Ivanka Trump announced on Wednesday her plans to take on an official role in the White House and serve formally as an unpaid assistant to the president. The move makes her a federal employee.
After it was revealed last week that she was set to receive a White House office and other perks without becoming a federal employee, many expressed concerns that the arrangement allowed her to act as a de facto official without being bound by the ethics laws applied to formal employees.
Trump’s decision on Wednesday, she said in a statement, came in direct response to those questions. “I have heard the concerns some have with my advising the president in my personal capacity while voluntarily complying with all ethics rules,” the first daughter stated, “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.”
This was clearly the right decision.
Ivanka Trump is reportedly among the most trusted and influential people in the president’s circle of advisers. If she intends to focus daily on that work of advising her father, an obvious assumption given her decision to seek an office and security clearance, there is no legitimate reason not to take on a formal title.
Even now that Ivanka Trump responded to their concerns, however, opponents of her father are knocking the administration for nepotism. Though a Justice Department memo issued in January regarding President Trump’s hiring of son-in-law Jared Kushner should clear the administration to hire Ivanka Trump as well, liberals continue to believe the president’s decision to surround himself with trusted family members constitutes egregious nepotism.
Meanwhile, beloved Democratic President John F. Kennedy, ranked by members of his party as one of the greatest presidents in history, made his brother the attorney general.
Ivanka Trump’s role as an “assistant” in the White House pales in comparison to the power of the attorney general. Do her critics also find Kennedy’s decision appalling? Were Twitter at their fingertips in the early 1960s, would they have issued the same breathless denouncements of him?
In fact, given the glaring differences in power between a White House assistant and the attorney general of the United States, that decision should be considered significantly more outrageous by these new ethics warriors, awakened suddenly by Donald Trump’s move to the White House.
If Ivanka Trump serving as an assistant to her father is nepotism, so too is nominating your brother to run the entire Justice Department.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
