Trump White House Senior Staff Have Private RNC E-mail Accounts

Senior Trump Administration staffers including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon have active accounts on a Republican National Committee e-mail system. 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 e-mails.

Making use of separate political e-mail accounts at the White House is not illegal. In fact, they serve a purpose by allowing staff to divide political conversations (say, arranging for the president to support a congressional re-election campaign) from actual White House work. Commingling politics and state business violates the Hatch Act, which restricts many executive branch employees from engaging in political activity on government time. But after then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republicans repeatedly called for “locking up” Hillary Clinton for handling government work with a private server while secretary of state, the new White House staff risks repeating the same mistake that dogged the Democrat’s presidential campaign. They also face a security challenge: The RNC e-mail system, according to US intelligence, was hacked during the 2016 race. It’s not clear whether or how Trump staffers are using the RNC email addresses. I