First Lady Melania Trump used a non-government email after assuming her role, a former close friend and adviser has said.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the author of the soon-to-be-released tell-all memoir titled Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, told the Washington Post in an interview published late Tuesday that she and the first lady corresponded multiple times per day, and that they “both didn’t use White House emails.”
Melania used a private email account linked to the Trump Organization. The Post, which reviewed messages sent from the private email address, reported that the subject discussed included government hires and contracts, her and the president’s schedules, her anti-cyberbullying campaign Be Best as well as finances for the presidential inauguration.
The allegations Melania is facing are similar to the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s usage of a private email server while in her government role, a scandal that Trump played on during their 2016 race, calling her crimes “worse than Watergate.”
Melania is not the first in the Trump administration to have raised questions over usage of a private email. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner both were investigated for using private accounts for government affairs. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was found to have done so himself, following an inquiry stemming from a 2019 Washington Post report saying the watchdog group Democracy Forward obtained government-related emails from Ross’ private email via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
