President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner will represent the Trump administration at the official opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem next week, the White House said Monday.
The embassy is scheduled to open on Monday, May 14, making good on Trump’s December pledge to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, where most nations have their diplomatic posts.
Kushner, a White House adviser charged with ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is Jewish, as is Ivanka, who converted before they married.
Other members of the official delegation include Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who will lead the delegation, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt.
Trump previously expressed interest in attending the embassy opening himself.
“I may go, I’m very proud of it,” he said on April 27.
Administration officials said in December that the move was “some years away” and may happen only after Trump’s first term in office. But a streamlined plan moved up the opening.
Trump claimed last month he saved taxpayers $999.5 million on the new embassy, by endorsing a plan to renovate an existing building.
“They were going to spend $1 billion, and we are going to spend much less than a half a million — could have done it for much less than that, but I said, ‘Let’s make it really nice,'” he said.
