Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Still Benefiting From Business Empire, Filings Show

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Still Benefiting From Business Empire, Filings Show By JESSE DRUCKER, ERIC LIPTON and MAGGIE HABERMANMARCH 31, 2017 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Share Tweet Email More Save 1395 Photo President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, leaving the Oval Office in February. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities, according to ethics filings released by the White House Friday night. Ms. Trump will also maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The hotel, just down the street from the White House, has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that foreign governments or special interests could stay there in order to curry favor with the administration. It is unclear how Ms. Trump would earn income from that stake. Mr. Kushner’s financial disclosures said that Ms. Trump earned between $1 million and $5 million from the hotel between January 2016 and March 2017, and put the value of her stake at between $5 million and $25 million. The disclosures were part of a broad, Friday-night document release by the White House that exposed the assets of as many as 180 senior officials to public scrutiny. The reports showed the assets and wealth of senior staff members at the time they entered government service. Continue reading the main story RECENT COMMENTS Bruce Carroll 31 minutes ago If it is true that federal employees are forbidden under federal criminal and civic law from taking any action that might benefit their... mike b 31 minutes ago Everyone knows the Trump fortunes have been built from slick salesmanship, deception, sleight-of-hand, self-interest...and no doubt some... SSJ 31 minutes ago These people are incapable of understanding what it is to live in the real world. Just got laid off along with 100 others from my $12 hr.... SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT Those disclosures included the assets of Gary D. Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who now leads the National Economic Council, Kellyanne Conway, the pollster and counsel to Mr. Trump and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist to the president. Mr. Bannon disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization, $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign, and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three are backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, financiers and major Republican donors. Mr. Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm into which income from his other investments appeared to flow. It was valued at between $5 million and $25 million. He also held bank accounts valued at up to $2.25 million, and rental real estate worth as much as $10.5 million. Ms. Conway earned at least $842,614 last year, and perhaps slightly more, the filings show. Her assets are valued at between $11 million and at least $44.2 million. Mr. Cohn is far wealthier, with assets valued between $253 million and $611 million, and income last year as high as $77 million. Another White House official, Reed Cordish, who heads up technology initiatives, accumulated assets as a Maryland developer valued as high as $424 million. Mr. Trump’s administration is considered the most wealthy in American history, with members of his senior staff and cabinet worth an estimated $12 billion, according to a tally by Bloomberg. The Friday filings will add voluminous detail to that top-line figure. The White house chief of staff, Reince Priebus, for example, earned at least $1.18 million — nearly half of which came from the Republican National Committee, which he formerly led. His assets totaled between $604,008 and at least $1.26 million. “I think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. The officials “have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets,” he said. Until January, Mr. Kushner was the chief executive of Kushner Companies, a family-run real estate investment firm with holdings across the country. It is a growing business that has taken part in at least $7 billion of acquisitions over the past decade. Late Friday, the White House released details of the plan devised by his advisers to avoid conflicts of interest between Mr. Kushner’s government role and the wide-ranging business empire he ran with his father. That business depends on foreign investment from undisclosed sources, as well as billions of dollars in loans from the world’s biggest financial services firms. Although Mr. Kushner has stepped down from his management positions at the more than 200 entities that operated aspects of the family real estate business, he will remain a beneficiary of a vast majority of the business he ran for the past decade, through a series of trusts that already owned the various real estate companies. The plan laid out on Friday “is not sufficient,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel and chief ethics officer for the Federal Election Commission. “While removing himself from the management of the businesses is an important step, he is still financially benefiting from how the businesses do. This presents potential for a conflict of interest. Given his level in the White House and broad portfolio, it’s hard to see how he will recuse himself from everything that may impact his financial interest.” While the filing discloses Mr. Kushner’s personal lenders, it does not provide information on his business partners or lenders to his projects. His real estate firm has borrowed money from the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group, Deutsche Bank and the French bank Natixis. It also received loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of a United States Justice Department