Ivanka Trump Is Making $1.5 million a Year While Working in the White House “For Free”

Ivanka Trump never cut ties with the Trump Organization and that presents many potential legal, ethical and political problems according to an article by Anita Kumar at McClatchy. “She’s still getting $1.5 million a year in income from various Trump businesses,” according to Daily Kos.

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Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner have been widely praised (at least by her father) for working at important jobs in the U.S. government while taking no salary.  Well, if daddy is giving you over a million dollars a year as “compensation” for doing nothing, then who needs a measly government salary?

And besides, the Trump family has shown that they can pull in a lot more money by selling their influence and making deals with foreign countries who are trying to curry favor with the United States and with the Trump administration.  Ivanka’s husband Jared reportedly punished the country of Qatar by imposing a blockade when they wouldn’t give him $300 million he needed for a troubled real estate deal in New York City.  This for sure sent a message to foreign countries — either you play along and help the Trump businesses or you will be punished.  This is called “play for pay” and it is illegal.

The phrase “conflict of interest” doesn’t even begin to describe the depth and breadth of corruption that takes place daily in the White House and throughout the Trump administration.

Ivanka is “a senior White House adviser who is doing everything from lobbying the Senate on tax policy to representing her father at a G20 summit of world leaders.”  You do wonder with all of those responsibilities on her plate how she can find the time to render services worth $1.5 million to her dad’s companies.

Since Donald Trump became president, Ivanka has been meeting with leaders from throughout the world, including leaders from countries whose governments are involved in business deals and projects with the Trump Organization.

Here is just a sampling of the Trump family deals which Ivanka is involved in that have come under scrutiny for potential  violations of both laws and ethics rules:

• A company owned by the Chinese government was awarded a contract to build a road as part of a development in Dubai being done by the Trump Organization.
• The Indonesian government is going to build a road between an airport on the island of Bali and a new luxury Trump Organization resort.
• A company owned jointly by the governments of Saudi Arabia and South Korea and others expects to build the Trump Lido City development in Indonesia with potential to make substantial profits.
• Ivanka’s brother, Donald Trump Jr., recently visited India to promote new luxury housing projects there being developed by the Trump Organization.  He charged people $38,000 to meet with him and have dinner.  He also had arranged to give a foreign-policy speech alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but that never took place after the ethics violations became public.
• The Trump International Hotel Washington D.C., has been cited in lawsuits accusing the president and the Trump Organization.of violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“To the extent Ivanka is still taking money from the Trump companies and she’s still in the West Wing representing the United States along with Trump’s private businesses, she has many of the same ethical and legal issues ,” said Stephen Spaulding, chief of strategy at Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that has examined Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest.

Thank goodness Ivanka has only an interim security clearance.  (Her conflicts of interest prevent her from getting a permanent clearance.)  Who knows what kinds of secrets she (and her crooked husband) might be selling if she had access to information only available to those with “top secret” security clearances.

Officials at the White House and the Trump Organization have not responded to requests for comment about her article, according to Kumar.  They are putting their heads in the sand and pretending that there is nothing wrong with what Ivanka is doing.  But Mueller and the people of the United States know that, as Hamlet said, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.