White House announces Jared Kushner is now responsible for everything

[SueEllenRules!]

White House Announces Jared Kushner Is Now Responsible For Everything
Donald Trump really needs to meet some new people.

President Donald Trump has placed son-in-law Jared Kushner, right, in charge of revamping the VA system, fixing the nation’s opioid addiction problem and creating peace in the Middle East.

• The president of the United States has a very difficult job, and in recent weeks we’ve all been given to wonder whether President Donald Trump really wants to do it. Last week, Trump’s first big legislative initiative ― the American Health Care Act ― foundered, partially due to the fact that the president abruptly stopped trying to facilitate negotiations with members of Congress. Over the latter half of Thursday, we went from House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) extolling Trump’s efforts, to Trump suddenly bailing on the effort and demanding a Friday resolution to the matter ― which all but guaranteed it wouldn’t be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.
• But over the weekend, the president’s philosophy on running the country suddenly became more clear. Trump wants to get a lot of work done, he just wants his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to do it.
• As the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker reported on Sunday, Kushner has been tapped to run an entirely new office with the “sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises ― such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction.”
• Okay, but let’s cast our minds back to Jan. 9, when the same newspaper reported this:

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President-elect Donald Trump and one of his closest confidants, will join the White House as a senior adviser to the president, Trump announced Monday, while a lawyer assisting the family said that Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, will not immediately take on a formal role.

Kushner, who will not take a salary, is expected to have a broad portfolio that includes government operations, trade deals and Middle East policy, according to a member of Trump’s transition team. In a statement, the transition office said Kushner would work closely with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon to execute Trump’s agenda.

• And on Feb. 10, The Washington Post reported:

Trump said he wanted to explore the possibilities for making what he has called “the ultimate deal,” a peace pact between Israel and the Palestinians. He is deploying his son-in-law — and now senior adviser on the Middle East — Jared Kushner to the task.

• So, if you’re keeping track, Jared Kushner, who comes to Washington with no government experience, no policy experience, no diplomatic experience, and business experience limited to his family’s real estate development firm, a brief stint as a newspaper publisher, and briefly bidding to acquire the Los Angeles Dodgers, will be working on trade, Middle East policy in general, an Israel-Palestine peace deal more specifically, reforming the Veterans Administration, and solving the opioid crisis.
• Oh wait, that’s not all! Apparently, this new office will also be responsible for “modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency; remodeling workforce-training programs; and developing “transformative projects” under the banner of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, such as providing broadband internet service to every American.”
• We have certainly come a long way from “I alone can fix it.”
• How is Jared Kushner going to do all of these things? Simply “modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency” is an enormous undertaking. In the United Kingdom, they had to create a whole new cabinet agency just to surmount that challenge. It would be great if Kushner would simply work on that one thing, or any one of these things. Instead, Kushner has now basically been saddled with several full-time jobs, in which he is responsible for fulfilling many, if not all, of his father-in-law’s campaign promises.
• Just imagine what Kushner’s daily schedule is going to be like:

9:00-9:30 - “Fox and Friends” debrief.

9:30-10:00 - Provide broadband internet service to entire nation.

10:00-11:00 - Stop working on providing broadband internet service to entire nation to focus on just providing it to entire government first.

11:00-11:30 - Elevensies.

11:30-1:00 - Working lunch to solve the intractable Israel-Palestine peace process that adults in government have been working on to no avail for decades.

1:00-1:30 - What do you mean there are other places in the Middle East that need tending to? FFS, people, I can’t possibly do everything!

1:30-2:00 - Daily “I can’t possibly do everything” meeting with POTUS. POTUS reminds Kushner that the AHCA went down because he was off in Aspen, skiing.

2:00-2:15 - Cancel all skiing vacations for the foreseeable future.

2:15-2:30 - Search for another samovar of coffee to push through the rest of the afternoon.

2:30-3:30 - Develop one “transformative project for America under the banner of Trump’s $1 billion infrastructure program.”

3:30-3:45 - Meeting with POTUS to discuss “transformative project.” POTUS says there is still something missing.

3:45-4:15 - WHAT IS IT MISSING? COME ON KUSHNER, THINK! YOU CAN DO THIS.

4:15-4:30 - Trump’s name added to transformative project. POTUS signs off.