investigation into allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes using undeclared accounts. Most recently, his firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was the subject of controversy: Around the time his father-in-law received the Republican nomination last spring, Mr. Kushner’s firm began conversations with a Chinese company with ties to some of the Communist Party’s leading families about a plan to invest billions of dollars in the troubled office tower. Mr. Kushner’s company and the firm, Anbang Insurance Group, agreed to end the talks on Wednesday after weeks of negative publicity about the deal, criticized as a bailout of the Kushners. The building had already been rescued by a number of prominent firms, including the private equity giant Carlyle Group, and Zara, the Spanish fashion retailer founded and owned by Amancio Ortega, one of the world’s wealthiest men. Morning Briefing Get what you need to know to start your day in the United States, Canada and the Americas, delivered to your inbox. Enter your email address Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY Mr. Kushner has divested his stakes in any businesses connected to that property. The disclosures do not reveal the names of investors and lenders to ventures that Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in. For example, the form shows Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in a limited liability corporation that owns a Trump-branded luxury rental high-rise building in Jersey City worth as much as $5 million. That project was financed with tens of millions of dollars from wealthy Chinese investors through a controversial visa-for-sale program called EB-5. However, the filing does not disclose the names of any of those investors — or partners in any of his other projects. “We don’t know who the business partners are in many of these investments,” Mr. Noble said, “and those business partners may also have interests that will be affected by how he advises the government. And that’s a concern.” “He could have foreign business partners who have a real interest in policy, and he may be advising the president on those policies,” Mr. Noble added. “This is a dark area where we just don’t know what’s going on.” In all, the Kushner company owns more than 20,000 apartments and approximately 14 million square feet of office space. Previous disclosures by the United States Office of Government Ethics showed that Mr. Kushner had divested his interests in several entities, mostly partnerships connected to a venture capital firm run by his brother, Joshua, called Thrive Capital, that invests in technology firms like Instagram. He also shed his interests in funds run by the private equity giant Blackstone Group — whose chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman, is an economic adviser to Mr. Trump — as well as BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. Over all, he has shed his stakes in 58 businesses. He is still the sole primary beneficiary of a majority of the trusts that will retain assets, with his children as the secondary beneficiaries. Mr. Kushner was required to submit some limited financial information for his wife, Ms. Trump, who will continue to receive payments from the Trump Organization as well as her fashion brand. Ms. Trump, who now serves as an assistant to the president, resigned from her leadership roles at both companies. Instead of performance-based payments, Ms. Trump will receive fixed payments from T International Realty, the family’s luxury brokerage agency, as well as fixed fees from two entities related to real estate projects, the documents show. Ms. Trump had previously rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which is overseen by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the trust at more than $50 million. The brand is largely a licensing operation, meaning that it sells the use of Ms. Trump’s name to partners who manufacture her clothes, shoes and other accessories. Since it is privately held, little is known about the company’s financials, but The New York Times has previously reported that revenues were roughly between $4 million and $6 million in 2013, before the debut of a major partnership. The disclosure forms released Friday for less senior White House staff members were not reviewed by the federal Office of Government Ethics. Only the White House Counsel’s Office examines their assets to determine if there are potential conflicts, and to decide what steps employees must take to sell assets, resign positions or recuse themselves from decisions. Already, a complaint has been filed against at least one White House staff member for taking actions that might benefit his own financial interests. Christopher P. Liddell, an assistant to the president and the director of strategic initiatives, had been the chief financial officer of companies including Microsoft, International Paper and General Motors before taking his White House job. Until recently, he also owned stock in General Motors, according to disclosure forms, among more than 750 other companies. But in late January and early February, according to a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mr. Liddell participated in meetings that involved several of the companies in which he still owned a total of about $2 million in stock, including International Paper and General Motors. Mr. Liddell, according to disclosures, sold these stock holdings by mid-February. 1395 COMMENTS “It is Ethics 101 — the most basic thing you are not supposed to do: using your official capacity to benefit your financial interest,” said Norman Eisen, who served as a White House ethics lawyer during the Obama administration and now is a co-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The White House did not respond Friday when asked about the complaint.

