A top Trump transition aide on Thursday said the president-elect would “benefit tremendously” by having both his daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, serve in the next administration.
“I think we would benefit tremendously by having them inside the administration if, in fact, that can happen,” Kellyanne Conway told reporters at Trump Tower. “Ivanka is incredibly committed to women in the workplace, women in the economy [and] women entrepreneurs.”
Kushner and Ivanka were both deeply involved in Trump’s presidential campaign and have continued to play major roles during the transition process. The couple and their three children are expected to relocate to Washington before Trump enters the Oval Office Jan. 20, according to multiple reports earlier this month.
“Ivanka and Jared will make their own announcement and decision in due course,” Conway told reporters when asked if Trump’s eldest daughter is hunting for a new home in the nation’s capital.
The exact roles Ivanka and Kushner might play in the next administration remain largely unknown, particularly as legal questions about existing nepotism laws have yet to be answered definitively. An anti-nepotism law passed by Congress in 1967 says public officials “may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.”
The 1967 law was in response to President John F. Kennedy making his brother attorney general, though it did not prevent first lady Hillary Clinton from chairing her husband’s healthcare reform task force during the 1990s.
Trump had planned to discuss the roles, if any, Ivanka and his two eldest sons might play in his business empire going forward on Thursday, but the previously scheduled press conference has been delayed until January, suggesting the president-elect’s legal team is still determining what kind of involvement his children could have in his administration.
