She’s not avoiding him, she’s avoiding Washington. For a snotty elitist, moving from Manhattan to Washington, which is distinctly lacking in socialites and movie stars, isn’t far from moving to a farm in the sticks and raising hogs.
Is it wrong to wonder what “Goodbye city life” would sound like with her accent?
Why this matters: Ivanka and her husband have, like her father, complicated real estate and business interests that we, as citizens, are not fully informed about. Since she is not holding office, nor collecting a paycheck, she is above any ethics laws on the books.
For instance, Jared Kushner and family own a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, and there were talks for awhile of them attracting Anbang as investment partners. Anbang, of course, is a front company for the Chinese government that buys up overseas real estate for various reasons. Like, visiting diplomats to the UN used to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, until Anbang bought the hotel, and now it’s assumed anyone that stays there, and all their communications, is recorded by he Chinese government.
All overseas investments must be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the US which is committee largely comprised of the president’s cabinet. During Obama’s term Anbang tried to buy a hotel a block away from a significant US naval base, but was denied, for national security reasons.
Now, though? Do you think they will have any such compunctions?
Probably thinking of life-long Bachelor James Buchanan, who had his niece, Harriet Lane, serve as ‘hostess’ for White House functions in the First lady role.
ETA: Jefferson daughter, Tyler’s Sister-in-law, Jackson’s niece, Van Burens’ Duaghter-in-law…not as uncommon as I thought. Ignorance fought.
She says she wants to wait until their son finishes his current school term, which sounds reasonable enough. I don’t see why we can’t take her at word for that, and if she comes up with some other [del]reason[/del] excuse after the school term is over, then unleash the dogs.
He could have called himself Gabby and tried to claim the residuals from all those westerns.
Considering his marital history, you’d think she’d want to keep a closer eye on him.
That’s is entirely a non-issue in the legal/ethical sense. That isn’t to say the Trump Presidency is lacking in legal or ethical issues, but this isn’t one of them. I think, or suspect, at least a lot of people’s concern comes from a misunderstanding about government jobs in relation to the executive branch.
There’s several different types of executive office jobs, in two very broad categories that then have significant sub categories:
- Federal Officers
1a. Cabinet and Sub-Cabinet Positions - These are expected to be filled with political loyalists, but by law cannot be filled by relatives (due to the law passed in response to JFK appointing Bobby Kennedy, whom many Senators felt wasn’t really qualified resume wise to be AG but several with reservations admitted they voted to confirm out of party loyalty), and there’s a strong tradition that these people be competent. Someone like Jeff Sessions is an example of a classic person to fill one of these positions, while people hate him, his resume is highly qualified for an Attorney General. Someone like Betsy DeVos or Rick Perry, who are leading more technical/wonkish cabinet agencies with virtually no background or experience in them are more outside the norm.
1b. Special commission/independent positions - These are positions like FEC, FCC, SEC, Federal Reserve; these are more like Supreme Court positions, the President gets to nominate them and the Senate confirms them, but they can’t be fired by the President. Much like judges they’re going to have certain leanings, but there’s a lot of “institutional expectations” of some level of neutrality.
1c. Various jobs held by high military officers - Positions like JCS, NSA head, DIA head etc. These are basically special national security jobs where you have to actually be in the military to hold them, but then need an additional appointment/Senate Confirmation to hold said job.
1d. Civil Service Jobs/Armed Forces Jobs - This makes up the vast bulk of Federal employees in the executive branch, there are tons of laws governing their hiring and firing, primarily to prevent the old “spoils” system in which President would individually fire/hire even the lowliest of clerks as patronage positions.
For any of the types of jobs I listed above, it’d be quite inappropriate for the President to appoint Ivanka or any family member, or anyone without proper qualifications. For some of those jobs it’d be outright illegal.
But obviously she wasn’t given any position of that kind. But there’s another class of jobs in the executive branch: Executive Office of the President jobs. People in the EOP are (with only a few exceptions like U.S. Trade Representative, OMB Director) not Senate confirmable, and aren’t even part of the civil service at all. They serve at the pleasure of the President. These make up a ‘second’ category of executive branch positions.