Ivanka Trump set to get West Wing office as role expands

Ivanka Trump set to get West Wing office as role expands The first daughter will not, however, become a government employee, raising ethics questions. Ivanka Trump, who moved to Washington saying she would play no formal role in her father’s administration, is now officially setting up shop in the White House. The powerful first daughter has secured her own office on the West Wing’s second floor — a space next to senior adviser Dina Powell, who was recently promoted to a position on the National Security Council. She is also in the process of obtaining a security clearance and is set to receive government-issued communications devices this week. In everything but name, Trump is settling in as what appears to be a full-time staffer in her father’s administration, with a broad and growing portfolio — except she is not being sworn in, will hold no official position and is not pocketing a salary, her attorney said. Trump’s role, according to her attorney Jamie Gorelick, will be to serve as the president’s “eyes and ears” while providing broad-ranging advice, not just limited to women’s empowerment issues. Last week, for instance, Trump raised eyebrows when she was seated next to Angela Merkel for the German chancellor’s first official visit to Trump’s White House. As her role in the White House grows — a role that comes with no playbook — Trump plans to adhere to the same ethics and records retention rules that apply to government employees, Gorelick said, even though she is not technically an employee. But ethics watchdogs immediately questioned whether she is going far enough to eliminate conflicts of interest, especially because she will not be automatically subjected to certain ethics rules while serving as a de facto White House adviser. FBI’s Trump-Russia probe knocks White House on its heels FBI’s Trump-Russia probe knocks White House on its heels By SHANE GOLDMACHER and MATTHEW NUSSBAUM "Having an adult child of the president who is actively engaged in the work of the administration is new ground,” Gorelick conceded in an interview on Monday. “Our view is that the conservative approach is for Ivanka to voluntarily comply with the rules that would apply if she were a government employee, even though she is not.” A spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump said her role was signed off on by the White House counsel’s office, and the conflict issues were “worked through” with the office of government ethics. A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about the unique arrangement. People close to Ivanka Trump said that she sees nothing unusual about the arrangement — it’s simply how she has worked with her father for years, as a senior official at the Trump Organization and as Donald Trump’s partner on “The Apprentice.” But in the White House, the unprecedented arrangement for a child of the president has raised new questions about potential conflicts of interest — and about why Ivanka Trump can’t simply join the administration as a government employee. Her husband, Jared Kushner, serves as an official senior adviser in the White House and was sworn in, but his hiring also raised questions of whether it violated anti-nepotism laws. The Justice Department ruled that those laws applied only to agency appointments. Ivanka Trump still owns her eponymous fashion and jewelry brand, even though she stepped down from her position at the company ahead of her father’s inauguration. She is also publishing a book, “Women Who Work,” which is due out in May. "I will continue to offer my father my candid advice and counsel, as I have for my entire life,” Trump said in a statement. “While there is no modern precedent for an adult child of the president, I will voluntarily follow all of the ethics rules placed on government employees." The arrangement, however, was greeted with more questions about what freedoms Trump was trying to preserve for herself — and why. “They're not saying she's going to voluntarily subject herself to ethics rules to be nice,” said Norm Eisen, the former ethics czar in the Obama administration. “There’s recognition that they're in very uncertain territory here. The better thing to do would be to concede she is subject to the rules. It would create some outside accountability, because if she can voluntarily subject herself to the rules, she can voluntarily un-subject herself to the rules.” POLITICO Playbook Get the latest news and scoops first, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Under the new rules, Trump has divested her common stock, tech investments, investment funds — and they will all appear on Kushner’s 278 financial disclosure form, required by all Cabinet nominees. Bloomberg News reported on Monday afternoon that Trump and Kushner sold as much as $36.7 million in assets to comply with federal ethics rules, according to the Office of Government Ethics. But when it comes to divesting from her business, however, Gorelick admitted there is no way to make it a conflict-free zone. “The one thing I would like to be clear on: we don’t believe it eliminates conflicts in every way,” Gorelick said. “She has the conflicts that derive from the ownership of this brand. We’re trying to minimize those to the extent possible." Gorelick argued that the area is murky because outstanding contracts with third party vendors mean that Ivanka Trump cannot simply close her business — those vendors could continue using her brand. She also can’t sell the business, her attorney argued, because the buyer would have the right to license her name and potentially create other ethical issues. Instead, Trump will be distancing herself, as much as possible, from the day-to-day operations of the Ivanka Trump brand and convey her interests to a trust. The trust, Gorelick said, will be controlled by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and her sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer, who will be prohibited from entering the brand into any agreements with foreign countries or agencies. Ivanka Trump has appointed Abigail Klem to serve as president of her company, overseeing the day-to-day operations, and prohibited the company from using her image to sell the brand. The first daughter, however, will retain veto power to kill any deals that would be “unacceptable from an ethics perspective.” President Donald Trump's approval rating dipped to a new low in Gallup's daily tracking poll. Gallup: Trump hits low 37 percent approval By MADELINE CONWAY Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, will also serve as the outside ethics adviser to the trustees. The business will also be prohibited from using her image to market the brand. Under the trust, her attorneys said, Ivanka Trump will receive only the information she needs for disclosure requirements and to facilitate compliance with conflict of interest and impartiality rules. As for the money she will make from her book, Trump is planning to donate the royalties and net proceeds to charities that focus on women in the workforce, with the help of a donor-advised fund. The measures that Ivanka Trump is undergoing to comply with federal ethics laws, ethics watchdogs said, are better than nothing. But they argued they are weak in the face of the flagrant violations of ethics standards by the president. Donald Trump’s hotels and golf courses, for instance, continue to engage in business with foreign and national groups that have interests in front of the White House. “You might be inclined to view this differently and more generously if the White House had shown a stronger commitment to ethics enforcement,” Eisen said.

