Mike Pence Email Scandal Update: Vice President Demands Apology From Associated Press For Publishing Wife's Private Email Address

Vice President Mike Pence publicly demanded an apology from the Associated Press (AP) on Saturday for listing his wife’s private email address in a story about Pence’s apparent reluctance to make the records of his tenure as Indiana's governor public.

In a tweet on Saturday evening, Pence alleged that AP had violated his and his wife’s privacy and security. The vice president also posted a detailed letter addressed to Gary Pruitt, AP's president and CEO, demanding an apology for a story the news agency published Friday.

"The publication of Mrs. Pence's active private email address to millions of her readers has subjected her to vitriolic and malicious emails and raised serious security concerns…the Associated Press should have done a proper inquiry into the status of Mrs. Pence's personal email account before publishing it," Mark Paoletta, counsel to the vice president, wrote in the letter.

Following Pence’s tweet, Lauren Easton, AP's director of media relations, said the following in a statement: "AP removed the email address from subsequent stories after learning Mrs. Pence still used the account. The AP stands by its story, which addresses important transparency issues."

The story surfaced following a report by the Indianapolis Star on Thursday, which claimed that Pence used a private AOL account to conduct state business during his tenure as governor of Indiana. The two stories suggested that the AOL email account was used by Pence to discuss seemingly confidential subjects such as terror attacks and to receive FBI updates. The email account was also reportedly hacked last summer.

"Similar to previous governors, during his time as Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence maintained a state email account and a personal email account…as Governor, Mr. Pence fully complied with Indiana law regarding email use and retention. Government emails involving his state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act," Pence's office said in a statement to the Indianapolis Star.

The news regarding Pence’s email is significant because former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state was repeatedly denounced by the then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Pence in the run-up to the presidential elections last year. Pence, however, said that "there's no comparison whatsoever," when asked if he felt any sympathy for Hillary Clinton under his current circumstances, according to CNN.

Although Clinton was ultimately cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the FBI, news about Clinton’s email scandal was considered by many to be the tipping point that eventually gave Trump the upper hand in the presidential race. Former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, for instance, also recently said that “forces within the FBI” worked against Clinton during a taped NewCo. Shift discussion with John Heilemann.

Explaining another possible reason for Clinton’s loss, the Vox video embedded below uses a Gallup report to suggest that news regarding the Clinton email scandal overwhelmingly dominated what American voters had read, seen or heard about the two candidates. In comparison, it suggests that the damning coverage around Trump was more scattered because of how media was operating during the election.

More recently, a photo of Clinton glancing at a newspaper headline about Pence using private email has gone viral on social media.