Ivanka Trump – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

The Trouble With Ivanka’s Business Partner

David Posnett — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 18:15:32 +0000

From Politico

The first daughter’s longtime friend and associate is falling afoul of his creditors—and the courts.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER | August 27, 2017

His vendors call him a “career grifter.” His father’s creditors claim he’s a fraud and a serial extortionist who shakes people down with trumped-up threats of criminal charges. With these and other allegations piling up in court records along with judgments—against him, his wife and his businesses—for millions of dollars, his lawyers are abandoning him, saying he’s a deadbeat. All the while, he’s been living in one of the most luxurious mansions in the Bronx.

For the past decade, Lax, a 43-year-old New York diamond heir and entrepreneur, has been Trump’s partner in Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, the first major venture of her business career.

Trump and her family have continued to associate with Lax even as his legal problems have mounted and Trump has been dragged into Lax’s business disputes. On election night, Lax and his wife stood at the front of the ballroom at the Trump campaign’s victory party in New York, and Lax went on to visit Trump Tower during the transition, while Tiffany Trump attended the launch party for a new Lax venture in February. Ivanka Trump has even continued to rely on Lax’s advice in recent years: In depositions they gave for an unrelated case last summer, both Trump and her brother, Don Jr., cited advice they received from Lax in assessing another business partner.

And according to court records, Trump renewed her licensing agreement with Lax in 2011, allowing him to continue using her name even after his company defaulted on payments and he violated numerous terms of their agreement.

“He cheated not just us, he also cheated Ivanka,” says Mahipal Singhvi of KGK, a company that was recently awarded a multimillion-dollar judgment against Lax, his wife and their businesses after they kept, but did not pay for, a large shipment of KGK diamonds.

Trump’s relationship with Lax and the mountain of legal and financial troubles—reported here for the first time based on dozens of interviews and public records—raise serious questions about the first daughter’s judgment, even as she continues to serve as a powerful White House adviser. In response to detailed questions sent to the White House and the Trump Organization, White House spokesman Josh Raffel requested more information about this article but did not provide comment.

Lax initially agreed to a telephone interview about his relationship with Trump, but then said he might be traveling to Washington imminently and would prefer to meet in person. In response to an email listing detailed questions about the judgments and allegations against him, Lax responded that he was the victim of a blackmail and extortion scheme by one of his creditors.

“I do have all the hard evidence that this is an extortion case for money,” he wrote. “I will pursue criminally.” Lax declined to elaborate, and POLITICO Magazine is withholding the name of the creditor, for lack of any evidence of wrongdoing.

Lax grew up in Brooklyn the son of a diamond magnate with a sideline in real estate. He began his partnership with Trump a decade ago when both were rich kids looking to make their mark in the world of business. In 2007, Lax approached Trump pitching her on a land deal in Fort Myers, Florida.

Trump found herself drawn to Lax, seeing him as a kindred spirit. “Moshe was looking to take his business to a whole new level,” she recounts in “The Trump Card,” a 2010 memoir in which the entire final chapter is devoted to her partnership with Lax. “In that way, I suppose, we were a lot alike, trying to make our own way along a path set out for us by our fathers and trying to extend that path in exciting new directions, which I guess explains why we hit it off.”

Lax was not the only person Trump would hit it off with through the proposed deal. Soon after meeting Trump, he called a meeting of real estate heirs to discuss business opportunities at Prime Grill, a steakhouse across the street from Trump Tower, according to an April profile of Lax in Mishpacha, a magazine serving the Orthodox Jewish diaspora. At Lax’s networking lunch, Trump met her future husband Kushner for the first time (in the profile, Lax joked that it was a “state secret” whether he received a match-making fee and said he had gained an appreciation for President Trump’s “decency” and “sense of humor” by working with him up close).

The real estate deal went nowhere, but Trump and Lax soon embarked on a more promising venture together. At the time, Lax had a steady supply of diamonds from his family’s business, but was having trouble differentiating his product. Trump had a famous name with which to brand jewelry and ideas about how to create a shopping experience geared toward working women buying for themselves – a break from other diamond retailers that catered to husbands and boyfriends.

The pair decided to embark on a joint business venture, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, converting Lax’s retail space on Madison Avenue into their flagship boutique.

According to Trump’s memoir, the partnership was a homerun. “As of now, in this tough economy, we’re doing very well,” she wrote in 2010. “Actually we’re doing better than ‘very well’ … We’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.”