4:30-4:45 - A brief wander through the White House. How did it come to this? Didn’t life used to be so much simpler? I could have done anything. I really would have liked to own the Dodgers. Oh, man, the crack of bat, fists pounding on leather, the scents of an afternoon ballgame? Heaven is a patch of well-manicured grass, the cheers of the crowd, fathers in the upper decks teaching their freckle-faced kids how to score the game, and nothing but the expanse of a hazy Southern California afternoon ahead of you. That should have been me. That’s what I was meant to do. How did I end up here? I only vaguely remember: My name, shouted in a certain dawn … a message … a summons … There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where I could have said – no. But somehow, I missed it.

4:45-6:00 - Fix the VA system, the opioid crisis, streamline government, and maybe do some trade stuff?

6:00 - Fifteen hours of weeping.

• Oh, hey, I nearly forgot: For the time being, Kushner is going to be wrapped up in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into “ties between Trump associates and Russian officials or others linked to the Kremlin,” so that’s going to cut into a lot of these activities.
• Now, the good news, if you’re Kushner, is that this latest thing he’ll be tapped to run may as well be called “the Office of Farming Out All This Work To Other People.” The Washington Post describes this agency as one that will “harvest ideas from the business world and, potentially, [privatize] some government functions.” (If you hate the VA hospital system now, just wait until it has a fiduciary responsibility to turn a profit for shareholders!)
• Parker and Rucker report that this arrangement is “viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants” and is “designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington,” which is what I thought Trump was going to do himself.
• Of course, “SWAT teams of strategic consultants” already exist ― they are called management consulting firms and one could presumably simply give them money to do things like overhaul veterans’ hospitals. But that wouldn’t give Kushner the chance to run his own version of McKinsey out of the White House, where he can build up his own prestige while commanding the participation of people like “Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff and Tesla founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk” ― all of whom already have full-time jobs.
• Still, we’re on the verge of someone having to write a “Can Jared Kushner Have It All” think piece, and it’s all down to the fact that Donald Trump seems to know very few people ― and trust even fewer ― and so task after task keeps being placed on the shoulders of a small inner circle of advisers. And at least two factions of that inner circle seems to openly loathe one another ― the Reince Priebus faction is made up of government careerists who are distrusted by the Steve Bannon faction, who want to humiliate career bureaucrats, dismantle the “administrative state,” and spend the rest of their free time oppressing immigrants and Muslims. Those are two legs of what Vox’s Matt Yglesias describes as Trump’s “three legged stool” of staffing, with the third being “the entire extended Trump family,” of which Kushner is the nominal head.
• All of this means that Trump will likely never court some of the controversy that his predecessor, President Barack Obama faced. When Obama staffed up, he found different people to tackle different problems or run specific policy portfolios ― all of which led to extended criticism that he was placing a coterie of unaccountable “czars” (or if you prefer, “tsars”) in White House gigs. Trump is solving this dilemma by making Kushner the Everything Czar ― though it’s starting to look like Kushner is the de facto president, and Trump is the czar of golfing and tweeting.
• But who knows if Kushner is going to be able to successfully take on this immense pile of work all by himself. Even if all he’ll be doing is shuttling the half-baked ideas of Silicon Valley CEOs up and down the administrative ladder, at some point, people are going to remember all the things for which Trump made his son-in-law responsible and wonder if this arrangement really makes sense. And the longer that actual solutions to these problems elude the Trump White House, the worse it will be for Kushner.
• In the end, Donald Trump may have to do the one thing he’s long been loath to do: give his daughter Tiffany a job. (Also, he might have to take some personal responsibility for something.)

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58d95499e4b02a2eaab6664f

 

[Zable]

Trump said he wanted to explore the possibilities for making what he has called “the ultimate deal,” a peace pact between Israel and the Palestinians. He is deploying his son-in-law — and now senior adviser on the Middle East — Jared Kushner to the task.

Oh, simple:
* To try and break from much of the legacy of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, a start would be to try and avoid doing 'business' (horse-trading) with the old cohort of warmongers and negotiate with those stakeholder reps born at least a decade after 1973. They're less likely to have fire in their belly.
* Persuade Israelis and Palestinians to settle as one united group with the promise of more land in 'new' territory.
* Persuade Jordan to set aside that land, in exchange for Jordan absorbing what is now Israel and Palestinian-occupied lands.
* Persuade Palestinians to be absorbed into Jordan.
* The country Israel must cease to exist, and what was Israel and Palestinian claimed territory absorbed by Jordan. So, effectively, the place of dwelling for Israelis and Palestinians is what they previously had plus extra land set aside by Jordan. (Trans-Jordan?)
* There, the official language will be one common to Jordanians & Israelis and already spoken by Palestinians. It should be recognised in rest of Jordan/be given special status. Meaning, people educated in this new territory shouldn't face difficulties living or face barriers to working in the rest of Jordan, for example.
* Israelis and Palestinians have freedom of movement in Jordan to both civilian and religious areas/sites. Etc.

