An Associated Press investigation finds President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in law could benefit from a tax program they pushed
WASHINGTON (AP) — At an Oval Office gathering earlier this year, President Donald Trump began touting his administration’s new real estate investment program, which offers massive tax breaks to developers who invest in downtrodden American communities. He then turned to one of the plan’s strongest supporters.
“Ivanka, would you like to say something?” Trump asked his daughter. “You’ve been pushing this very hard.”
The Opportunity Zone program promoted by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner — both senior White House advisers — could also benefit them financially, an Associated Press investigation found.
WASHINGTON – Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Trump’s efforts to build a skyscraper in Moscow has led him to ask questions about the role two of the president’s children played in attempting to secure a Russian real estate deal, sources tell Yahoo News.
Mueller’s interest in the Trump family real estate company’s plans for a skyscraper in Russia was confirmed on Thursday when Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney and fixer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the proposed deal. In charging documents, Mueller said Cohen falsely claimed that the effort to build a Trump Tower Moscow “ended in January 2016” in an attempt to “minimize” links between Trump and the project and to “give the false impression” the effort ended before the Republican primaries in 2016. Yahoo News first reported in May that congressional investigators had obtained text messages and emails showing Cohen’s work on Trump Tower Moscow continued for longer than he admitted under oath.
But Cohen wasn’t the only person at the Trump Organization who was pursuing deals to build a skyscraper in the Russian capital. Multiple sources have confirmed to Yahoo News that the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka, who is now a top White House adviser, and his eldest son, Don Jr., were also working to make Trump Tower Moscow a reality. The sources said those efforts were independent of Cohen’s work on the project. One of the sources said Ivanka was also involved in Cohen’s efforts. And a separate source familiar with the investigation told Yahoo News that Mueller has asked questions about Ivanka and Don Jr.’s work on Trump Tower Moscow.
Trump excused his daughter Ivanka’s use of a private email server for government business after years of saying Hillary Clinton should be jailed for her email usage.
Trump spent his presidential campaign demonizing Hillary Clinton over her email use and demanding that authorities “lock her up” for no good reason.
But now that Ivanka Trump has been busted for using a private email server for government business, Trump suddenly doesn’t care so much about email policy.
The Washington Post reported Monday that Ivanka Trump improperly used a private email address to conduct official government business in her role as a member of the Trump administration. Democrats have indicated they plan to investigate the practice and the White House’s role in hiding her behavior.
White House senior advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump stand behind the president in the Oval Office Credit: Twitter
The former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration said the latest White House scandals prove that President Donald Trump and family “do not want to function within a democratic system” of government.
Richard Painter joined MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber” on Tuesday.
“Ivanka Trump is one more official who has chosen not to follow the rules,” Painter concluded.
Republicans in Congress tried to sweep it under the rug a year ago, but now the scandal over Ivanka’s emails has gotten too big to ignore.
Credit: CBS
As Shareblue reported Tuesday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the outgoing chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stonewalled an investigation into Ivanka Trump’s potentially improper email use a year before it became a public scandal.
But now that he can’t avoid it anymore, Gowdy is finally admitting Ivanka may have broken the law when she used a private email account to conduct government business.
“Ms. Trump’s use of a personal email account for official communications may implicate the Presidential Records Act and other security and recordkeeping requirements,” Gowdy wrote in a letter to the White House requesting a briefing on the email issue.
A House committee started a bipartisan inquiry into Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s private email accounts. Republicans dropped it before the truth could be discovered.
Ivanka Trump says the “pathway to well-paying jobs and rewarding careers,” must begin “well before college or trade school.” Credit: AP Photo, Alex Brandon
Republicans in Congress were alerted to Ivanka Trump’s improper use of private email for government business over a year ago — but they failed to conduct a proper investigation or subpoena the White House over it.
A bombshell Washington Post report revealed Monday that Ivanka Trump has used a private email account to send hundreds of messages to government officials since December of 2016. The practice may be in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which requires government business to be conducted over official accounts so the information can be preserved.
What’s more, the Post reported, the Trump White House knew about this behavior — and tried to shield Ivanka Trump from scrutiny by attributing the account to her husband, Jared Kushner, to avoid the scandal of Trump’s daughter doing the same thing that Trump spent his entire campaign demonizing Hillary Clinton for.
President Trump on Tuesday dismissed as “fake news” reports that his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump may have violated federal law by using a personal email account to conduct government business.
In his first comments on the story, President Trump rejected parallels to his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton‘s private email setup because he said his daughter’s emails did not contain classified information and she did not use an extensive home server.
“She wasn’t doing anything to hide her emails,” Trump said of his daughter while speaking to reporters at the White House.
White House officials tried to hide details about Ivanka Trump’s troubling use of a private email account used for government business, according to a bombshell new report by The Washington Post.
From December 2016 throughout last year, Ivanka sent hundreds of emails to government officials potentially in violation of the Presidential Records Act. Her use of the account under a personal domain created by her and husband Jared Kushner caused concern throughout the White House, according to the report.
However, when Politico first revealed the private Ivanka-Jared domain last year, White House officials let Kushner take the fall. Coverage at the time focused on Kushner’s use of the private account to conduct government business without being archived, and the original report stated there was “no indication” Ivanka used the account for government business.
Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are planning to look into Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account to determine whether she violated federal law.
A Democratic aide told The Hill on Tuesday that the committee is planning “to continue our investigation of the presidential records act and federal records act, and we want to know if Ivanka complied with the law.”
The Washington Post reported Monday that the president’s daughter and White House aide had used her personal account last year to correspond with White House staffers, her assistants and Cabinet officials, in potential violation of federal records law.
Read the Trumps’ false statements — and what the actual facts were.
A pattern of deception ran through the Trumps’ real estate deals since the mid-2000s. Not only were the Trumps more than the mere licensors they claimed to be, extracting millions in fees from nearly every facet of these projects, but they often misled buyers and investors on key information — such as the level of sales and the Trumps’ role and investment in the deals. (Read our full investigation.) The Trump Organization did not respond to our questions, and the White House didn’t have a comment.
