Look Who's Using Private Email Now (It's Melania)

Could it be…that Melania Trump used personal email while conducting Official White House Business? That is indeed what her former senior advisor and friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff told the Washington Post. That’s pretty rich considering her brittle french fry of a husband called Hillary Clinton’s email situation “the biggest political scandal since Watergate.”

To wit, Winston Wolkoff said that Melania regularly used various private email accounts as well as iMessage and Signal while in the White House. “Melania and I both didn’t use White House emails,” she said. Fascinating.

So what does Melania discuss over Signal, anyway? Only her most important official business, ranging from the Easter egg roll to her incoherent Be Best campaign. From the Post:

The Post has viewed messages dated after the inauguration that appear to be from private email and messaging accounts used by Melania Trump. The messages contained discussions of government hires and contracts (including Winston Wolkoff’s), detailed schedules for the president and first lady during the Israeli and Japanese state visits, strategic partnerships for the first lady’s Be Best initiative, the logistics of the Easter egg roll, and finances for the presidential inauguration, key parts of which Winston Wolkoff, an experienced New York City events producer, planned.

Of course, this isn’t anything for which Ivanka and Jared aren’t already under investigation. But amid the diarrhetic psychobabble that endeared him to an alarming percentage of the electorate, one of Trump’s favorite refrains has always been about Clinton’s use of her private email server. (To which the rest of us say: Trump has been accused of rape.) How curious, then, that so many White House fixtures have done the same.

In a characteristically flaccid response, a spokesperson for Melania gave the following statement:

“In consultation with White House ethics officials, from the beginning of the Administration, the First Lady and her staff have taken steps to meet the standard of the Presidential Records Act, relating to the preservation of records that adequately document official activities.”

I love this expression, “taken steps.” It implies vague gestures of effort but promises no result. This might be the most honest statement anyone associated with the Trump administration has made in the last four years! Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer, explained that Melania is sort of allowed a pass since she’s not a government employee, but “if she is doing United States government business, she should be using the White House email.” If she can’t produce them in response to a subpoena, she’s screwed. And if she’s discussing classified information, that’s definitely illegal.

Would you be surprised if Melania was iMessaging classified information to her stylists? Remember how careful her husband was with the nuclear football?