While in the White House, Melania Trump has used private email accounts, ex-adviser says

During her time in the White House, first lady Melania Trump has routinely used a private Trump Organization email account and the encrypted messaging app Signal, her former adviser and friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff told The Washington Post.

Trump has also used an email from her MelaniaTrump.com domain and iMessage to communicate, Winston Wolkoff said. She said she didn't write about the emails in her new book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, because she "just had too much" else to say. She told the Post she decided to speak about the matter now because the White House has been smearing her name as retaliation for the book.

Winston Wolkoff said she and the first lady "both didn't use White House emails," and provided the Post with emails dated after President Trump's inauguration that appear to be from the first lady's private accounts. Some of the messages were about government contracts and finances related to the inauguration, while others included schedules for state visits to Israel and Japan.

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During his 2016 campaign, the president railed against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of state, regularly encouraging his supporters to chant "Lock her up!" during rallies. It has since been revealed that his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, both senior advisers to the president, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have all used private email to conduct government business.

Richard Painter served as the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, and he told the Post that while the first lady is not a government employee, "if she is doing United States government business, she should be using the White House email. It's total hypocrisy. They get elected acting as if Hillary Clinton ought to be in jail for using the wrong email."