POLITICS JULY 15, 2019 / 4:32 PM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

House panel probes education secretary DeVos' personal email use

Jan Wolfe
3 MIN READ

(Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee on Monday sought records from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos relating to her use of private email accounts, expanding an investigation into how President Donald Trump’s top aides use unofficial messaging services to conduct government affairs.

U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, sent a letter to DeVos requesting copies of all messages relating to official government business she sent or received from private email accounts or electronic messaging services.

The letter gave DeVos a July 29 deadline.

“This is nothing more than political grandstanding,” Department of Education press secretary Liz Hill said in a statement, adding that an internal department watchdog “has already done a thorough report on this issue.”

The watchdog said in a May 20 report that DeVos sometimes used personal email accounts for government business and did not always save the messages properly.

-snip-