But what about her emails?
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Monday joined the club of Trump officials revealed to have used private email addresses for government business, a practice that often violates the rules for retaining documents for the benefit those who want to examine the public record.
President Trump’s supporters might be excused for not hearing about the news over the roar of a campaign rally chanting “Lock her up!” at the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name on Monday night.
In a brief letter Monday, the Education Department’s acting inspector general, Sandra D. Bruce, said that her office found emails DeVos had received on her private email accounts from a sender “who was offering advice on potential candidates for Departmental positions.”
DeVos herself, between Trump taking office and April 2018, sent a “limited” number of emails relating to official business from a private account, per the letter. The department failed to turn up those emails in responding to a public records request. But the inspector general separately found emails sent from DeVos’ private accounts on the departmental email system, Bruce wrote.
“We did not identify any instances where the Secretary forwarded emails from her personal accounts to her Department email accounts,” Bruce wrote, flagging that Devos’ emails “related to government business were not always being properly preserved.”
But let’s not be too hard on DeVos, she’s hardly alone. Here’s a brief list of current and former senior Trump administration officials confirmed or reported to have used private email addresses or messaging apps for official business:
Mike Pence (as Indiana governor); Jared Kushner; Ivanka Trump; Steve Bannon; Reince Priebus; Gary Cohn; Stephen Miller; K.T. McFarland; James Comey; Kris Kobach and other former members of Trump’s bogus voter fraud commission; John Gore, to correspond with members of the President’s bogus voter fraud commission; and Scott Pruitt (as EPA administrator and Oklahoma attorney general).