But beneath the rosy picture Trump painted in public, there were a number of problems. In June 2011, Trump and Lax entered into a new licensing agreement. This agreement, which has since surfaced in litigation, states that Lax’s company defaulted on licensing payments to Trump and that Lax or his company committed numerous violations of the original deal, including entering into unauthorized sublicensing agreements and failing to keep accurate records. The agreement charges Lax’s company $300,000 per year and 36 percent of net proceeds for the right to use Trump’s name.

Despite those problems, Trump remained in business with Lax as troubles kept piling up.

In 2012, Lax’s company, Madison Avenue Diamonds, found itself in court after it accepted delivery of millions of dollars in diamonds but refused to pay for them, claiming that the vendor, KGK, had breached their agreement by delivering some computer files related to the diamonds late. Lax was represented by David Scharf of Morrison Cohen, who in the past had done extensive legal work for the Trump Organization (the firm later went to court with the Trump Organization over half a million dollars in disputed legal fees).

The diamond dispute entangled Trump in a web of litigation against her will. At one point, Judge Charles Ramos became agitated with Trump’s attempts to avoid testifying about her relationship with Lax.

Ramos expressed special annoyance at the fact that Trump submitted an affidavit from her lawyer in an attempt to quash a subpoena, rather than submitting one herself. “You know something, if she does not want to testify she can tell me she doesn’t want to testify,” Ramos said at a hearing on the matter. “She has not done that. She does it through counsel? Thanks a lot. The deposition will go forward.” Trump also made the unusual request that the deposition take place at her office in Trump Tower, which the judge denied.

At her deposition, Trump’s lawyer revealed that in addition to her licensing agreement with Lax, Trump had an ownership stake in Madison Avenue Diamonds through an entity called IHoldings Madison LLC. It’s not clear how large a share of the company Trump held, or for how long. In the personal financial disclosure she made this year upon entering the White House, Trump says she served as president of IHoldings Madison until this May.

In 2015, the court ordered Lax’s company and his wife, Shaindy—who had personally guaranteed payment of the diamonds and in whose name Lax conducts many of his financial dealings—to pay the stiffed vendor $2.4 million plus interest. Singvhi of KGK says that the company has still not received the payments due, which at this point amount to $3.5 million.

In the meantime, Lax has had other problems. ***

In 2008, Lax’s father died, leaving him as co-executor of a vast estate. But his father also left vast debts, including $27 million owed to the IRS and a multimillion-dollar loan guaranteed by the Brooklyn real estate developers Joseph Brunner and Abe Mandel.

The fallout from that loan has led to some of the most disturbing charges against Lax: that he has been extorting members of his tight-knit religious community, threatening to bring criminal charges against them if they do not pay him—and that he engaged in a massive financial fraud to hide tens of millions of dollars left by his father from the government and creditors.

In 2014, Brunner and Mandel sued Lax, his wife, his brother-in-law Martin Ehrenfeld, his father’s estate, his father’s family trust and various corporate entities, claiming the defendants had used a series of shell corporations to hide Lax’s father’s money and avoid paying his father’s debts. The developers say that before his death, Lax’s father showed them documentation that his net worth was $174 million. According to their complaint, Lax and his co-defendants managed to make the fortune disappear—so that when creditors came calling, the estate had no assets to repossess.

The developers also claimed that Lax attempted to extort them in a scheme to avoid paying on the debts. In a sworn affidavit, Mandel said he received a call from Scharf in March 2014 informing him that a legal complaint was being prepared that would “destroy” him and Brunner and inviting him to a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue at Scharf’s office.

At the meeting, Scharf allegedly told the developers that his client was working with a former prosecutor, was prepared to accuse them of racketeering and would demand $20 million in damages—that is, unless they negotiated with Lax and his brother-in-law “to make this go away.”

In the affidavit, Mandel also said that a private intelligence firm had been approaching his business and personal contacts, telling them Mandel and his partner were under investigation and telling a charity he had given to that his gift was made with “stolen funds.” The developers submitted business card from the firm Sage Intelligence bearing the name Herman Weisberg, a former NYPD detective, that had been left with one of their acquaintances. Weisberg declined to comment for this story.

The developers said they were not the only victims, and that the defendants had been engaging in a “pattern and practice” of extorting and trying to extort other members of the Orthodox Jewish community, to which all involved belong, through “sham” entities called Diligence I LLC and Prudence LLC.

“Brunner and I inquired in our community about Scharf, Lax and Ehrenfeld,” states Mandel in a sworn affidavit. “We learned that they have been shaking down other people in our community for large settlement payments by threatening criminal actions.”

The Laxes and Ehrenfeld have denied wrongdoing. Scharf and his firm, who were never named as defendants, also deny any wrongdoing. Morrison Cohen has since withdrawn as counsel for Lax’s father’s estate, citing a conflict of interest (in June, the firm also withdrew from the KGK case, saying Lax and Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry had failed pay them).