Something like that.

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Stephen Colbert Slams Donald Trump’s ‘Bureau of Obvious Nepotism’
“Somebody keeps putting totally unqualified people in charge of really important stuff.”

• Stephen Colbert ripped President Donald Trump for hiring his own son-in-law for a key job in a newly created department.
• Jared Kushner, who is married to the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, has been tapped by the commander in chief to oversee the “overhaul” of the government bureaucracy.
• “And the government desperately needs overhaul,” Colbert said on the “Late Show” Monday night. “I mean, somebody keeps putting totally unqualified people in charge of really important stuff. That’s gotta stop!”
• Colbert cracked that the original title of Kushner’s new “Office of American Innovation” was the “Bureau of Obvious Nepotism.”

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58da1963e4b00f68a5ca51c8?utm_hp_ref=jared-kushner

 

[Zable]

Stephen Colbert operates on snark, not true wit. And for the popularity, he's prepared to dumb down his intelligence. Pity, that.

Back in January, the Department Of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, which interprets Federal law for the White House, said that Federal anti-nepotism laws only cover executive agencies; and the White House Office is not an executive agency as defined by these laws. Reportedly, a separate law gives the president broad powers to hire his personal staff.

Apparently, Mr Trump's transitional team had asked the DoJ OLC to look into the proposed 'hiring' of Kushner, for a legal opinion separate from that of Mr Kushner's own counsel.

CNN reported that deputy assistant attorney general in the DoJ OLC Daniel Koffsky wrote that this separate law -- I don't know the name of it -- authorizes the president to appoint "employees in the White House office without regard to any other provision of law regulating the employment or compensation of persons in the government service."

Reportedly, Kushner is not taking a salary for his new duties.

According to Mr Koffsky, per CNN's reporting: "A President wanting a relative's advice on governmental matters therefore has a choice: to seek that advice on an unofficial, ad hoc basis without conferring the status and imposing the responsibilities that accompany formal White House positions; or to appoint his relative to the White House under title 3 and subject him to substantial restrictions against conflicts of interest .... We believe that the President's special hiring authority in 3 U.S.C. § 105(a) permits him to make appointments to the White House Office that the anti-nepotism statute might otherwise forbid."

As for the so-called FBI investigation into collusion....The FBI is only interested in getting proof of a standard that can be presented in court. So it's investigations will be on slow boil. I don't think they are anywhere near going down that route of collusion, because before that the FBI will have to show provable coordination. To go down that route of coordination, they will have to prove one particular type of contact out of 3 possible types: that Americans knowingly had contact with (active) Russian intelligence agents. So first they'll have to find out who had what contact and determine its nature and how to characterise that contact.

So far as we know, Mr Kushner's meetings with Russians took place when he was still head of the Kushner family business, a position he stepped into at age 24, and family business matters were on the agenda. If anything else was on the agenda, it's for people more qualified than Joe Public (and that includes the Stephen Colberts of the world) to establish.

As for being inexperienced in matters of government (or should that be leadership?).... give the guy, Mr Kushner, time. William Pitt the Younger was prime minister of Britain at age 24 and held the post for 18 years. Then was once more PM (3 years later) for 2 years (until his death). Sure, he had a dad who himself was PM, for just 2 years, when the younger Pitt was between ages 7-9.... guess Mr Kushner has a father figure in Mr Trump in that sense, but Mr Kushner is not a boy wet behind the ears. Who knows what he's capable of.

Mr Colbert and his like can take potshots over Mr Trump's elevation of his son-in-law all they like till the cows come home, it's not going to change things real soon if it's legal.

 

[Zable]

I don't think they are anywhere near going down that route of collusion, because before that the FBI will have to show provable coordination.

To clarify, that was how I saw things. I did not sit through FBI Director James Comey's testimony to Congress.

So, I missed what Mr Comey had to say about "collusion" ....but have now just seen it in a news report published online 8 hours ago.

