to call out and criticize a public figure such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who is now running for the US Senate in Massachusetts. We're further happy to see the judge affirm that CDA Section 230 protects us from being sued over comments made on the blog, which cannot be attributed to us under the law. We talk a lot about the importance of CDA 230, in part because it protects sites like our own from these kinds of lawsuits. This is just one more reason we're so concerned about the latest attempt in Congress to undermine CDA 230. While those supporting the bill may claim that it only targets sites like Backpage, such changes to CDA 230 could have a much bigger impact on smaller sites like our own.

We are disappointed, however, that the judge denied our separate motion to strike under California's anti-SLAPP law. For years, we've discussed the importance of strong anti-SLAPP laws that protect individuals and sites from going through costly legal battles. Good anti-SLAPP laws do two things: they stop lawsuits early and they make those who bring SLAPP suits -- that is, lawsuits clearly designed to silence protected speech -- pay the legal fees. The question in this case was whether or not California's anti-SLAPP law should apply to a case brought in Massachusetts. While other courts have said that the state of the speaker should determine which anti-SLAPP laws are applied (even in other states' courts), it was an issue that had not yet been ruled upon in the First Circuit where this case was heard. While we're happy with the overall dismissal and the strong language used to support our free speech rights, we're nevertheless disappointed that the judge chose not to apply California's anti-SLAPP law here.

However, that just reinforces the argument we've been making for years: we need stronger anti-SLAPP laws in many states (including Massachusetts) and, even more importantly, we need a strong federal anti-SLAPP law to protect against frivolous lawsuits designed to silence protected speech. The results of this case have only strengthened our resolve to do everything possible to continue to fight hard for protecting freedom of expression and to push for stronger anti-SLAPP laws that make free speech possible, and not burdensome and expensive.

You have not heard the last from us on the issue of the First Amendment, free speech and anti-SLAPP laws -- or how some try to use the court system to silence and bully critics. Step one of this is our new Free Speech edition, which we announced just a few weeks ago, where we are focusing more of our reporting efforts on issues related to free speech and anti-SLAPP. We intend to do a lot more as well. For years, we've talked about these issues from the position of an observer, and now we can talk about them from the perspective of someone who has gone through this process as well.

Of course, if you have to face something like this, it helps to have great lawyers--and we're immensely grateful for the incredible hard-work of Rob Bertsche, Jeff Pyle and Thomas Sutcliffe along with the rest of the team at their firm, Prince Lobel Tye LLP.

Finally, I can't even begin to thank everyone who has supported us over the past nine months -- whether by kind words (you don't know how much that helped!) or through our survival fund at ISupportJournalism.com or by becoming a Techdirt Insider. We just passed Techdirt's 20th anniversary and while it's one thing to think that people like and support you, it's another thing altogether to see how people come out to support you when it matters most. And we were overwhelmed by the support we received over the past nine months, and the kind words and help that many, many people offered. It was beyond heartening, and, once again, it reinforces our resolve to continue to speak up for free speech and to do what we can to protect others' ability to speak out as well.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, defamation, email, first amendment, shiva ayyadurai
Companies: floor64, techdirt

The Chilling Effects Of A SLAPP Suit: My Story

from the no-fun-at-all dept

Last week, I presented at the always excellent Personal Democracy Forum event in NY, talking publicly for the first time about the lawsuit that's been filed against us. Specifically, what I chose to talk about is the real chilling effects that such a lawsuit can have -- and has already had on us. We've written about SLAPP defamation suits for many, many years. But it's (unfortunately) different (and much, much worse) to experience it yourself. You can see the video here, which got more emotional than I had expected it to be.

If you agree that these chilling effects are a dangerous attack on free speech, please consider supporting our ongoing reporting via any of the following methods: ISupportJournalism.com, Patreon.com, our own Insider Shop, or perhaps you want to buy some t-shirts, hoodies, mugs or stickers. However you support us: thank you. Related to this, I also want to thank both the staff and attendees at PDF, who were amazing, kind, thoughtful and helpful to me over the course of the event.

