Ivanka Trump scandal has a known moral
Ivanka's private messages came to light when White House ethics officials reviewed Cabinet-level emails they were collecting in response to a public records lawsuit filed last year.
Ivanka Trump used her personal email account last year to conduct official White House business up to 100 times.
If that doesn't strike you as a rather tongue-in-cheek twist, then sharpen your antennae and look for any video of your father threatening to put Hillary Clinton in jail for using a private email server, asking Russian hackers to find her emails. or praising the FBI for reopening an investigation into the "criminal and illegal conduct" of the former secretary of state.
The Washington Post reported Monday that many of those emails, which were sent to White House aides, federal officials and aides to Ivanka, "were in violation of federal records regulations" and linked to a private domain -- "ijkfamily.com." – which she shared with her husband, Jared Kushner.
Ivanka's private messages came to light when White House ethics officials reviewed Cabinet-level emails they were collecting in response to a public records lawsuit filed last year.
"The discovery alarmed some advisers to President Trump, who feared that her daughter's practices bore similarities to the use of Hillary Clinton's personal email," the newspaper noted.
"Some attendees were surprised by the volume of personal emails from Ivanka Trump, and stunned by her response when asked about the practice. Trump said she was unfamiliar with some details of the rules."
Ivanka, who worked closely with her father on his presidential campaign and made Clinton a target for her use of a personal server and mishandling of classified information, may not have known that federal records rules could one day apply to it.
She may not have thought that using an email hosted on "ijkfamily.com" – a setup she created just two months after Donald Trump was elected president and as her husband prepared to arrive at the White House – would somehow day could get you in trouble.
On the other hand, it is also possible that Ivanka, like her father, believes that the rules are for other people and not for the Trumps.
For example, Ivanka used her personal email in February 2017 to contact Small Business Administration Director Linda McMahon about "opportunities to collaborate" at a time when she was participating in White House meetings but had no business. an official title or function.
Newsweek reported all of that last year, also revealing that the president's daughter identified herself as "Ivanka Kushner" in communications. She became a federal employee a month after contacting McMahon. (Politico reported that Jared Kushner used a Twitter account). private email during that same period; the New York Times noted that the use of private email was common among other members of Trump's White House team).
The article published by the Washington Post on Monday night went even further, revealing that Ivanka's use of personal email was much more voluminous than was publicly known and was therefore a closely guarded secret. inside the White House.
This is not the only example of cases in which the president's daughter traces her own path. When she was defining and redefining her role in the White House during her father's first months in office last year, she decided not to leave her namesake apparel and accessories business.
Although she hired someone else to run her company when she left for Washington, she remained the beneficiary of her financial success (and used her increased visibility to market the company's products, often just using them). ). It wasn't until last summer that she finally closed the operation to, among other things, address ethics concerns."
Ivanka's business isn't completely idle, either. In October, the Chinese government awarded it 16 new trademarks for a variety of products including fashion, apparel, nursing homes, sausages and voting machines.
Although Ivanka eventually became an unpaid adviser to her father, she earns significant sums from other activities, such as the $3.9 million she received in 2017 for her stake in the family's Washington, D.C., hotel, the Trump International. That is the same hotel that is part of a portfolio of properties from which the Trumps are supposed to remit profits from dealings with foreign governments to the Treasury Department.
But the justification and disclosure of those payments has been unclear; so far the Trumps have apparently only handed over about $150,000.
Trump International is built on federal land (which essentially means Trump leases the land to himself) and hosts legions of foreign diplomats, which has helped make the hotel a target of lawsuits accusing it of violating the “emoluments” provisions of the Constitution that prohibit the president from accepting gifts, rewards, or benefits from a foreign or state government.
The hotel represents a clear financial conflict of interest for the president and Ivanka, but they have stood their ground.
Ivanka and her father also share a history of misleading investors and buyers about the prospects of Trump-branded properties, as ProPublica and WNYC told us in an investigation into that legacy published last month.
Even with that close scrutiny, Ivanka has managed to avoid any major involvement in her brief White House career. With a potential email scandal brewing, however, that may be about to change, especially if incoming House Democrats decide it's time to exercise their oversight responsibilities in the new year and remind the daughter of the president the importance of standards.
