Ivanka Trump will become government employee after uproar about West Wing office

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March 29, 2017 10:42 PM

President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka will become an official government employee, the White House announced Wednesday.

Ivanka Trump.

The move, first reported by The New York Times, came after an uproar over her getting a West Wing office without an official government position. Her position will be one of an unpaid adviser.

"We are pleased that Ivanka Trump has chosen to take this step in her unprecedented role as First Daughter and in support of the President," the White House said in a statement.

The statement added: "Ivanka's service as an unpaid employee furthers our commitment to ethics, transparency, and compliance and affords her increased opportunities to lead initiatives driving real policy benefits for the American public that would not have been available to her previously."

Ivanka said in a statement that she had "heard the concerns" ethics experts had about her advising her father and vowed to comply "with all ethics rules and I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House Office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees."

"Throughout this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the White House Counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role," she said.

Ethics experts had previously said that her taking a West Wing office and getting a security clearance without an official position could violate ethics standards.

"There's quite a bit of evidence about tribalism in this administration, where there's a very tight inner circle of family loyalists — like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner — who don't have the type of experiences" typical of presidential advisers, said Jon D. Michaels, a legal expert at the UCLA School of Law, earlier this month.

Kushner, Ivanka's husband, is a senior adviser to Trump.

Ivanka's lawyer, Jamie S. Gorelick, told the Times that Ivanka's status as a federal employee would require her to comply with ethics standards.

"She will file the financial disclosure forms required of federal employees and be bound by the same ethics rules that she had planned to comply with voluntarily," she said.

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