On Monday, financial disclosure forms were released stating that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and daughter, made at least 82$ million in outside income during last year. They both work as senior White House advisers.
Of those numbers, Ivanka Trump earned 5.9$ million between her revenue from the Trump International Hotel and the Trump Organization, and Kushner earned 5$ million from the apartment complex he acquired last year. This data demonstrates that the couple has been able to keep bringing substantial and significant amounts of income while still working for the Trump administration.
It has also pushed forward the fear from the press and experts in ethics that there will be a conflict of interests between their different jobs. This is all despite the fact that they dropped their daily administrative labor in their respective companies as they joined Donald Trump’s team. They have both still maintained their stakes in companies that have large extents of influence, both national and international. Jared Kushner’s family has a real estate company that has several proprieties around the country, and Trump’s clothing and accessories line have been quite successful and produces its products in foreign companies.
After the recent disclosure was released by the Washington Post, a spokesman for the couple’s ethics counsel, Peter Mirijanian, released statements through email to the press, mentioning that the disclosures were insufficient to understand Trump’s and Kushner’s net worth. He reminded the public that the couple has followed the rules and restrictions of the Office of Government Ethics, and stated that their net worth has remained somewhat the same. He continued mentioning that the recent filing reflects “more the way the form requires disclosure than any substantial difference in assets or liabilities.” According to previous reports, they had made 19$ million in income from business related enterprises and 80$ million in real estate and others between 2016 and early 2017.
Ivanka Trump’s main source of income has been her clothing line, which provided her 5$ million dollars out of her 12$ million dollar income last year. Her three companies are related to the Trump Organization, and she will now receive fixed yearly payments instead of direct profit from the companies. The change was done by the Office of Government Ethics, in order to help avoid a conflict of interests and to make her focus more in her role at the White House.
Ever since she dropped her previous position and started working for her father as a senior adviser, people have been raising questions about the ethics behind her position and her husband’s. Kushner especially gained attention, since he had 70$ million of income last year and failed to report several states from “limited-liability companies”, according to the Washington Post. Those companies included an online news publication in Las Vegas and a restaurant in California. Before entering his job in the White House, he sold one of his stakes from Kushner Co., which had over a million dollars in debt and is now owned by a trust family-controlled trust.
Kushner’s father has also been the subject of controversy, as he has dismissed the jobs of ethics watchdogs, describing them as “jerks who can’t get a real job”. Charles Kushner further stated to the Real Deal: “I look at what my kids have sacrificed to go into government, with the only intent of doing good for this country and for the world, and to help people, and what they have sacrificed, and the daily barrage of negative media, and the attacks they get, and they had a perfect, beautiful life and they still have a very good life, but they sacrificed a lot.”