Separately, Ars Technica just published a long deep dive article on the claims that the plaintiff in the case against us, Shiva Ayyadurai, has made. It's a worthwhile read.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, charles harder, chilling effects, defamation, email, free speech, shiva ayyadurai, slapp, techdirt
Companies: floor64, techdirt

IBM Shamed Into Giving Away Awful Patent On Email Out-Of-Office Messages

from the so-why-get-it-in-the-first-place? dept

IBM basically tries to patent everything, no matter how stupid. The company has (no, really) been at the top of the patent recipient list in the United States for an astounding 24 straight years. Really. And, yes, sure, the company has done some innovative things and yes, Watson's pretty cool, but does anyone actually think IBM is the most innovative company around for the past two and a half decades? It gets tons of patents because IBM has an army of lawyers who just try to patent anything. Earlier this week, the EFF put out its regular Stupid Patent of the Month post, and it was about an incredibly stupid patent from IBM. The patent (US Patent 9,547,842) is for an out-of-office email messaging system.

You know, when you email someone and you get back a bounce that says the person is out of the office, and that they won't be reading emails (even though they probably are reading them anyway and probably will respond anyway, because, really, who goes off email these days?). Anyway, the application for this patent was filed in 2010, way, way, way after OOO messages were quite common. The one thing that might be considered different in this patent was that you could set it to tell people a few days earlier that you would be on vacation in a few days. But, as EFF pointed out, that's not particularly inventive or difficult for anyone to figure out and it certainly doesn't deserve a patent. As the EFF notes, going over the history of this patent demonstrates why the US Patent Office is so bad at this stuff. Rather than figuring what's actually obvious or in the prior art, it just looks at patents:

You might think that a patent examiner faced with a patent application on an out-of-office email system might look at some real out-of-office email solutions. But the examiner considered only patents and patent applications. The Patent Office spent years going back-and-forth on whether IBM’s claims where new compared to a particular 2006 patent application. But it never considered any of the many, many, existing real-world systems that pre-dated IBM’s application.

To take just one example, the Patent Office never considered this detailed specification from 1998 (PDF) from IBM describing the out-of-office agent in Notes. Nor did it consider other well-known email features like scheduling and signatures. If the Patent Office had taken a peek at the real world, and applied a modicum of common-sense, it would have quickly rejected IBM’s claims.

EFF also notes that the patent should have easily failed under the Alice standard, but IBM tap danced around it:

In Alice, the Supreme Court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply because it is implemented on a generic computer. That decision came down in June 2014, so the Patent Office had plenty of time to apply it to the application that led to this patent. If it had, it likely would have rejected the claims. The ’842 Patent goes out of its way to make clear that its method can be implemented on a generic computer. The final three columns of the patent recite at length how its claims can be implemented in any programming language on essentially any kind of hardware.

At one point, the examiner did reject some of the application’s claims under Section 101 of the Patent Act (which is the statute the Alice decision applies). But IBM overcame the rejection simply by arguing that the patent’s method was implemented in computer hardware. In January 2013, IBM noted that “it was agreed [between IBM and the patent examiner] that the rejection ... under 35 U.S.C. § 101 could be overcome by reciting that a hardware storage device stores computer readable instructions or program code.” Even if that was a reasonable response in 2013, it certainly was not after Alice. Yet the Patent Office never revisited the issue. We have submitted multiple rounds of comments (1, 2, 3, and 4) to the Patent Office urging it to be more diligent in applying Alice.

So, normally, we just repost the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month posts here on Techdirt, and we even had this one lined up... but a funny thing happened on the way to the posting. Over at Ars Technica, Joe Mullin reached out to IBM to ask them the reporter's equivalent of "WTF?" and got back this response:

Asked today about EFF's criticisms of the patent, an IBM spokesperson said that "IBM has decided to dedicate the patent to the public."