In his BBC, Washington report, Trump Russia dossier key claim 'verified' http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39435786 , Paul Wood writes:

Comey was careful in his testimony to say the investigation was into "co-ordination" rather than collusion.

"Collusion is not a term, a legal term of art," he said, "and it's one I haven't used here today, as we're investigating to see whether there was any co-ordination…"​

Assuming he's been quoted correctly, I don't know what Mr Comey means by "a legal term of art". I gather he doesn't see "collusion" as being the next stage after "co-ordination".

(Mr Wood's report is about US officials having 'verified' a claim in the Christopher Steele dossier that "a Russian diplomat in Washington was in fact a spy". According to Mr Wood, Mr Steel, formerly of Britain's MI6, had a long-standing relationship with the FBI. The report is lengthy and contains many parts to it.)

 

[Gabriel Maxwell]

This reptilian creep with a rich frat boy grin is as crooked as his convict father. And he'll be going down along with this White House criminal syndicate with filthy Russian money ties.

 

[Zable]

This reptilian creep with a rich frat boy grin is as crooked as his convict father.

Do you think freedom of speech rights will protect you if you are sued (in this case for libel)?

Mr Trump is finding out that he can't always bank on a 'free speech' defence. A Federal judge in Kentucky has rejected his freedom of speech defence in a case "accusing him of inciting violence", it's been widely reported. The 3 plaintiffs bringing the suit had protested at one of his rallies (on March 1, 2016, in Louisville, Kentucky) who were shoved and punched by some of his supporters after he shouted "get them out". The judge has ruled that they can proceed with their case.

Granted that the circumstances are not the same as here, but...

Do you have grounds for a defence of truth? Or of absolute privilege? Qualified privilege? Fair comment? Did you make a statement of fact or were you stating your opinion?

How is it in the public interest or benefit of forum readers to read this? Do you think Jared Kushner's reputation so bad that nothing you said would make it worse?

Do you know specific facts to support what you say about Mr Jared Kushner being "as crooked as his convict father"?

Your writing impacts the owners and users of this site. Think boy, think.

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Still Benefiting From Business Empire, Filings Show
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 $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities, according to ethics filings released by the White House Friday night.