In a way these jobs are just paid positions for something that’s always existed, “informal advisers”, what’s important to note is these positions have a ton of “soft power” due to access to the President, but they have absolutely zero “hard power.” Unlike all the “category 1” jobs I listed above, these guys can’t order the lowliest civil servant to hold the door for them, in a legal sense.
If you’ve ever watched the West Wing, these are basically everyone on the show other than the Vice President and occasional cameos from military officers/congresscritters. All those people in that world had a lot of political clout and power, but Leo for example (White House Chief of Staff) had zero legal power to do basically anything. If you watched that show you observed he had tons of practical power due to informal operations of that administration, and that’s often true in real life as well, but the entire EOP is basically the President’s paid advisory staff.
It started off small, but today it has over 4,000 employees, a small number of highest advisors working in the West Wing, and the rest working in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
It’s actually murky as to whether the nepotism laws passed in the 20th century apply to EOP jobs, at least a couple Presidents have concluded they did, and for that reason refrained from appointing family members to formal positions in the EOP. It was more common before those laws for this to happen. But there’s genuine legal ambiguity on this matter because these are basically just the President’s paid advisors, and aren’t “officers” of the government. When Trump appointed Jared Kushner (who is working without a salary, but has a formal EOP job), his DOJ also issued a statement explaining his legal theory as to why it doesn’t violate nepotism laws.
FWIW, I dislike Trump immensely but I suspect for both practical and legal reasons, EOP jobs aren’t covered by the nepotism law in question, and if the law did cover these jobs I’d think it could even be unconstitutional just on the grounds Congress is given power to restrict officers of government who have legal authority in our country, but it’s questionable that they have the authority to deny the President the advice he wants from the advisors he wants.
But now we have Ivanka–she’s actually not being given a job at all, so she’s entirely outside of all of this. But she’s by no means unprecedented, in recent years most Presidents have just given people like her (close friends they want advice from regularly) a “Senior Advisor” job and basically put them on the org chart not connected to anything other than the President. But as has been mentioned there’s always been a long standing practice of Presidents taking advice from “informal advisors.” The two big things, at the end of the day, from this “job” are both relatively unimportant:
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Office and Secure Phone - At the end of the day the President is allowed to give offices to whomever he wants in the West Wing. In modern times it’s not been done that a daughter gets one, but the President runs the West Wing, it’s legally distinct from much of the rest of the government in that regard. Trump could turn offices into ball pits or cocktail bars if he wanted and had appropriate money to do so.
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Security Clearance - At the end of the day, the President is special when it comes to classified information. He has access to all of it upon request (nothing can be legally “compartmentalized” out of his touch, even most high ranking intelligence officers who have special access to the most sensitive documents only have access to specific sensitive documents), further the President isn’t governed at all about the laws against disclosure. In fact he can unilaterally formally declassify anything he chooses–I’ll note classified is distinct from “privileged” or “confidential”, the Federal government has a lot of privileged/confidential personal information about U.S. citizens, it isn’t classified (they aren’t state secrets) but there are privacy law protections in place, so Trump can tweet state secrets if he wants, but if he ordered the IRS to publish Chuck Schumer’s tax returns that’d be an outright crime. So it’s entirely legal for example if I’m President for me to casually tell my wife or kids at dinner classified state secrets. Depending on the state secret and the kids/family in question, it may be unwise, but not illegal. So really, if Trump is giving his daughter an office so she can better work as an informal advisor, getting a formal security clearance is really more of a “dotting i’s and crossing t’s” scenario, because her dad is the President and he can say whatever he wants, whether it’s classified or not, to her.
