Heat on Conway over Ivanka Trump product endorsement
The White House has “counselled” a top aide to President Donald Trump after she promoted Ivanka Trump’s fashion line during a national cable television appearance from the White House.
But House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz says that’s not enough, calling what Kellyanne Conway did “wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable”. The Utah Republican congressman and Democratic Oversight Leader Elijah Cummings jointly asked the Office of Government Ethics to review the matter.
Chaffetz also said he will write a formal letter to the White House lodging his irritation. He said White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s remark yesterday that Conway has been “counselled” doesn’t go far enough.
“It needs to be dealt with,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press. It’s the first time during the young Administration that Chaffetz has questioned an ethical matter.
Speaking later to Utah lawmakers, Chaffetz added: “Of course I’m going to call that out. My job is not to be a cheerleader for the President.”
The White House said later that Trump “absolutely” continues to support Conway.
In response to questions from the Associated Press, the White House said Trump didn’t see Conway’s interview on Fox News. But a spokeswoman said Trump “understands she was merely sticking up for a wonderful woman who she has great respect for and felt was treated unfairly”. In an interview later yesterday on Fox, Conway declined to discuss the case but said she had spoken with Trump and “he supports me 100 per cent.”
The ethics dustup began on Thursday with the President himself.
Reacting to news that a depart- ment store had dropped his daughter’s line of clothing and accessories, Trump tweeted — and retweeted from the official presidential account — that Ivanka Trump had been treated “so unfairly by @ Nordstrom”. Ivanka Trump does not have a specific role in the White House but moved to Washington with her husband, Jared Kushner, who is one of Trump’s closest advisers. She followed her father’s approach on business ties by handing over operating control of her fashion company but retaining ownership of it.
In an interview with Fox News from the White House briefing room yesterday, Conway urged people to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff ”, boasting that she was giving the brand “a free commercial here”.
While Trump and Vice- President Mike Pence are not subject to ethical regulations and laws for federal employees, Conway, who is a counsellor to the President, is.
Among the rules: An employee shall not use his or her office “for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise”.
“For whatever reason, the White House staff evidently believes that they are protected from the law the same way the President and vice president are,” said Stuart Gilman, a former special assistant to the director of Office of Government Ethics.
He called Conway’s comments “unbelievable” and said they risk wrecking the US’s reputation around the world as a model for government employee ethics. Republicans won Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s choice for Health Secretary yesterday in the testy chamber’s fourth consecutive brawl over Cabinet picks. Senators approved Representative Tom Price to head the Health and Human Services Department by a strictly party- line 52- 47 vote in the dead of night. A debate that Democrats prolonged was dotted with bitter accusations, reflecting the raw feelings enveloping Washington early in Trump’s presidency. The White House says Donald Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping in a phone call yesterday night that the US would honour Washington’s “one China” policy, which has been at the centre of friction between the global powers since Trump’s election. Trump “agreed, at the request of President Xi”, to honour the policy, the White House said. Before taking office, Trump questioned Washington’s “one China policy”, which shifted diplomatic recognition from selfgoverning Taiwan to China in 1979. He said it was open to negotiation. The White House disputed a report that during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin Donald Trump was unaware of a 2010 USRussia treaty that limits nuclear arsenals to no more than 1550 deployed nuclear warheads. Press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump paused during the call as he was “seeking an opinion” from advisers.