Morrison Cohen’s withdrawal was just one of many bizarre turns the Brunner and Mandel case has taken. At one point, an attorney for Diligence claimed not to know who actually controlled the shell corporation he was representing. At another point. Lax claimed not to know the original identities of the lenders for the loan under dispute.

Judge Shirley Kornriech later concluded that Lax was lying, and over the course of the case she grew increasingly frustrated with such shenanigans. “A theme in this case is the pleading of ignorance by defendants and their counsel,” she wrote in one court order, listing off assertions that she did not find credible.

In June 2015, the lawyer for Diligence, Steven Schlesinger, withdrew from the case, saying his client had failed to communicate with him and had stiffed him on $85,000 worth of legal fees. Diligence then got a replacement lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, but he also withdrew from the case this January.

In his request to abandon the case, Jaroslawicz said he had been retained by someone named Eldridge Glasford running a corporate services firm on the Caribbean island of Nevis— population 11,000—that he was “not computer literate” because of a disability, and that he was never paid for his work. In November, a lawyer representing Lax’s sister, Zlaty Schwartz, and his father’s estate, withdrew from the case, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the estate.

Since then, the case has settled, according to the developers’ lawyer, William Fried, who declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Those cases represent only a small sample of the suits filed against Lax in recent years. In September 2013, the law firm Cohen & Perfetto sued Lax, claiming he stiffed them for $48,000 in legal fees. The case settled, with Scharf representing Lax.

Last January, Lax’s cousin, Aron, sued Lax and his sister for allegedly pursuing “unjust enrichment” by trying to evict Aron and his wife from a Brooklyn condo that they have resided in since 2006 but whose mortgage is in the name of Lax’s late father. Last October, the firm Porzio, Bromberg & Newman sued Lax for $100,000 in unpaid legal fees. And in June, the law firm Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone sued Lax for $20,000 in unpaid legal fees. The cases remain ongoing. Lax has also been named as a defendant in a number of cases claiming failures to make mortgage payments.

Lax’s problems have continued to entangle Ivanka Trump. In recent years, the state of New York has issued at least three warrants for unpaid taxes against Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, totaling over $300,000. The outstanding taxes were eventually paid.

The financial travails of Lax and his wife have also put Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry in danger of at least partly falling into the hands of the highest bidder at a public auction in order to satisfy their unpaid debts. In January, a New York couple, Michael and Rachel Goldenberg, sued Lax and his wife for stiffing them on a six-figure loan. Lax’s wife owned at least part of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, and in April, a New York court ordered her to turn over her stake in the company to the city so that it could be auctioned off to settle the debt. She apparently failed to do so, leading the Goldenbergs to request in May that she be held in contempt of court. In July, the court ordered the Laxs to pay the Goldenbergs $675,000, and the motion for contempt has been put on hold until September 19, the deadline for paying the debt.

The Laxes’ finances are further obscured by the fact that they are sometimes conducted under the name Chana Weisz, an alias used by his wife, Shaindy. Lax will sometimes write checks from a checkbook made in the name of Chana Weisz, according to a person who has seen him do this. Theperson recently received a five-figure check from Lax out of that checkbook but said they were unable to cash it because, as an alarmed bank teller pointed out, Lax’s signature did match the name on the check.

Amid so many setbacks, Lax did score at least one massive, if temporary, reprieve thanks to some highly irregular tax relief. In October 2015, the IRS released a $27 million tax lien against his father’s estate, saying the obligation had been satisfied. But last May, the IRS reinstated the lien, saying it had been released by mistake and that the $27 million in back taxes had never actually been paid.

Michael Macgillivray, a prominent Chicago attorney specializing in tax collections and a veteran of the IRS collections department, was gob-smacked by the botched lien release. “That is extremely extraordinary,” he said. “Of the things I’ve seen in my practice, nothing has even remotely approached a million dollars when there was an erroneously released lien.”

MacGillivray added that he had difficulty fathoming the explanation the IRS offered on the form reinstating the lien—that the lien had been released “mistakenly.” A spokesman for the IRS said the agency does not comment on individual cases.

“I could not believe that on a $27 million issue somebody would just make a mistake like that. You’d think there’d be a lot of due diligence,” MacGillivray said. “I can’t say its corruption because the IRS has 80,000 employees and there are incompetents.”

As Lax’s problems mounted, Trump did not sever ties or disavow him. The continued relationship briefly came up last summer, when she gave a deposition in a dispute between the Trump Organization and restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian, who years before had ended a partnership with Lax amid acrimony and litigation.