So at the end of the day, there’s really nothing ethically improper. The only thing left is whether it’s “wise”, and that’s largely a matter for the voters. My opinion is that it shows Trump is still stuck in the insular, family-oriented decision making he used to run his private family real estate firm. That is troubling because most good Presidents like to have a diversity of opinions from highly qualified people, and even like to encourage and participate in internal debate. But every indication has always been Trump has never managed this way, and was unlikely to transition to managing this way as President. That’s one of the many reasons I found him unfit for the office and voted for Hillary, but we lost, and his voters are largely getting what they voted for here.
Even a Man of the People needs an Ivanka to keep him grounded.
The sixth Marx brother was Manfred, known in the family as Fredo. He complained that he was the oldest brother but he got stepped over in the act. So he signed with the Hyman Roth studio. It broke Groucho’s heart.
I think Bobby was a good AG and a smart man, but at the time of his appointment his experience was light for someone to be basically the top lawyer in the government. Many Senators noted it at the time, and he really only got the job out of nepotism, someone with the same resume who wasn’t he President’s brother likely would’ve had too much opposition in the Senate and the Prez would’ve withdrawn the nomination.
Like I said, not knocking Bobby Kennedy, but he just hadn’t built up the resume at the point of his nomination.
Yeah, a lot of companies over the years eventually have need to raise outside capital which requires them to accept partners, or even to become public companies to raise money on the public markets, which dilutes dynastic control. But it’s typical that a founding family holds on if at all possible. Volkswagen, Wal-Mart and Ford are all public companies in which the founding family still maintains control for example. DuPont is an example of one where the DuPont family’s stake eventually became so diluted they don’t control the company any longer, although there is a member of the DuPont family on the board. Procter & Gamble which another poster mentioned, none of the descendants of either man have significant control of the company these days.
It’s worth noting that in the world of real estate, basically all over the world (Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia), large real estate concerns are often ran as “family” companies. Closely held and tightly managed by a family. The Trump Organization is just one of many such multibillion dollar New York family run real estate firms, it’s not even (I believe) one of the top five in size, there are several such family firms with tens of billions of assets in the city.
For this reason real estate firms aren’t typically ran like IBM or P&G which are public companies with a very diffuse shareholder base.
And “informal advisor” to the President isn’t in the succession. Trump’s successor is Mike Pence if he dies or can’t fulfill the duties of the office (or is impeached), Pence’s successor is Paul Ryan etc. It’s set in law, nothing changing there based on Trump giving Ivanka an office.
But yeah, real estate firms are very different from a big conglomerate like P&G that is owned by millions of shareholders. In the real estate world it’s very common to see really high valuation family firms as the major players.
Yep. And that’s the same reason Mr. & Mrs. Obama are using to remain in Washington after his term is over.
Excellent and detailed post.
For me that minimizes my concerns.
If he’s going to be talking to her anyway, and it will include potentially classified information, getting her a clearance and the appropriate information systems to handle classified material is a very good thing. It’s not like she can wander down to Best Buy and pick up classified systems herself. IMO it’s a rare case of administrative competence that seems to address the security requirements of Ivanka handling classified information.
Do you remember Hillarycare?
The Obamas can live anywhere they want without having to give a reason. They’ve left public service and are no longer answerable to the American people.
The same is not true for the Trumps. The First Lady may not be an official elected position but it does exist in reality. By choosing to live in Manhattan rather than Washington, Mrs Trump is creating a hole in the administration. And she’s requiring the American people to foot the expense of maintaining two presidential households instead of one. Her husband chose to run for President; that creates obligations for her as well.
No one hates Trump more than I do, but I disagree that being First Lady “creates obligations.” She doesn’t want the job, fine by me. (who can blame her?). Other than the cost, I don’t care about a “hole in the administration.” That’s the least of our problems.
Sorry-had to attend to personal matters. Are you perhaps referring to the Affordable Care Act?
Considering Trump himself, I would say that a Trump wife has greater concerns than a cheating husband. You wouldn’t want him to stop screwing the upstairs maid and come crawling back into YOUR bed.
What are the obligations of a First Lady?
All the things people have criticized First Ladies for not doing when they didn’t vote for her husband.