• Ms. 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 Ms. Trump would earn income from that stake. Mr. Kushner’s financial disclosures said that Ms. 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, Friday-night 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 D. Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who now leads the National Economic Council, Kellyanne Conway, the pollster and counsel to Mr. Trump and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist to the president.
• Mr. Bannon disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization, $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign, and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three are backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, financiers and major Republican donors.
• Mr. 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.
• Ms. Conway earned at least $842,614 last year, and perhaps slightly more, the filings show. Her assets are valued at between $11 million and at least $44.2 million.
• Mr. Cohn is far wealthier, with assets valued between $253 million and $611 million, and income last year as high as $77 million. Another White House official, Reed Cordish, who heads up technology initiatives, accumulated assets as a Maryland developer valued as high as $424 million.
• Mr. Trump’s administration is considered the most wealthy in American history, with members of his senior staff and cabinet worth an estimated $12 billion, according to a tally by Bloomberg. The Friday filings will add voluminous detail to that top-line figure. The White house chief of staff, Reince Priebus, for example, earned at least $1.18 million — nearly half of which came from the Republican National Committee, which he formerly led. His assets totaled between $604,008 and at least $1.26 million.
• “I think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. The officials “have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets,” he said.
• Until January, Mr. Kushner was the chief executive of Kushner Companies, a family-run real estate investment firm with holdings across the country. It is a growing business that has taken part in at least $7 billion of acquisitions over the past decade.
• Late Friday, the White House released details of the plan devised by his advisers to avoid conflicts of interest between Mr. Kushner’s government role and the wide-ranging business empire he ran with his father. That business depends on foreign investment from undisclosed sources, as well as billions of dollars in loans from the world’s biggest financial services firms.
• Although Mr. Kushner has stepped down from his management positions at the more than 200 entities that operated aspects of the family real estate business, he will remain a beneficiary of a vast majority of the business he ran for the past decade, through a series of trusts that already owned the various real estate companies.
• The plan laid out on Friday “is not sufficient,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel and chief ethics officer for the Federal Election Commission. “While removing himself from the management of the businesses is an important step, he is still financially benefiting from how the businesses do. This presents potential for a conflict of interest. Given his level in the White House and broad portfolio, it’s hard to see how he will recuse himself from everything that may impact his financial interest.”
• While the filing discloses Mr. Kushner’s personal lenders, it does not provide information on his business partners or lenders to his projects.
• His real estate firm has borrowed money from the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group, Deutsche Bank and the French bank Natixis. It also received loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of a United States Justice Department investigation into allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes using undeclared accounts.
• Most recently, his firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was the subject of controversy: Around the time his father-in-law received the Republican nomination last spring, Mr. Kushner’s firm began conversations with a Chinese company with ties to some of the Communist Party’s leading families about a plan to invest billions of dollars in the troubled office tower.
• Mr. Kushner’s company and the firm, Anbang Insurance Group, agreed to end the talks on Wednesday after weeks of negative publicity about the deal, criticized as a bailout of the Kushners. The building had already been rescued by a number of prominent firms, including the private equity giant Carlyle Group, and Zara, the Spanish fashion retailer founded and owned by Amancio Ortega, one of the world’s wealthiest men.
• Mr. Kushner has divested his stakes in any businesses connected to that property.
• The disclosures do not reveal the names of investors and lenders to ventures that Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in. For example, the form shows Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in a limited liability corporation that owns a Trump-branded luxury rental high-rise building in Jersey City worth as much as $5 million. That project was financed with tens of millions of dollars from wealthy Chinese investors through a controversial visa-for-sale program called EB-5.
• However, the filing does not disclose the names of any of those investors — or partners in any of his other projects.
• “We don’t know who the business partners are in many of these investments,” Mr. Noble said, “and those business partners may also have interests that will be affected by how he advises the government. And that’s a concern.”
• “He could have foreign business partners who have a real interest in policy, and he may be advising the president on those policies,” Mr. Noble added. “This is a dark area where we just don’t know what’s going on.”
• In all, the Kushner company owns more than 20,000 apartments and approximately 14 million square feet of office space.
• Previous disclosures by the United States Office of Government Ethics showed that Mr. Kushner had divested his interests in several entities, mostly partnerships connected to a venture capital firm run by his brother, Joshua, called Thrive Capital, that invests in technology firms like Instagram.
• He also shed his interests in funds run by the private equity giant Blackstone Group — whose chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman, is an economic adviser to Mr. Trump — as well as BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
• Over all, he has shed his stakes in 58 businesses.
• He is still the sole primary beneficiary of a majority of the trusts that will retain assets, with his children as the secondary beneficiaries.
• Mr. Kushner was required to submit some limited financial information for his wife, Ms. Trump, who will continue to receive payments from the Trump Organization as well as her fashion brand.
• Ms. Trump, who now serves as an assistant to the president, resigned from her leadership roles at both companies. Instead of performance-based payments, Ms. Trump will receive fixed payments from T International Realty, the family’s luxury brokerage agency, as well as fixed fees from two entities related to real estate projects, the documents show.
• Ms. Trump had previously rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which is overseen by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the trust at more than $50 million.
• The brand is largely a licensing operation, meaning that it sells the use of Ms. Trump’s name to partners who manufacture her clothes, shoes and other accessories. Since it is privately held, little is known about the company’s financials, but The New York Times has previously reported that revenues were roughly between $4 million and $6 million in 2013, before the debut of a major partnership.
• The disclosure forms released Friday for less senior White House staff members were not reviewed by the federal Office of Government Ethics. Only the White House Counsel’s Office examines their assets to determine if there are potential conflicts, and to decide what steps employees must take to sell assets, resign positions or recuse themselves from decisions.
• Already, a complaint has been filed against at least one White House staff member for taking actions that might benefit his own financial interests. Christopher P. Liddell, an assistant to the president and the director of strategic initiatives, had been the chief financial officer of companies including Microsoft, International Paper and General Motors before taking his White House job. Until recently, he also owned stock in General Motors, according to disclosure forms, among more than 750 other companies.
• But in late January and early February, according to a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mr. Liddell participated in meetings that involved several of the companies in which he still owned a total of about $2 million in stock, including International Paper and General Motors. Mr. Liddell, according to disclosures, sold these stock holdings by mid-February.
• “It is Ethics 101 — the most basic thing you are not supposed to do: using your official capacity to benefit your financial interest,” said Norman Eisen, who served as a White House ethics lawyer during the Obama administration and now is a co-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
• The White House did not respond Friday when asked about the complaint.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile...ng-from-business-empire-filings-show.amp.html

 

[SueEllenRules!]

