I Feel Empowered by This Congressional Document Request Related to Ivanka Trump's Possible Business Conflicts

While Democrats are seemingly too scared to go after the president’s adult children directly, they are still apparently looking into Ivanka Trump’s finances and business interests.

Trump was not among those specifically targeted in the House Judiciary Committee’s recent request for documents, but the New York Times reports that she is still of some interest: “Of the 81 document requests sent, 52 individuals and organizations were asked to turn over documents related to Ms. Trump or her business interests.”

Those individuals, according to the Times, include Rhona Graff, the president’s longtime executive assistant, Anatoli Samochornov, a Russian translator who “sat in on a meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian lobbyists,” and Keebler’s own Jeff Sessions.

What is all of this possibly about? Emoluments, according to the Times:

In February, House Democrats retained Norman L. Eisen, a litigator and prominent Trump critic, to begin its inquiries into the president. Mr. Eisen, who played a large role in overseeing the document requests, has also been vocal about potential emoluments clause violations from the president and his family. In December 2016, for instance, he was an author of a report for the Brookings Institution, “The Emoluments Clause: Its text, meaning, and application to Donald J. Trump.”

Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, never completely divested from their companies even after taking top White House positions. Their income in 2017, from various investments they remained involved in through vehicles and trusts, was $82 million to $222 million, according to their ethics disclosures. In 2017, Ms. Trump earned more than $5 million from her namesake fashion brand, according to financial disclosures.

“She’d be in violation of the Constitution if she was getting any business deals from foreign governments,” Former Bush administration lawyer Richard Painter explained to the Times. “The idea here is to get an awful lot of information we would have had if there had been more detailed disclosures about the entities the Trump family controls.”

BuzzFeed reported in January that Ivanka (and Don Jr.) reportedly managed aspects of a secret plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016, even after Donald Trump publicly denied having ties with Russia. Ivanka’s attorney told BuzzFeed that she “did not know about this proposal until after a non-binding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, never visited the prospective project site and, even internally, was only minimally involved.” During her time as a White House advisor, she has hawked her merchandise during a TV interview, received a trademark for her business in China on the same day she dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and waited for over a year into her new position to shut down her fashion brand.