Melania Trump used private email accounts to conduct official business in the White House, her former adviser says

• First Lady Melania Trump used private email accounts to conduct government business, her former adviser told The Washington Post.
• "Melania and I both didn't use White House emails," Stephanie Winston Wolkoff said.
• Winston Wolkoff shared email exchanges and revealed that she secretly recorded conversations between the two, after the White House denied claims in her new book.
• Ahead of the 2016 election, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that Hillary Clinton should be jailed for using a private email server while she was Secretary of State. "It's total hyprocisy," an ethics watchdog said.

Melania Trump used her private email accounts instead of her White House email to discuss government business, her former advisor and friend told The Washington Post.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who worked as the first lady's senior adviser from 2017 to 2018, disclosed that Trump conducted official work on her Trump Organization and MelaniaTrump.com email accounts, iMessage, and Signal, an encrypted messaging service.

"Melania and I both didn't use White House emails," Winston Wolkoff told The Post.

Winston Wolkoff shared with the newspaper email exchanges and messages that appeared to be from Trump, in which she discussed government hires and contracts, her own and President Donald Trump's schedules during Israeli and Japanese state visits, the Be Best initiative, the White House Easter Egg Roll, and presidential inauguration finances, according to The Post.

Although a first lady is not a government official, she should be using a White House email for government business, Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer, told The Post.

The first lady is the latest in the president's inner circle to catch flak for the alleged use of private email accounts. Congress has been investigating Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, both White House advisers, for their use of private emails.

Ahead of the 2016 election, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump excoriated Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

"It's total hypocrisy," Painter told The Post. "They got elected acting as if Hillary Clinton ought to be in jail for using the wrong email."

The White House's vehement denial of claims made in Winston Wolkoff's book, "Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady," prompted her to expose Melania Trump's private emails and play secretly recorded audiotapes between the two for The Post, the newspaper reported.

The tell-all memoir, which was published on Tuesday, provides details about Winston Wolkoff's White House role as well as the end of her 15-year friendship with the first lady over an investigation into the president's inauguration committee shelling out nearly $26 million to an event planning firm started by Winston Wolkoff.

Winston Wolkoff, who previously worked as an event planner at Vogue and met Trump in the early 2000s, said she felt "betrayed" because the first lady didn't publicly defend her, according to The Post.

In a recording played for the newspaper, a voice that sounds like the first lady's can be heard saying: "Don't be so dramatic. Because you were not fired. This came to that because this is politics."

Winston Wolkoff's book also offers an inside look into Melania Trump's personal life, including a strained relationship with her daughter-in-law, Ivanka Trump.

"You know how they are snakes," reads one August 2017 text that the first lady appeared to have sent Winston Wolkoff about Ivanka and Jared over a staffing conflict, The Post reported.

• Read more:
• Melania Trump launched 'Operation Block Ivanka' to minimize Ivanka's inauguration presence, according to a new book based on secret tapes recorded by the first lady's former friend
• Melania Trump thinks someone sabotaged her 2016 RNC appearance by giving her a speech to read that was plagiarized from Michelle Obama, book claims
• Watch Melania Trump greet her stepdaughter Ivanka at Trump's RNC speech