In her testimony, Trump recalls receiving advice about Zakarian’s character from Lax, which she passed along to her older brother, Don Jr. “I recall telling my brother to make sure that he got a good guarantee, because I had heard from a partner of mine that Zakarian had treated him very badly in a deal,” Trump said. “Moshe certainly feels that Geoffrey is not a very good human being.” Don Jr. also cites Lax’s advice in his deposition for the suit.

In November, Lax and his wife attended the Trump campaign’s official election night party at the Midtown Hilton. A few days later, with the new president-elect and his team holed up at Trump Tower to chart the course of his administration, Lax was spotted in the lobby, taking an elevator upstairs.

In March, Trump’s company announced it was discontinuing the Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry line to focus on a mass-market collection, leaving the current status of her business relationship with Lax unclear. Until his LinkedIn profile was taken down this week, it listed him as the current chairman of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry. Pieces from the line remain available for sale alongside glamorous black-and-white photos of Trump at IvankaTrumpFineJewelry.com, a website registered to the Trump Organization.

Despite all his problems, Lax has been residing of late in a luxurious mansion in Riverdale, an exclusive section of the Bronx, according to a subpoena response submitted by his wife earlier this year. The house is named “Ochre Point” after a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and at one point last year, it was the second-most expensive residence on the market in the entire borough, featuring “eight bedrooms, an elevator, a motor court, a three-car garage, and an outdoor pool,” with a $7.75 million asking price, according to the real estate publication Curbed. The house is part of the Villanova Heights development, where houses rent for between $17,500 and $25,000 per month, according to the New York Post.

Meanwhile, Lax has continued to pursue new ventures and keep his name in the news. Earlier this year, he launched Code, a 10,000-square-foot “conceptual fashion retail gallery harboring a Community of Designers” at 800 Fifth Avenue. Trump’s younger sister Tiffany attended the launch party, along with Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who happens to be the landlord.

In July, Lax announced a new diamond gallery, Facet of Love, slated to open on August 15, also at 800 Fifth Ave. But Lax has fallen afoul of Spitzer, according to a person close to the building, who said Lax is now being booted from it “as a consequence of his failure to pay rent.”

Facet of Love has not yet opened, and is not clear when it will, if ever. “I really can’t give a date,” said Lax’s publicist Ronni Kairney, whose website lists Trump as a former client and who also said she did not know when Lax might be available for an interview. “He’s just very busy.”

Indeed, despite it all, Lax continues to exhibit the same hustle that first drew Trump to him all those years ago. “My new associate was an entrepreneur through and through,” the future first daughter recalled in her memoir. “I admired that about him.”

An Open Letter to our Fellow Jews

David Posnett — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:41:02 +0000

From my friend Larry Smith:

By Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman

Berkeley, California, 8/16/17

To our fellow Jews, in the United States, in Israel, and around the world:

We know that, up to now, some of you have made an effort to reserve judgment on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. Some of you voted for him last November. Some of you have found employment in his service, or have involved yourself with him in private business deals, or in diplomatic ties.

You have counted carefully as each appointment to his administration of an avowed white supremacist, anti-Semite, neo-Nazi or crypto-fascist appeared to be counterbalanced by the appointment of a fellow Jew, and reassured yourself that the most troubling of those hires would be cumulatively outweighed by the presence, in his own family and circle of closest advisors, of a Jewish son-in-law and daughter.

You have given your support to the President’s long and appalling record of racist statements, at worst assenting to them, at best dismissing them as the empty blandishments of a huckster at work, and have chosen to see the warm reception that his rhetoric found among the hood-wearers, weekend stormtroopers, and militias of hate as proof of the gullibility of a bunch of patsies, however distasteful.

You have viewed him as a potential friend to Israel, or a reliable enemy of Israel’s enemies.

You have tried to allay or dismiss your fears with the knowledge that most of the President’s hateful words and actions, along with those of his appointees, have targeted other people — immigrants, Black people, and Muslims — taking hollow consolation in how open and shameless his hate has been, as if that openness and shamelessness guaranteed the absence, in his heart and in his administration, of any hidden hatred for us.

The President has no filter, no self-control, you have told yourself. If he were an anti-Semite — a Nazi sympathizer, a friend of the Jew-hating Klan — we would know about it, by now. By now, he would surely have told us.

Yesterday, in a long and ragged off-the-cuff address to the press corps, President Trump told us. During a moment that white supremacist godfather Steve Bannon has apparently described as a “defining” one for this Administration, the President expressed admiration and sympathy for a group of white supremacist demonstrators who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, flaunting Swastikas and openly chanting, along with vile racist slogans, “Jews will not replace us!” Among those demonstrators, according to Trump, were “a lot” of “innocent” and “very fine people.”