Got that? So IBM spent tons of money not just applying for this patent, but arguing back and forth with the PTO for years over why it truly deserved this silly patent... and then it got it at the beginning of this year. And less than two months after receiving the patent, when the EFF publicly shames IBM over the patent, the company then says "oh, hey, we dedicate it to the public." That makes sense.

Filed Under: email, out of office, patents, stupid patent of the month
Companies: eff, ibm

Order This Weekend To Get The Next Batch Of Techdirt Gear!

from the faster-service dept

New Gear From Techdirt: I Invented Email »

As some of you might have noticed, recent upgrades over at Teespring have allowed us to change the way we offer Techdirt gear. Instead of running individual week-or-two long campaigns that only print and ship once the whole thing is completed, we've now got our logo gear (in two styles) and our I Invented Email gear running on a cycle with new orders printing and shipping every three days, so you don't have to wait nearly as long to get your hands on it. Those of you who already ordered should be getting your shirts, hoodies et al soon!

Another batch closes tomorrow (Sunday) night — so order now to get in on the next shipment! The Email gear won't be around forever, so don't wait too long.

Filed Under: email, t-shirts, techdirt gear

Some New Techdirt T-Shirts (And Hoodies, And More...)

from the i'm-spartacus dept

New Gear From Techdirt: I Invented Email »

Okay, it's been a long time since we ran some t-shirt campaigns around here, and we've been hard at work on some new designs that we think you'll enjoy. First up, we've got one that we've had a few people asking for: our brand new I Invented Email gear, allowing you to express your opinion on certain events. Separate from that, we've got some brand new Techdirt logo gear in two styles. Check 'em out. The email t-shirts are only available for a limited time, so get them while they're here.

Filed Under: email, t-shirts, techdirt

FBI Changes FOIA Policies, Tries To Route More Requesters To Fax Machines, Mailboxes

from the FBI-FOIA:-where-the-present-is-always-several-years-away dept

The FBI's relationship with the FOIA is, at the very least, contentious. The agency clearly would rather follow the letter of the law than its spirit... but only the letters it likes. It will technically release documents -- sometimes years after the request is made -- even if said documents are nothing more than a mostly blank paper telling the requester that all 509 pages have been withheld.

To the FBI -- and to its official FOIA stats -- this release of nothing counts as a "response." Even cutting itself this much slack on "responses" hasn't helped the FBI's FOIA stats. This has led to it preemptively declaring any response that may include more than 50 pages as "complex," in hopes of massaging its clearly awful response times.

Considering the FBI's open antagonism towards FOIA requesters, it comes as no surprise the agency is making it even more difficult for requesters to make requests. The Daily Dot reports on the FBI's latest changes to its FOIA policies.

At the beginning of March, the FBI will no longer accept FOIA requests via email. Instead, requesters will have to rely on fax machines and standard mail (“snail mail”) in order to communicate with the agency’s records management division. The agency will also accept a fraction of requests through an online portal, provided users agree to a terms-of-service agreement and are willing to provide the FBI with personal information, including a phone number and physical address.

In the year of our various lords two-thousand-seventeen, the FBI is pushing requesters towards fax machines and snail mail. Why? Because it makes it incrementally more of a hassle to request documents from the agency. Sure, there are a number of options online to turn emails into faxes, but it's just one more hoop to jump through, put into place by the FBI with absolutely zero justification.

Anything that discourages the filing of a request is a win in the FBI's book. Anything that makes the process more time consuming is just another deterrent. And forcing electronic requesters to provide a phone number and physical address is completely nonsensical. This itself is a deterrent, as some requesters may not feel comfortable giving the FBI this information in exchange for a pile of redated PDF pages at some point in the next six months-five years.

And there's no guarantee requests sent in the FBI's preferred form will even make it through. As was noted here a few years ago, an agency with an annual budget in the high billions (Defense Dept.) was sending letters to requesters to inform them that the Department's FOIA fax machine was broken and might not be replaced until the beginning of the next fiscal year.