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Do you think freedom of speech rights will protect you if you are sued (in this case for libel)?

Mr Trump is finding out that he can't always bank on a 'free speech' defence. A Federal judge in Kentucky has rejected his freedom of speech defence in a case "accusing him of inciting violence", it's been widely reported. The 3 plaintiffs bringing the suit had protested at one of his rallies (on March 1, 2016, in Louisville, Kentucky) who were shoved and punched by some of his supporters after he shouted "get them out". The judge has ruled that they can proceed with their case.

Granted that the circumstances are not the same as here, but...

Do you have grounds for a defence of truth? Or of absolute privilege? Qualified privilege? Fair comment? Did you make a statement of fact or were you stating your opinion?

How is it in the public interest or benefit of forum readers to read this? Do you think Jared Kushner's reputation so bad that nothing you said would make it worse?

Do you know specific facts to support what you say about Mr Jared Kushner being "as crooked as his convict father"?

Your writing impacts the owners and users of this site. Think boy, think.

 

[Zable]

Reportedly, a separate law gives the president broad powers to hire his personal staff. .... CNN reported that deputy assistant attorney general in the DoJ OLC Daniel Koffsky wrote that this separate law -- I don't know the name of it -- authorizes the president to appoint "employees in the White House office without regard to any other provision of law regulating the employment or compensation of persons in the government service."

Reportedly, Kushner is not taking a salary for his new duties. According to Mr Koffsky, per CNN's reporting: ".... We believe that the President's special hiring authority in 3 U.S.C. § 105(a) permits him to make appointments to the White House Office that the anti-nepotism statute might otherwise forbid."

@SueEllenRules! Which part about the Justice Department's January 2017 finding/advice that President Trump can appoint/'hire' his relatives to White House (Executive) Office positions don't you understand?

The "separate law" I referred to turns out to be the American Constitution's Appointment clause (Article II, Section 2), which directly vests the President with 'hiring' powers in connection with "inferior officers".

For your own agenda you are pushing a piece of legislation which the Justice Department has found to be inferior (to the American Constitution) when it comes to Presidential 'hiring' powers. This, despite me letting you know about "the separate law" that the JD sided with earlier. Why, exactly? You doubt the JD's competence or ethics?

On March 29, 2017, the Vox, giving a New York Times report as its source, reported that Ivanka Trump "will become an unpaid government employee with the title of special assistant to the president".

The Vox went on to say, in its piece about nepotism and Ivanka's unsuitability for the job, that:

"Giving Ivanka Trump a West Wing office might be nepotism. But it’s not illegal nepotism. The Justice Department ruled that federal anti-nepotism laws don’t apply to the president’s choice of White House advisers."​

Like I did, the Vox quoted the Justice Department's Daniel Koffsky. It's report said (in part):

“A President wanting a relative's advice on governmental matters therefore has a choice: to seek that advice on an unofficial, ad hoc basis without conferring the status and imposing the responsibilities that accompany formal White House positions,” the Justice Department’s Daniel Koffsky, a deputy assistant attorney general, wrote, “or to appoint his relative to the White House under title 3 and subject him to substantial restrictions against conflicts of interest.”​

In other words: Trump is going to get advice from his relatives anyway, so he might as well get it in a role that puts some ethical restrictions around what they can do.​

Congress passed a federal anti-nepotism law in the 1960s. Before that, the only unusual thing about an appointment like Trump’s would be that she was the president’s daughter — not the president’s brother or the president’s son.​

[Me: Several presidents did that, latterly Democrats.]​

.... Then in 1967, a federal anti-nepotism law reforming the Post Office prohibited executive branch officials from appointing their relatives to jobs in the agencies they oversee. Legal experts disagree ( see https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/presidential-nepotism-debate-goes-back-to-the-founders-time/ ) on whether the law applies to the president and to jobs in the White House.​

[Me: That's the one you quote from in your poster. Section 3110 is known as the Federal Anti-Nepotism Statute. "Passed as part of a Postal Service reform law." The penalty for violating this statute is to withhold "salary or other financial remuneration". Bear in mind, neither Jared Kushner nor Ivanka Trump are receiving salaries.]​

.... Today, Kushner and Ivanka Trump have already disclosed information about their finances and divested from some stocks as part of Kushner’s White House role, according to Politico. As an official White House employee, she’ll also be bound by regulations on financial disclosures and conflicts of interest.​

You might want to think about why some people in the White House administration refer to Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as 'Democrats' (without the quote marks, even).