So, now you know. First he went after immigrants, the poor, Muslims, trans people and people of color, and you did nothing. You contributed to his campaign, you voted for him. You accepted positions on his staff and his councils. You entered into negotiations, cut deals, made contracts with him and his government.

Now he’s coming after you. The question is: what are you going to do about it? If you don’t feel, or can’t show, any concern, pain or understanding for the persecution and demonization of others, at least show a little self-interest. At least show a little sechel. At the very least, show a little self-respect.

To Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and our other fellow Jews currently serving under this odious regime: We call upon you to resign; and to the President’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen: Fire your client.

To Sheldon Adelson and our other fellow Jews still engaged in making the repugnant calculation that a hater of Arabs must be a lover of Jews, or that money trumps hate, or that a million dollars’ worth of access can protect you from one boot heel at the door: Wise up.

To the government of Israel, and our fellow Jews living there: Wise up.

To Jared Kushner: You have one minute to do whatever it takes to keep the history of your people from looking back on you as among its greatest traitors, and greatest fools; that minute is nearly past. To Ivanka Trump: Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase, long employed by Jewish parents and children to one another at such moments of family crisis: I’ll sit shiva for you. Try it out on your father; see how it goes.

Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.

To our fellow Jews, in North America, in Israel, and around the world: What side are you on?

Women working in Trump’s White House only make $0.80 to the man’s dollar

David Posnett — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 23:45:40 +0000

Published 9h ago on July 3, 2017

by Marie Solis

President Donald Trump waves as he arrives on Air Force One

Source: Carolyn Kaster/AP

The country’s gender wage gap goes all the way to the White House, according to a new CNN analysis.

Using the findings from the White House’s annual report to Congress, which was released on Friday, the outlet found women working in President Donald Trump’s White House earn an average salary of roughly $83,000, while their male colleagues earn an average of roughly $104,000.

That disparity works out to women making just $0.80 to the man’s dollar, a pay gap falling just below the national average: As of April’s Equal Pay Day, women made $0.82 for every dollar earned by a man.

However, the White House’s pay gap problem isn’t specific to Trump.

In 2014, the Washington Post reported that then-President Barack Obama hadn’t yet succeeded in closing the gender wage gap in his White House, albeit a much smaller gap than Trump’s. Under Obama, women in the White House earned an average salary of $78,400 to men’s $88,600, adding up to a 13% wage gap, or $0.87.

Trump speaks along with daughter Ivanka during a video conference in the Oval Office in April.

Source: Pool/Getty Images

Still, a hallmark of Obama’s presidency was his dedication to solving the country’s gender wage gap problem. Just a little over a week into his presidency, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, equal pay legislation named for a woman who discovered at the end of her 19-year career that she’d been paid less than her male colleagues all along. In 2014, Obama signed an executive order promoting fair pay and safe work conditions, including mandates for paycheck transparency and a ban on forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination or sexual assault.

In March, Trump revoked the latter Obama-era policy, just days before Equal Pay Day on April 4.

This move, along with Trump’s apparent animus toward other issues affecting women’s lives, means the wage gap could widen under the 45th president. In a December interview with Mic, Fatima Goss Graves, a senior vice president at the National Women’s Law Center, said it’s in Trump’s power to decide if he wants to close it.

“[You can either decide to] change the range of factors that really are leading to lower wages, or you can continue to lean into the things you know cause the problem in the first place,” she said. “That’s the question for the Trump administration: Are they on the side of equal pay [and equal rights] for women?”

What Ivanka Trump doesn’t know will hurt us all

David Posnett — Sat, 06 May 2017 23:58:47 +0000

Posted on Salon.com

SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017 05:00 PM EDT

I read “Women Who Work” so you don’t have to. Ivanka’s “successful businesswoman” reputation is kind of a sham

ERIN KEANE

Ivanka Trump (Credit: Salon/Flora Thevoux)

Ivanka Trump’s new book “Women Who Work” is not, as you may have already guessed or read, particularly useful, even compared to other bland corporate tactical manuals. If you are a woman who works — or know one with a graduation or a promotion or a birthday coming up — save your money. The Trump family’s rapacious worldview is in its full glory in this clip job of a so-called monograph; Ivanka (or whoever “architected” this sugar-, fat- and gluten-free life manual) takes the subhead, “Rewriting the Rules for Success,” to an absurdly literal level. The book is not written so much as it is aggregated, borrowed so heavily from certain individual sources that she ought to owe royalties to Sheryl Sandberg and the estate of Stephen Covey, not that they’re any more likely to collect now that her office is in the West Wing instead of Trump Tower. What else is the intellectual work of others but “content” for “Ivanka” to “curate” (“wordsmith,” even!) for her own profit?

