Some aides to Trump have argued that the law does not apply to the White House.
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President-elect Donald Trump’s influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will join the White House as a senior adviser, according to two people briefed on the decision.
Kushner, 35, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, is taking the job after receiving legal counsel he would not be violating a U.S. anti-nepotism law based on court rulings that the statute does not apply to the White House. Like Trump, Kushner took his father’s empire of middle-class apartments and parlayed it into investments in Manhattan, before becoming a key player in his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
But he may also be challenged on a federal anti-nepotism law aimed at preventing officials from appointing relatives to government positions.
Officials with Trump’s transition team confirmed the development to NBC news and CNN.
He was still a student when fellow Trump aide Chris Christie, then a United States attorney, jailed his father for tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign contributions. Luckily for Trump, the White House may be one of the few places in government where the nepotism rules do not apply. Kushner has been CEO of Kushner Companies since 2008. He has so far resisted calls to establish a blind trust and divest his holdings, but he is expected to give more information about those efforts at a news conference on Wednesday. A formal announcement is expected later this week.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, since Kushner seems to be a Trump Mini-Me – like his father-in-law born to real estate wealth and not particularly talented at anything, but with a family taste for power and personal vengeance.
The court’s ruling was that the White House and Executive Office of the President were not agencies under federal anti-nepotism law. The law prohibits any president from hiring a relative.
So fierce is his loyalty that Kushner has repeatedly defended Trump against accusations of anti-Semitism, publishing an op-ed last July that referenced his Holocaust survivor family. When the campaign registered the fact that momentum in MI and Pennsylvania was turning Trump’s way, Kushner unleashed tailored TV ads, last-minute rallies and thousands of volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls.
A lobbying group at the time, known as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, alleged that Hillary Clinton was acting outside her non-governmental role, and thus both were in violation of anti-nepotism laws.
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“But the president does have discretion to choose a staff of his liking, she continued, “and so if that is true, and that legal advice holds, that will open up a realm of responsibilities”. The president-elect has said he plans to take steps to distance himself from his businesses, but has not provided details on how he might do that.
