(a)For the purpose of this section—
You know......I really do not need to write another word here, but I will anyway. AGAIN, trump believes he can flaunt the law. ivanca trump and her husband, jared kushner, cannot work in the White House, period. It is specifically prohibited by the above referenced federal statute. Per this statute, trump cannot hire them in any official capacity, by any means. In other words, he cannot even nominate them to a position and then have them approved by Congress. I can read, you can read, the members of Congress can read, trump.......not so sure. I do not need to give reasons why I find the idea of these two people, daughter and son-in-law, serving in the White House for the head admin a repulsive idea. The only ground that I need to stand on is the law.
(1)“agency” means—
(2)
“public official” means an officer (including the President and a Member of Congress)
(3)
“relative” means, with respect to a public official, an individual who is related to the public official as father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, or half sister.
(b)
A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official. An individual may not be appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced in or to a civilian position in an agency if such appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement has been advocated by a public official, serving in or exercising jurisdiction or control over the agency, who is a relative of the individual.
We, the people must be proactive. We must write to our representatives in Congress and the Justice Department. These two people working in the White House is flat out illegal.
As was pointed out in an Op-Ed in the New York Times this morning (a happy coincidence because I started this posting last night) written by Norman Eisen and Richard W. Painter, If trump chose to disregard the law and 'employ' these two people as advisers in an unofficial way, a whole different set of issues would arise. If trump does not officially appoint these two to official positions, but gives them free access to the the West Wing of the White House, they would have the ability to instruct administration staff, while not having been approved by our representatives. They would skirt the legal necessity to have to disclose taxes and business dealings so that conflicts of interest could be identified and removed. They would use an 'end run' to avoid recusing themselves from issues that involve their business holdings with conflicts of interest. They would be privy to info that would be "dangerously close to liability for insider trading". As far as I'm concerned, Eisen and Painter are hedging their bet as lawyers often do. If ivanca trump and kushner have access to the highest levels of secured information that they will gain as uncontrolled opperatives in the White House, they will in fact be in violation of inside trading laws, currently on the books. They won't be dangerously close, all three of these people will be squarely over the legal line; trump, his daughter and her husband.
In order to demonstrate the legitimacy of the authors of the referenced Op-Ed, please see their credentials, below and note that Eisen worked for The Obama White House and Painter worked for the G.W. Bush White House:
Norman Eisen, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011. Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007.
The last point that I will put forward is that without official positions, i. trump and j. kushner have no legal standing to be given the highest level of security clearance, as trump has requested for them. In fact they have no right to any level of security clearance. Without security clearance, all three would be squarely breaking the law by discussing sensitive security issues. This would be especially true for kushner, who trump wants in the West Wing of the White House to advise trump on foreign policy issues.
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