Add to that the FBI's internal search system, which appears to be deliberately designed to avoid finding responsive documents. Some of the equipment dates back to the 1980s, and the databases it accesses are siloed off from each other, preventing cross-searches for specified terms. Requesters need to know as much about FOIA documents searches as the FBI's FOIA response team in order to coax even a minimum of compliance from the agency.

The good news is that the FBI has been shamed into rolling back part of its "fax and stamps" FOIA demands. It would still prefer requesters use the most archaic form possible when asking for documents, but it has rolled back restrictions it placed on requests made through its online portal.

Earlier on Tuesday, the FBI told the Daily Dot it would remove the limit on the number of submissions requesters could make and allow users to file requests 24 hours a day.

“The FBI eFOIA portal has been under development and testing for two years. With the full implementation of the portal on March 1, 2017, the terms of service for the site will be modified to allow an unlimited number of requests, no limitation on the number of requests which may be submitted by an individual, and availability seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” the FBI said in a statement.

Even with this belated fix, the FBI has still drawn the attention of Senator Ron Wyden, who plans to ask a bunch of pointed FOIA questions at his earliest convenience.

"Sen. Wyden has a number of concerns about the FBI’s new FOIA policy, even with the revisions announced today,” Keith Chu, Wyden's spokesman, told the Daily Dot in an email. “He plans to ask FBI how it justifies limiting access to information the public has a right to access.”

I'm sure the agency will inform Ron Wyden that it performs the statutory minimum to comply with FOIA law, even if this "compliance" results in routine, lengthy response delays and multiple lawsuits. But it may find it harder to explain how it arrived at the conclusion it could do even LESS than it already does by instituting these policies.

Filed Under: email, fax machines, fbi, foia, transparency

Congress Tries Once Again To Require Warrants To Search Emails

from the will-it-actually-happen? dept

The efforts to reform ECPA -- the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act -- have been going on for basically two decades at this point. The law, which was passed in 1986, has a whole bunch of problems, with the biggest one (as we've discussed dozens of times) being that it considers any email that's been on a server for more than 180 days "abandoned," and thus freely searchable by law enforcement without a warrant. That's because there was no concept of cloud computing back in 1986. People who got email "retrieved" those emails off of a server and downloaded them to local storage. Many in Congress have been trying to fix this for so, so, so many years. And it always gets blocked. The IRS and the SEC have both been fairly proactive in trying to block ECPA reform bills that will require a warrant (funny: I thought it was the 4th Amendment that made such a warrant necessary, but, silly me, no one cares about the 4th Amendment any more).

Last year, a plan to fix ECPA, called the Email Privacy Act, with an astounding 315 co-sponsors, passed the House unanimously. As we noted at the time, this is fairly incredible. In these contentious times -- especially on issues related to surveillance and law enforcement -- to have a unanimous vote on a law that says "get a warrant" if you want access to emails, is quite incredible. But, of course, even with that much support on that side of Congress, the Senate has a way of killing ECPA reform each and every year. Last year, a few Senators -- including Jeff Sessions, who is likely to be our next Attorney General -- tried to bury it with ridiculous amendments that would expand surveillance.

On Monday, the reintroduced Email Privacy Act easily passed the House via a voice vote, showing that our Congressional Members still recognize how important this is. Of course, now it gets to go back to the Senate, and we saw how well that worked last year. And then we have to believe that President Trump will sign the bill. Stranger things have happened, of course, but it still seems like a longshot that real ECPA reform will become law this year. It's great that Rep. Kevin Yoder, along with Reps. Jared Polis, Bob Goodlatte, John Conyers, Ted Poe, Suzan DelBene, Will Hurd, Jerry Nadler, Doug Collins and Judy Chu keep pushing this bill. I disagree with many of the folks on that list on a number of other issues we cover, but the fact that they're willing to support basic 4th Amendment concepts for email is worthy of recognition. Now, hopefully, the Senate won't try to muck it up again.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, email privacy act, irs, kevin yoder, sec, warrants

Lock Them Up! Trump Staff Still Using Private Republican National Committee Email Accounts

from the well,-it's-bad-when-our-political-opponents-do-it... dept

Time to lock up Donald Trump? Or at least his staff?

