Ivanka Trump or her trust has received at least $12.6 million since early 2016 from her various business ventures and has an arrangement to guarantee her at least $1.5 million a year even as she serves in a top White House position, according to her first ethics disclosure made public late last Friday.
The report was released alongside an updated filing by her husband, Jared Kushner, who is also serving as a top adviser to President Donald J. Trump.
It shows that the couple benefit from an active business empire worth as much as $761 million to them, an arrangement that ethics experts warn poses potentials for conflicts of interest as the couple have been given a wide-ranging portfolio of government responsibilities.
Ivanka Trump, who resigned from nearly 300 leadership positions at various entities within the family real-estate businesses and at her fashion brand, has continued to receive millions of dollars from both streams, including more than $2.4 million from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington and more than $2.5 million in salary and severance from the Trump Organization.
Trump received about $1.7 million in payments from T International Realty, the family’s luxury-brokerage agency, as well as two other real-estate companies for various management, consulting and licensing work, the documents show. Those payments, for work done in 2016, were based on the companies’ performance.
But going forward, she will receive fixed payments—a change that her advisers say was developed in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics to minimize her potential conflicts by removing her interest in how well her family’s business performs.
In total, Trump will receive $1.5 million in fixed payments from the same three real-estate entities. She stands to earn additional income from her stake in the hotel in Washington.
The disclosures provided less specific figures for Trump’s earnings from her fashion brand, which were reported in ranges.
From the start of 2016 to May 31, she or her trust earned at least $6 million from sales of her clothes, shoes and other accessories. Trump rolled her brand into the trust, which is overseen by Joshua Kushner and Nicole Meyer, her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, in March.
The income reported by Trump does not reflect expenses associated with the underlying businesses.
Those payments will keep coming, albeit into the trust. Trump also receives regular reports on the performance of her brand, which is overseen by its president, Abigail Klem.
Although the documents show Trump’s personal assets, income and liabilities, they do not disclose her brand’s fashion licensing partners, for example, or real-estate clients. Such information is not required, demonstrating the limits of such disclosures for government officials with vast
business interests.
“There still may be financial ties that we don’t know about,” said Lawrence M. Noble, a former general counsel and chief ethics officer of the Federal Election Commission. “These really weren’t meant to deal with a situation where somebody’s going to keep a major business interest.”
Kushner divested his interests in some assets owned by his family’s real-estate firm, Kushner Cos., but he remains heavily invested in the bulk of the businesses.
The disclosures provide another clue into how active the multibillion-dollar Kushner family real-estate business remains.
Since March, companies in which he remains invested have closed several real-estate deals across the country, including the sale of properties in Toledo, Ohio, for $5 million to $25 million and a purchase in Brooklyn, New York, also worth as much as $25 million to him.
Kushner discussed the scope of his business in his first ethics report in March. In the amended filing released last Friday, he disclosed the existence of dozens of subsidiaries he had not reported previously, generally connected to entities he mentioned in that first report.
In the first report, he stated that the couple’s holdings were worth about $736 million, about $25 million less than in the updated report.
The documents also offered tidbits about less significant sources of Trump’s income. She received $50,000 for helping to oversee a trust belonging to children of Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21stCentury Fox, and his former wife Wendi Deng, her close friend. Trump resigned as a trustee last year.
She also received $787,500 as an advance for her book, Women Who Work, although it is not clear what portion of her total advance that represents.
In total, the couple reported as much as $212 million in income since early 2016, according to new and previous filings. The bulk of that number comes from Kushner’s holdings.
Ethics experts say the extensive holdings of the two pose potential conflicts of interest. Unlike Donald Trump, who is exempt from federal ethics laws, Kushner and Ivanka Trump are prohibited by those laws from taking any government action that might benefit their financial holdings.
Kushner and Trump both “walk a very fine line in having to step aside and recuse themselves from certain discussions and give advice if it would benefit them and their business personally,” said Scott H. Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization. “And we won’t know if they are taking necessary steps to recuse themselves because, unfortunately, the ethics process requires a lot of self-policing,” he added.
Image credits: Doug Mills/The New York Times