Ivanka is not an original thinker; this is not news. So it comes as little surprise that she is not a gifted — or even passably average for her genre — writer, either. In her NPR review, Annalisa Quinn aptly likens reading the book to “eating scented cotton balls,” and I would thank the American culture to immediately stop placing any automatic, unqualified premium value on prestigious prep school and Ivy League educations, as every podunk public school graduate I know has a better grasp of Toni Morrison and Charlotte Perkins Gilman than Ivanka Trump does, despite her expensive degrees.

A more fitting label for this perfect-bound Pinterest board would be “Women Who Work for Me, Ivanka Trump,” as they appear to be the only relevant audience. The focus is mainly on what has worked for her in her career, which is as idiosyncratic as her personal life has been, and what kinds of people she is drawn to when she builds a team. So if you work for Ivanka Trump but still don’t understand her alien ways, or some day want to sell some harmless clutches to whichever mid-range department store will still do business with you, this book is likely quite useful. Spout back all of the platitudes about building a “one-life corporate culture,” show up with “DREAM and DO” doodled on your file folder, and you’re in.

But for all of her nonsense about the “quiet, deliberate, and essential” so-called “workplace revolution” she claims to be launching, Ivanka is not up-ending what she calls “the old-fashioned ‘work warrior’ mentality” that demands long hours at the office as the only proof that employees are sufficiently dedicated to making money for their corporate overlords. What she’s advocating — Millennial Pinkified, self-actualized personal contentment wrapped around a tireless pitbull level of commitment to achieving corporate goals — is even more sinister. In her world, #WomenWhoWork and depart the office at 6 p.m. are still “leaving early” — the so-called Trump administration advocate for working parents obviously has no idea what time many daycares close — and they’re also expected to be back on at night and on the weekends, grinding away after they fulfill their Ivanka-modeled 20 scheduled minutes of quality time with their children or partners at home.

Ivanka’s obliviousness at her own privilege, despite lip service to acknowledging her many blessings, continues to dazzle. She holds up her Shabbat time with her family — sundown Friday to sundown Saturday — as an example of aspirational restorative time, and no doubt it is. Show me a couple that works the kinds of hours Ivanka and Jared do — even those without kids — that doesn’t have to use some of their non-working hours to run necessary errands or tidy up or get caught up on something other than leisure time, and I’ll show you a family wealthy enough to pay a full-time domestic staff to handle everything for them that isn’t personal exercise, family fun time and mandatory biweekly date nights. (Bullet journal note to self: An app to disrupt mandatory biweekly date nights? Siri but for sex?)

In Ivanka’s world, you can either “[turn] on ‘Real Housewives’ and [sit] in front of the TV eating a giant bowl of pasta with a glass of wine” — counterproductive! — or “meditate, soak in the tub, exercise, or take a long walk” at the end of a day to unwind. There’s a third option, too: “I simply turn off my devices, go into my kids’ room, and just watch them sleep.” Only a person who has never wondered if she could get her clean laundry put away before it cycled through to dirty again could offer only these options with a straight face.

Despite her heavy focus on working mothers in this book (though she is careful to always include those who are not parents yet and those who have chosen not to be, because you never leave a potential customer out!), it’s not until page 154 that the words “my nanny” appear, despite the many passages devoted to balancing motherhood with a demanding job. I don’t believe I saw it again until the acknowledgments, in which she thanks not only the nannies, Bridget and Dorothy, who helped raise her and her brothers as her own mother Ivana worked, but also “Liza and Xixi, who are helping me raise my own children, thank you for being a part of our extended family and enabling me to do what I do.” Employing two nannies has to be a cornerstone of the Ivanka Method; burying the full acknowledgment of that literally in the acknowledgments section is beyond disingenuous.

So Ivanka Trump is wealthy and privileged and shameless about pretending her hard work has been the key secret to her success; this is not news. But what this book does highlight is that her “successful businesswoman” image is also a hollow sham.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 2004, she worked briefly for another real estate development company, Forest City Enterprises. She nods to this in an anecdote about turning down a job at Vogue, which Anna Wintour offered her personally, because she just loves real estate so much. In 2005, she went to work for her father at the Trump Organization. She stayed with the family business even as she founded her own fashion and lifestyle company, and now she has followed the family business right into the White House. Ivanka glosses over quite deftly in her book that she has spent all of one year, tops, working for someone who is not herself or her father, and it shows.