Senior Trump administration staffers, including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, have active accounts on a Republican National Committee (RNC) email system, Newsweek has learned.

The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the George W. Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.

Seems like Trump might want to engage in a forced migration of staffers to official White House email accounts in the near future. Can't have cries of "lock him up" being fired back at his administration -- not after using Hillary Clinton's email server as a campaign plank for so many months.

Sure, there's nothing strictly illegal about utilizing a private email account while in office. But every bit of official business needs to be handled by official accounts. Government employees are required to forward any official emails to official accounts and to disclose any private accounts upon taking office.

Making frequent use of personal accounts is just bad optics. And, in the case of the RNC accounts, it's also a possible security issue.

The RNC email system, according to U.S. intelligence, was hacked during the 2016 race.

And there's insecurity on top of insecurity. A hacker spoke with CNN after discovering Trump and his administration are running several accounts -- both Gmail and Twitter -- without using the most basic of security settings: two-factor authentication. Correction: The hacker actually criticized their failure to use a security setting that requires password resets to be requested with an email or phone number. Twitter responded suggesting that two-factor authentication and additional security protocols are in place on White House accounts, but would not comment on these specific accounts.

WauchulaGhost says he found the likely email associated with Melania Trump's handle within twenty minutes. He said the email associated with Vice President Mike Pence was easy to guess once you saw the redacted version: vi***************@gmail.com, which WauchulaGhost pieced together as vicepresident2017@gmail.com. It has since been changed, but the president and first lady's email addresses remain the same. (And the VP account still doesn't have the extra layer of security.)

And today, there are even more detailed reports, showing that the @POTUS account is secured with a gmail address.

Given the President's ability to make markets move with a single tweet, leaving accounts like these unsecured is begging for catastrophe. The news that the VP and President are still using Gmail accounts is also a problem and not just because of the lack of two-factor authentication. It signals that the Trump Administration is planning to do some official business off the FOIA-able/archivable books. That third parties are disclosing these accounts suggests the administration is in no hurry to do so.

Trump's staff may want to engage in some public disavowals of these personal email accounts, especially considering all the noise the campaign made about Hillary Clinton's private email server, its security issues, and the dubious legality of routing classified documents through unsecured servers.

If not, well… that will be completely unsurprising. Not that Trump won't hold himself and his staffers to the same standard he held Clinton, but because politicians are a mostly-hypocritical bunch who like to point fingers at everyone but themselves.

That's why we tend to steer clear of partisan arguments here at Techdirt. This isn't a post about Trump being more wrong than Hillary Clinton. They're both wrong. Trump's staff has a chance to head this off before it becomes a weapon to be wielded against his re-election campaign. If his administration doesn't distance itself from private email accounts, it will make Trump no better or worse than those that have come before him. Unfortunately, that will just make him the same as everyone else. And that's not what he ran on. And that's not what his backers want to see.

But it's incredibly tempting to keep communications out of the public's hands for as long as possible (if not forever) by routing work emails through private accounts. There are statutes and regulations to guard against this, but they're mostly toothless. So, it's up to each politician to determine their personal level of integrity. Many have opted for deliberate opacity, preferring their own secrecy to their obligations to the public that elected them. Will Trump be any better? Or will his staffers find a way to rationalize away their hypocritical stance on private email accounts? According to the statutes they must comply with, we'll know the answer in a couple of weeks.

Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a Washington-based government watchdog that requests and collects classified information, sued the Bush administration (along with CREW) over the RNC server and lost emails, and is still waiting to see what was in them. “If senior aides to President Trump were using private RNC servers on the afternoon after the inauguration, they have about 16 days to copy them into the official White House systems. If not, not they are in violation of the law,” he says.

Filed Under: donald trump, email, foia, mike pence, private emails, security