It was only last week when Trump’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said that Ivanka Trump will have an office in the West Wing despite not being an official government employee. Along with this, Gorelick said that she would even have government-issued communications devices and have security clearance to access classified information. At the time, this caused quite a stir online and for good reason.
Trump says it’s fake news that he’s trying to get security clearances for his kids shortly before getting top security clearance for Ivanka. pic.twitter.com/AFY8np8Y9o
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 21, 2017
Now, despite Ivanka stating that she would just be an “informal advisor” to her father, the President, the New York Times reports that she will now be an official government employee. In a statement on Wednesday, Ivanka clarified saying “I have heard the concerns some have with my advising the president in my personal capacity while voluntarily complying with all ethics rules, and I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees.”
If this seems a bit odd to you that the daughter of the President will be working as the official “Assistant to the President,” that’s because it is. And Ivanka knows that. “Throughout this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the White House counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role.”
A spokesperson for the White House said that although the public obviously has some issues with this, “Ivanka’s service as an unpaid employee furthers our commitment to ethics, transparency, and compliance and affords her increased opportunities to lead initiatives driving real policy benefits for the American public that would not have been available to her previously.”
Gorelick also said that that this decision to take on Ivanka as an official employee was rooted from “her commitment to compliance with federal ethics standards and her openness to opposing points of view” and that she will “file the financial disclosure forms required of federal employees and be bound by the same ethics rules that she had planned to comply with voluntarily.”
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