If you thought Hillary Clinton was the only politician facing digital concerns, then get a load of this: many of President Donald Trump’s senior staff members had their own private email accounts. Newsweek reports that, until Wednesday, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon were still linked to addresses tied to a Republican National Committee email system.
According to Newsweek, it’s not against the law for a staff member to maintain a separate political email account while in the White House. Doing so actually helps to draw a distinction between conversations related to politics and those pertaining to work that happens within the White House. Unfortunately for Trump’s troupe, though, the events of 2016 cast this practice as highly controversial.
Remember when Trump wanted to “lock up” Clinton? The chant (along with the tweets, proposed investigations and overall aggression) was inspired by her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. Had Conway, Kushner, Spicer and Bannon kept their private email accounts, they would have run the risk of barking up the same tree that threw shade at Clinton’s run for president.
Additionally, the deleted accounts existed on rnchq.org. This is the same system former president George W. Bush’s administration was accused of using to skirt disclosure requirements that would have forced the reveal of secret information. As Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Director Melanie Sloan said in 2007, “they [the Bush administration] don’t want anyone ever to be able to come back and see what was going on behind the scenes.”
The accounts may be gone, but the Android remains. According to Cosmopolitan, Trump is still using an unsecure personal cell phone that’s just begging to be hacked.