Ivanka Trump, husband still benefit from business
WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $741 million, despite their new government responsibilities, according to ethics filings released by the White House on Friday night.
The Kushner company owns more than 20,000 apartments and approximately 14 million square feet of office space.
Ivanka Trump will also maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The hotel, just down the street from the White House, has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that foreign governments or special interests could stay there in order to curry favor with the administration.
It is unclear how Ivanka Trump would earn income from that stake. Kushner’s financial disclosures said that Ivanka Trump earned between $1 million and $5 million from the hotel between January 2016 and March 2017, and put the value of her stake at between $5 million and $25 million.
The disclosures were part of a broad document release by the White House that exposed the assets of as many as 180 senior officials to public scrutiny. The reports showed the assets and wealth of senior staff members at the time they entered government service.
Those disclosures included the assets of Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who now leads the National Economic Council, and Steve Bannon, the chief strategist to the president.
Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm into which income from his other investments appeared to flow. It was valued at between $5 million and $25 million. He also held bank accounts valued at up to $2.25 million, and rental real estate worth as much as $10.5 million.
Cohn is far wealthier, with assets valued between $253 million and $611 million, and income last year as high as $77 million.
The Trump administration is considered the most wealthy in U.S. history, with members of his senior staff and Cabinet worth an estimated $12 billion, according to a tally by Bloomberg.
The financial disclosures — required by law to be made public — give a snapshot of the employees’ finances as they entered the White House. What’s not being provided: the Office of Government Ethics agreements with those employees on what they must do to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Those documents will never be made public, White House lawyers said, although the public will eventually have access to “certificates of divestiture” issued to employees who are seeking capital gains tax deferrals for selling off certain assets.