Kushner used private email for White House business

Donald Trump vowed during the 2016 presidential election campaign that Democratic rival Hillary Clinton would "be in jail" for her use of a private email server for official correspondence when she was Secretary of State.

Now it has emerged that President Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has used a private email account alongside his official White House account to exchange messages with other administration officials.

Politico said the emails included correspondence about media coverage, event planning and other subjects. Kushner's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said Kushner complied with government record-keeping rules by forwarding all the emails to his official account.

Politico said other senior Trump aides had also used private email accounts, including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and economic adviser Gary Cohn.

"Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business," Lowell said in a statement provided to Politico, as well as other media organizations including Reuters.

"Fewer than a hundred emails from January through August were either sent to or returned by Mr. Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal email account," the lawyer said.

"These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an email to his personal, rather than his White House, address," the statement added.

Many White House officials use personal phones to communicate by text message with reporters and others.

(REUTERS)