It appears Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made an inordinate amount of outside income during their four years as White House advisers to former President Donald Trump.
According to Monday's analysis of financial disclosures released by the watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the former President's daughter and her husband raked in between $172 million and $640 million.
They shared their findings on Twitter.
We analyzed four years of Jared and Ivanka's financial disclosures. We found hundreds of millions of dollars coming… https://t.co/hpaIdynmjj— Citizens for Ethics (@Citizens for Ethics)1612847216.0
The report said it was difficult to determine the exact amount since the income is reported in "broad ranges and cover four months of income before Ivanka Trump officially joined her father's administration and nearly one month before Jared Kushner joined."
According to a June 28, 2019 report on White House office personnel, most Trump advisors and secretaries made around $183,000, annually.
To avoid the public's concern of nepotism, the ex-President's daughter and Kushner announced they would refuse salary while working under the Trump administration's White House.
The major factor of Ivanka Trump's sizable income came from her ownership stake in the Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. CREW called the hotel—which is blocks from the White House—"the locus of influence-peddling in the Trump administration."
The hotel was at the center of an emoluments clause lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Ivanka made about $13 million from the hotel since 2017—which dropped from "about $4 million a year between 2017 and 2019 to about $1.5 million last year, at least in part due to the pandemic."
@CREWcrew This is appalling but not surprising. What do you expect from a family conditioned to make money out of a… https://t.co/5QWjMBNAp1— Bib Jones (@Bib Jones)1612862683.0
@CREWcrew I have to admit to myself that I might be one of only a very few in America who care about ethics .... to… https://t.co/D746sN0OQr— Carole (@Carole)1612851792.0
The article added:
"While dealing with foreign governments can raise obvious questions for the children of presidents, getting financial or other benefits from foreign governments while working as a senior staffer in your father's administration should be an obvious non-starter."
Specifics about Ivanka's role in the White House remain unclear, but the group said "getting foreign trademarks to use after leaving the White House may have been her biggest accomplishment."
CREW found "at least 28 foreign trademarks approved for Ivanka Trump" during her tenure serving in the White House.
@HuffPost It's because of all the "architecting" Ivanka did - obviously 😎— N.I-B (@N.I-B)1612877634.0
Jared, on the other hand, owned a significant financial stake as a co-founder in technology real estate startup, Cadre—a company that offered investment platforms under the Opportunity Zones (OZ) program that Ivanka helped implement for her father's administration in 2018.
CREW reported that Ivanka's personal participation in the implementation process of OZ apparently violated federal conflict of interest law.
Kushner's stake in Cadre was valued between $5 million and $25 million at the beginning of the Trump administration and increased to $25 million to $50 million by the end.
@CREWcrew Made out like the bandits they are.— Peter Craven (@Peter Craven)1612871659.0
@NoahBookbinder Earned?? More like robbed the American people and our trusted institutions. Neither of them has eve… https://t.co/tr4yJdJUKw— Gini Roberts #MaskUp (@Gini Roberts #MaskUp)1612828325.0
@HuffPost All while the entire country was struggling economically..— Jay Paganini (@Jay Paganini)1612876881.0
CREW added:
"Kushner originally failed to disclose his ownership in Cadre. Despite the fact that the top White House ethics official determined at one point that it was 'reasonably necessary' for him to divest from Cadre in order to do his job at the White House, he never did."
The article concluded by mentioning Ivanka and Jared "should never have been allowed to work in the White House."
"While taking on enormous responsibilities that they were unqualified to carry out, and debasing their positions with constant ethics scandals, they likely made hundreds of millions of dollars from questionable sources."