Take these nuggets of advice about how to “bond with your boss”:

Take a cue from those around you. When your boss shares something that was pivotal early in her career, that’s an opportunity for you to respond in kind.

* * *

Ask questions. Inquire about her previous career history; ask her how she got to where she is today.

* * *

Think you deserve a promotion? Hoping for more than a cost-of-living raise? Broaching these topics in a setting that’s warmer and more casual than her office will take the pressure off you both; continuing the dialogue in a more formal way at review time will alleviate the need to try to cover everything in one sitting.

In Ivanka’s experience, the boss is either her — this is how to get on her good side — or Donald Trump, her own father, in which case flattering him with questions about his early successes and finding opportunities to remind him of how good she is at her job are the pathways to impressing him.

“Broaching these topics in a setting that’s warmer and more casual than her office will take the pressure off you both” is great advice if your boss is a woman with whom you are also chummy but it is potentially fraught and even lousy advice if a Woman Who Work’s boss is a man, as statistics tell us he is quite likely to be.

Ivanka has clearly never personally weighed the pros and cons of the optics of asking for a promotion or a raise from a man she is not related to “in a setting that’s warmer and more casual” than the office. She certainly didn’t “curate” any wisdom from Ellen Pao, who might have something to say about how corporate bonding can put women at a professional disadvantage. The clear advantage of working for daddy is that nobody is going to accuse you of sleeping with the boss, or trying to, in order to land a promotion or a raise — and you would have no reason to suspect that the boss has any sketchy motives for wanting to hang out “in a setting that’s warmer and more casual than the office” when you’re related to him.

This is not to say male bosses and female subordinates can’t break Mike Pence’s retrograde rules with no fear of harassment or gossip — of course they can and do. I personally have been friends with male bosses with no weirdness, innuendo, or actionable offenses, and surely many readers have as well. But to not even connect her advice to the realities of sexism and harassment women continue to face in the workplace and how to deal with them if or when they arise in a book aimed at working women, especially when your father has Fox News blaring in the background 24-7 as a reminder, is laughably naïve. In Ivanka’s world, you just “prove your worth,” and automatically you are paid as much as your male counterparts, or actually you deserve to make more than Eric because you’re two years older, Daddy, and it’s only fair.

“While I believe every woman should thoughtfully architect a life she’ll love and actively work toward achieving her goals,” the book states, “we must also be flexible, adaptable, and realistic about the fact that our passions, interests, priorities, and relationships shift.” Nowhere in the book does Ivanka address, for example, what happens when access to affordable health coverage for self-employed female entrepreneurs with pre-existing conditions “shifts” after it proves “flexible” in the eyes of Republican leaders, or how to negotiate a raise or higher project rates to off-set the costs if your insurer decides your pregnancy is a pre-existing condition. (Yes, this book was wordsmithed before the House voted last week to replace the Affordable Care Act, but Ivanka was a key strategist of her father’s campaign, which ran on the promise of doing just that.) Of course, forget about advice on how to discreetly schedule several days out of the office for an out-of-town abortion when the only appointment you can get within the legal timeframe is in another state that mandates a counseling appointment and a waiting period, and it’s November and you’ve already used up your vacation days for the year.

I am tired of writing about Ivanka Trump. You may well be tired of reading about her, too. If her father had not won the election with her help, and if Ivanka had then not taken a federal job as an adviser to the president, “Women Who Work” would be just another forgettable remainder table staple a month after graduation season ends. But she is supposed to be the advocate for workplace issues facing women in an administration that has already proven itself to be friendly to forces hostile to us. What Ivanka doesn’t know could hurt us all — and this book reveals just how extensive her lack of knowledge and context truly is.

Erin Keane is Salon’s managing editor.

State Department Promotes Ivanka Trump’s Book In Another Ethics Blunder

David Posnett — Sat, 06 May 2017 12:16:13 +0000

HUFFINGTON POST — POLITICS

05/04/2017 04:55 pm ET | Updated 22 hours ago

C’mon, folks. Not pushing the Trumps’ private business is not that hard.

By Laura Bassett

A State Department office retweeted Ivanka Trump’s post promoting her new book on Wednesday, likely violating a federal rule that bars the use of public office for private gain.

A federal government employee “shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity,” according to the Code of Federal Regulations (5 CFR 2635.702, to be specific).

Trump, who serves as a White House special counselor, had already canceled her book tour last month to avoid breaking the ethics rules around self-promotion.

“Out of an abundance of caution and to avoid the appearance of using my official role to promote the book, I will not publicize the book through a promotional tour or media appearances,” the first daughter announced on Facebook.