But I suspect you'll be content to lap up any negative Trump & associates views you come across. Me thinks the Vox article slant will likely be to your pleasing. http://www.vox.com/2017/3/22/15005508/ivanka-trump-white-house-nepotism

A Vox article which, by the way, talks about Jared & Ivanka "losing the war" to "shape President Trump’s administration into one that actively fights climate change and protects the rights of LGBTQ people" in a presidency which is less than 73 days old.

 

[SueEllenRules!]

@SueEllenRules! Which part about the Justice Department's January 2017 finding/advice that President Trump can appoint/'hire' his relatives to White House (Executive) Office positions don't you understand?

The "separate law" I referred to turns out to be the American Constitution's Appointment clause (Article II, Section 2), which directly vests the President with 'hiring' powers in connection with "inferior officers".




For your own agenda you are pushing a piece of legislation which the Justice Department has found to be inferior (to the American Constitution) when it comes to Presidential 'hiring' powers. This, despite me letting you know about "the separate law" that the JD sided with earlier. Why, exactly? You doubt the JD's competence or ethics?

On March 29, 2017, the Vox, giving a New York Times report as its source, reported that Ivanka Trump "will become an unpaid government employee with the title of special assistant to the president".

The Vox went on to say, in its piece about nepotism and Ivanka's unsuitability for the job, that:

"Giving Ivanka Trump a West Wing office might be nepotism. But it’s not illegal nepotism. The Justice Department ruled that federal anti-nepotism laws don’t apply to the president’s choice of White House advisers."​

Like I did, the Vox quoted the Justice Department's Daniel Koffsky. It's report said (in part):

“A President wanting a relative's advice on governmental matters therefore has a choice: to seek that advice on an unofficial, ad hoc basis without conferring the status and imposing the responsibilities that accompany formal White House positions,” the Justice Department’s Daniel Koffsky, a deputy assistant attorney general, wrote, “or to appoint his relative to the White House under title 3 and subject him to substantial restrictions against conflicts of interest.”​

In other words: Trump is going to get advice from his relatives anyway, so he might as well get it in a role that puts some ethical restrictions around what they can do.​

Congress passed a federal anti-nepotism law in the 1960s. Before that, the only unusual thing about an appointment like Trump’s would be that she was the president’s daughter — not the president’s brother or the president’s son.​

[Me: Several presidents did that, latterly Democrats.]​

.... Then in 1967, a federal anti-nepotism law reforming the Post Office prohibited executive branch officials from appointing their relatives to jobs in the agencies they oversee. Legal experts disagree ( see https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/presidential-nepotism-debate-goes-back-to-the-founders-time/ ) on whether the law applies to the president and to jobs in the White House.​

[Me: That's the one you quote from in your poster. Section 3110 is known as the Federal Anti-Nepotism Statute. "Passed as part of a Postal Service reform law." The penalty for violating this statute is to withhold "salary or other financial remuneration". Bear in mind, neither Jared Kushner nor Ivanka Trump are receiving salaries.]​

.... Today, Kushner and Ivanka Trump have already disclosed information about their finances and divested from some stocks as part of Kushner’s White House role, according to Politico. As an official White House employee, she’ll also be bound by regulations on financial disclosures and conflicts of interest.​

You might want to think about why some people in the White House administration refer to Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as 'Democrats' (without the quote marks, even).

But I suspect you'll be content to lap up any negative Trump & associates views you come across. Me thinks the Vox article slant will likely be to your pleasing. http://www.vox.com/2017/3/22/15005508/ivanka-trump-white-house-nepotism

A Vox article which, by the way, talks about Jared & Ivanka "losing the war" to "shape President Trump’s administration into one that actively fights climate change and protects the rights of LGBTQ people" in a presidency which is less than 73 days old.

 

[Gabriel Maxwell]

So, a murky legal landscape that had never before seen such blatant and rampant abuse of the high office has design flaws that makes it impossible to put a stop to this nepotism travesty. Got it. Meanwhile, Jared-boy gets to play Secretary of State in Iraq, while the Trump administration rushes to line their pockets, before this whole mockery of Presidency collapses.