Inside the Documents: Ivanka’s Emails, Affirmative Action, and HUD Decisions

Our investigations into the Trump administration have continued to turn up new documents and agency replies every week. Recent documents we’ve posted expose more corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration–most notably Ivanka Trump’s emails that she sent for government business from a personal account and the Department of Justice’s active investigation into affirmative action policies:

Ivanka Trump’s Emails Sent From a Personal Account:

American Oversight obtained records from Departments of Commerce, Labor, Education, and Treasury regarding their correspondence with Ivanka Trump — and several of the document sets contain emails Ms. Trump sent from her personal account, revealing that she was doing government business via personal email even after she was an official White House staff member. These records from the Department of Education also show that Ms. Trump’s involvement in events can lead to a lot of work for government staff, that she works on policy issues and attends high-level meetings despite limited experience. Read more on our blog and check out our investigation of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s unusual influence in the Trump administration. See an example of an email below:

Department of Labor Records Revealing Use of Government Planes:

DOL provided documents in response to our FOIA request, which we sent to a variety of government entities seeking records related to the use of government planes over commercial travel. Expensive and excessive government travel at taxpayer expense has been a problem under Trump and we’ve launched an investigation in order to hold these government officials accountable.

Records From HUD Still Don’t Answer What The Agency’s Been Doing:

In the past few weeks, we posted two documents containing records related to Housing and Urban Development (HUD)–an agency that has received comparatively little scrutiny over the past year. We received additional resumes from HUD for three employees who were highlighted the NY Magazine/ProPublica article “Is Anyone Home at HUD?” We also posted the documents HUD sent us in response to our request for any decision memos signed by Secretary Ben Carson, and to put it mildly, it doesn’t appear that he’s been doing very much.

Records Reveal DOJ’s Attempts to Weaken Affirmative Action:

American Oversight received records from the Department of Justice (DOJ) which revealed that DOJ is activity seeking to investigate colleges and universities for their affirmative action policies and is soliciting an attorney to assist with the investigation. A July 17, 2017 email from Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore revealed that the Civil Rights Division is making investigating race conscious admissions policies a top priority.

No Records That Show Trump Received Guidance on Transgender Ban

In response to our investigation into President Trump’s claims that he was advised by generals and other military personnel to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military, we received a no records response from the Army – indicating at at least one branch of the service never gave Trump the guidance he claimed to have received. We’ve gone to court to get answers from the rest of the Department of Defense, and you can see our full investigation here.