Trump Ends Silence With Palestinians, Opening a Path

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority was invited to the White House by President Trump on Friday. CreditSalvatore Di Nolfi/European Pressphoto Agency

WASHINGTON — President Trump spoke with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Friday for the first time since taking office and invited him to visit the White House, opening a new avenue of diplomacy as he develops his own peace initiative for the Middle East.

Mr. Trump, who presented himself last year as Israel’s greatest champion, had refused to deal directly with Palestinian officials until now. But after a White House meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and multiple conversations with Arab leaders from the region, Mr. Trump has embarked on what he promises to be a sustained effort to break a generations-old impasse and resolve the conflict.

The president has assigned Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, and Jason Greenblatt, his top negotiator, to explore ways of bringing the two sides together in tandem with other players in the region. Mr. Greenblatt plans to follow up Friday’s telephone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Abbas with a visit next week to the region. He will meet with Israeli officials in Jerusalem and Mr. Abbas in Ramallah, the headquarters for the Palestinian Authority that operates in the occupied West Bank.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an adviser and spokesman for Mr. Abbas, said the two presidents spoke for about 20 minutes in English and called it “a very good conversation.”

“He invited our president to the White House and it seems like he’s ready to deal with my president to achieve a real peace,” Mr. Rudeineh said. “The president seemed very serious about a peace deal, and a man who is willing to do something on the ground and is willing to do something to end the suffering in this region.”

In a statement describing the call, the White House said, “The president emphasized his personal belief that peace is possible and that the time has come to make a deal.”

But Mr. Trump has also moderated some of his positions since taking office. After Mr. Netanyahu announced thousands of new homes in the West Bank, Mr. Trump asked him to delay new construction, saying it would not help peace efforts. And while he promised last year to quickly move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem despite the longstanding dispute over a city that both sides claim as a capital, he has not acted on that pledge, making clear he was rethinking it.Mr. Abbas’s advisers initially expressed worry that Mr. Trump did not reach out sooner, and that he seemed deeply tilted toward Israel. For his ambassador to Israel, he nominated David M. Friedman, a lawyer and fervent supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. During Mr. Netanyahu’s visit last month, Mr. Trump cast aside two decades of American support for a two-state solution, meaning the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, saying it did not matter to him what form an agreement took as long as both sides concurred.

In recent weeks, Palestinian leaders have expressed tentative optimism that Mr. Trump, however unorthodox in his approach, may in fact pursue the deal he says he wants in the Middle East. There have been contacts between intelligence organizations, including a visit to Mr. Abbas by the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo.

“I suspect the phone call came as something of a relief for Abbas, who has been waiting anxiously for seven weeks for the administration to make political contact with the Palestinian leadership,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership in negotiations with Israel and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"Trump’s approach has not been terribly balanced, or even all that coherent, thus far,” he added, “but the administration seems to be returning to the standard talking points of the peace process — at least in relative terms. Whether any of this is enough to salvage the peace process or even a two-state solution is another matter.”