Ivanka Trump's Defense Of Her Email Use Compared To Hillary Clinton's Isn't Great

One of the most infamous parts of the 2016 presidential campaign (and there were a whole lot) was the focus on Hillary Clinton's use of a private email while serving as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama — something President Donald Trump constantly called her out on. Now Ivanka Trump is facing similar criticisms after it was uncovered that she also used a private email address while working in the White House. Representatives for Trump did not reply to Elite Daily's request for comment at the time. However, Ivanka Trump says her email use compared to Hillary Clinton's has "no equivalency," she said. Elite Daily reached out to representatives of Trump and Clinton for further comment, but did not immediately hear back.

A November review of Trump's emails showed that in 2017 she used her private email address to send hundreds of emails to cabinet officials, White House aides, and her assistants, according to The Washington Post. The publication reports that Trump used her personal email less than 100 times to reply to administration officials who contacted her through her private address. It's fairly ironic, given the fact that Clinton was called out by Donald Trump through the 2016 campaign trail for using a private email address, and now it turns out his daughter did the same — except Trump doesn't see any similarities. In a Nov. 28 interview with ABC News, the first daughter said she really doesn't see any "equivalency" between her email use and that of Clinton's. Trump maintained that even though she used a private email address, all her emails are "stored and preserved" and her situation is nothing like what President Trump took Clinton to task on during the 2016 presidential election. Trump told ABC News' Deborah Roberts,

There really is no equivalency. All of my emails are stored and preserved. There were no deletions. There is no attempt to hide. There's no equivalency to what my father's spoken about.

In a Nov. 19 statement, Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Trump's attorney and ethics counsel Abbe Lowel, said that Trump did sometimes used her private email but that was before she was briefed on all the rules, according to The Washington Post. Mirijanian said,

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.

This defense of Trump's email usage is reminiscent of Clinton's defense, which was that she was unaware or misunderstood some of the rules in regards to private and government email usage. Clinton told ABC News in 2015 that in retrospect, she should have used different accounts for personal and work-related emails. "That was a mistake," said Clinton at the time. A 2016 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report by then-Director James Comey said Clinton was "extremely careless" in the handling of her emails, but recommended no criminal charges, according to The New York Times. However, that didn't stop President Trump from using the email scandal as a mudslinging tool during and after the 2016 campaign trail. He often called his opponent "Crooked Hillary" and said she should be thrown in jail for her emails, inspiring his supporters to use phrases like "Lock her up!"

While President Trump went in on Clinton over her emails, he's not singing the same tune when it comes to his daughter. Per Politico, on Nov. 20, the president relied, once again, on the "fake news" defense. President Trump explained that, yes, his daughter did use her private email but unlike Clinton's, the emails "were not classified." The president went on to say that none of Trump's emails were deleted — referring to 2016 reports that Clinton deleted 33,000 emails which she believed to be non work-related. He said,

Just so you understand, Ivanka Trump did some emails, they were not classified like Hillary Clinton. They were not deleted like Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t doing anything to hide her emails. I looked at it briefly today and the presidential record, they are all in presidential records, there was no hiding.

Finally President Trump added, according to Politico, "There was no deletion, no nothing. What it is, is a false story."

While there are parallels to be drawn, it looks like Trump and her father don't see using a private email as a big of a deal as they did in 2016.

Disclosure: Hillary Clinton's son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky joined Social Capital, an investor in Bustle Digital Group, in mid 2017 and joined the Board of Bustle Digital Group in early 2018.