Trump has continued to use her personal Twitter account to promote her book, Women Who Work, after reportedly consulting with the Office of Government Ethics. But that advice would not cover @GenderAtState, the official account run by the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.

LAURA BASSETT

Voice of America, a news outlet funded by the U.S. government, also raised eyebrows on Wednesday by posting an article to its website and Twitter feed entitled, “In New Book, Ivanka Trump Gets Serious About Women at Work.”

This is not the first time the Trump administration has been accused of improper self-promotion. The Office of Government Ethics scolded the White House in March for refusing to punish presidential aide Kellyanne Conway after she promoted Ivanka Trump’s clothing line. In April, the State Department had to delete a blog post that appeared to promote Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida.

“This administration, perhaps because these people have never served in government before, perhaps because Trump’s transition team decided not to pay for an ethics training about endorsing products and services, has made lapse after lapse after lapse,” said Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation (and a former HuffPost reporter).

“The historic moment we’re in where the first family’s business and public businesses have been mixed like this with no divestment from them means that this kind of blurring is novel,” Howard added. “It’s inevitable that there’s going to be some mistakes that are made, particularly when the consequences for people at the highest levels of government seem to be fairly negligible.”

A spokesperson for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Government Ethics Office Drops Bomb On Ivanka Trump And Husband Jared Kushner

David Posnett — Thu, 04 May 2017 00:08:26 +0000

First posted on Liberals Unite

May 1, 2017 by Samuel Warde No Comments

The Government Ethics Office releases the rules that apply to Ivanka Trump in her capacity as advisor to the president.

Ivanka Trump must provide detailed financial disclosures and is barred from participating in the Trump family business according to a letter from the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) posted online by progressive firebrand Elizabeth Warren.

The letter was in response to a March 29th request submitted to the OGE by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tom Carper of Delaware requesting the ethics rules that would apply to Ivanka.

As Politico reports: “OGE Director Walter Shaub Jr. said in his reply, which was dated April 25 but released Monday by the senators, that Ivanka Trump must file disclosures within 30 days of her appointment about her financial interests and those of husband Jared Kushner and their children. The White House can grant two extensions up to 45 days each. She must also file periodic transaction reports, an annual financial disclosure report and a termination disclosure report.”

The letter goes on to explain that:

In response to your specific inquiry, the ethics provisions and requirements discussed above are generally applicable to Ms. Trump. For example, the primary criminal conflict of interest statute prohibits Ms. Trump from participating in particular matters affecting her financial interests, including the financial interests of Trump family businesses and other companies in which she has an ownership interest. That conflict of interest statute also covers her spouse’s financial interests, which are imputed to her. Another statute prohibits her from representing any person, including any family business organized as a legal entity, before the government. She is also subject to the Standards of Conduct. If, as has been reported, she is not receiving a salary, she is not covered by a prohibition on supplementation of government salary or a prohibition on earning outside income or~inarily applicable to appointees at her level.

The report also states that Ivanka must receive proper ethics training as well:

The White House is responsible for providing Ms. Trump with ethics support and advice. This support includes new employee ethics training within three months of her appointment and, thereafter, ethics training on an annual basis.

Shaub also explained in the letter that conflict of interest statutes bar Ivanka and other senior White House employees “from participating personally and substantially in particular matters directly and predictably affecting their financial interests,” adding that the usual remedy is for the employee to recuse themselves from any areas where conflict might arise.

The primary criminal conflict of interest statute prohibits senior White House appointees and other executive branch employees from participating personally and substantially in particular matters directly and predictably affecting their financial interests. Among other things, this prohibition extends to the financial interests of companies in which they have ownership interests. It is important to note, however, that the criminal conflict of interest statute is not a prohibited holdings statute. Instead, it requires an appointee to refrain from participating in the particular matter affecting the appointee’s personal and imputed financial interests.

Recusal is not the only means for resolving conflicts of interest. Other remedies for resolving conflicts of interest can include reassignment, divestiture, waiver, or the establishment of a qualified blind or diversified trust.

The letter also discusses the follow-up review and procedures once the Trump White House submits Ivanka’s financial disclosure report:

Only after the White House has certified the appointee’s financial disclosure report does the White House transmit the report to OGE. OGE then conducts a second-level review. As part of this review process, OGE advises White House ethics officials of any deficiencies in an appointee’s compliance with financial disclosure requirements. In turn, the White House ethics officials work with the appointee who filed the report in order to resolve them. It is normal for an appointee to make changes to a financial disclosure report and to add information during this review process. After the report is revised, OGE seeks information about how the White House is addressing any potential conflicts of interest identified during the review process. OGE then makes a determination regarding apparent compliance with financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules and either certifies or declines to certify the financial disclosure report.