Second Lady's Secret Mail

The Associated Press (AP) has clashed with US Vice President Mike Pence over his wife's email address.

One of the largest international news agencies, AP, came into conflict with US Vice President Michael Pence. The reason was the email address of his wife Karen Pence, published in the material.

The scandal began with an AP report on March 3 alleging that Pence and his wife were using personal accounts registered on AOL for work purposes. We were talking about at least 2013, when the politician served as governor of Indiana.

Pence used his personal address to discuss homeland security and a wide range of other issues. For example, among the letters they found a statement from his adviser about the FBI’s demand to detain several people on suspicion of terrorism. In the summer of 2016, his email was hacked.

A Pence spokesman explained that after the hack, the politician created another personal account on AOL with increased security measures. Journalists immediately recalled a similar scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton, but the Republican denied such accusations.

There can be no comparison between me and Hillary Clinton. We fully complied with all Indiana laws. Lawyers reviewed my personal email records to identify links or incidents related to government activities. According to Indiana law, we turned everything over to local authorities.

Michael Pence, US Vice President

The AP initially cited the Indianapolis Star as having obtained 29 pages from an AOL email in a formal request to Pence's successor as governor. At the same time, local authorities refused to release an unknown number of other files, citing confidentiality.

AP reporters also requested pages from the Republican's email, but their story found two important differences from the Indianapolis Star. The agency said that Karen Pence also used a personal address for business matters and published specific addresses.

Pence was outraged and sent a message to AP head Gary Pruitt demanding that the address be removed because it was active and his wife was still using it.

After the agency refused to change the story, Pence tweeted about the AP letter. It said the episode had no significance because Karen was not an elected official. Pence demanded an apology from the agency for violations of principles of fairness and journalistic ethics.

In a statement, Pence indicated that he did not remember any precedents with the publication of the email of the previous second lady, Jill Biden.

After the story became known to the public, the AP issued an official statement. The head of the media relations agency, Lauren Easton , emphasized that the journalists remained true to the facts in the already published article and did not intend to make changes to it due to the principles of openness. At the same time, she promised that the AP would not mention Karen Pence’s email address in future materials. Whether the conflict between journalists and politicians has been resolved is unknown.