This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/politics/donald-trump-jared-kushner-justice-department.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Jared Kushner, Trump’s Son-in-Law, Is Cleared to Serve as Adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s Son-in-Law, Is Cleared to Serve as Adviser
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has issued an opinion saying that President Trump’s appointment of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser does not violate federal anti-nepotism laws. WASHINGTON — Hours after President Trump took his oath on Friday, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying that his appointment of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser would be lawful despite a federal anti-nepotism law.
In a 14-page opinion issued on Friday by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, government lawyers said that the president’s special hiring authority exempted White House positions from federal laws barring the president from appointing relatives to lead federal agencies. In a 14-page opinion signed on Friday, a longtime career lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said that the president’s special hiring authority exempted White House positions from a 1967 law barring the president from employing relatives at a federal agency.
Some legal experts had raised concerns that Mr. Kushner’s appointment violated a 1967 law that was intended to curtail nepotism in the federal government. Six years earlier, President John F. Kennedy had appointed his brother Robert as attorney general. Some legal experts had raised concerns that Mr. Kushner’s appointment violated that law, which Congress enacted several years after President John F. Kennedy had appointed his brother Robert as attorney general.
The new Justice Department opinion cited a subsequent 1978 law that gives the president the authority to appoint White House staff members without regard to other laws restricting employment and compensation of federal employees. But the new Justice Department opinion, signed by Daniel L. Koffsky, a deputy assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office, said Mr. Trump had the power to appoint Mr. Kushner anyway because of a subsequent 1978 law that gives the president the authority to appoint White House staff members without regard to other laws restricting employment and compensation of federal employees.
The opinion, issued shortly after Mr. Trump was sworn into office, appeared to reverse previous ones from the Justice Department. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the opinion noted, the department said his son could not serve as an unpaid assistant to a White House staff member. Mr. Koffsky’s opinion acknowledged that in several cases since 1978, the Office of Legal Counsel had determined that the anti-nepotism statute prevented presidents from appointing relatives to positions.
It did not say how Mr. Kushner’s situation was different from the one involving Mr. Carter’s son. “Although our conclusion today departs from some of that prior work, we think that this departure is fully justified,” he wrote.
The decision issued on Saturday paves the way for Mr. Kushner, 35, to have nearly unfettered access to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. Mr. Kushner is Mr. Trump’s closest adviser and was a figure of stability throughout the tumultuous campaign and the transition. The revised position came after an effort by Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer and a deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration who is now a lawyer at the firm WilmerHale, to clear away obstacles to Mr. Kushner’s appointment.
Mr. Kushner married Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka in 2009. He has run his family’s vast real estate company and has owned a newspaper, The New York Observer. The opinion paves the way for Mr. Kushner, 35, to join Mr. Trump in the West Wing. Among the new president’s closest advisers during the campaign, Mr. Kushner married Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka in 2009. He has run his family’s vast real estate company and has owned a newspaper, The New York Observer.
Mr. Trump announced on Jan. 9 that he would appoint Mr. Kushner to the post and that Mr. Kushner would not accept a salary. Mr. Kushner’s portfolio is expected to include the Middle East and Israel, government partnerships with the private sector and matters involving free trade. Mr. Trump announced on Jan. 9 that he would appoint Mr. Kushner, who will not accept a salary. His purview is expected to include the Middle East and Israel, government partnerships with the private sector and matters involving free trade.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump lavished praise on Mr. Kushner at a candlelight dinner for donors at Union Station in Washington. “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Kushner at an event on Thursday.
“If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” Mr. Trump said. The appointment of Mr. Kushner will be a dramatic change. In 1977, for example, the Justice Department barred President Jimmy Carter from appointing his son to an unpaid White House role, citing the anti-nepotism law.
Some prominent Washington ethics lawyers — including White House ethics lawyers in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations — had said they supported allowing Mr. Kushner to hold a formal position in the White House because that would make him subject to conflict-of-interest laws. He will be legally prevented from taking any action that could benefit his businesses or those of his family, including his wife. Even after Congress enacted the 1978 law, the Justice Department continued to block proposed appointments of presidential relatives. Mr. Koffsky’s opinion, which he worked on in the final days of the Obama administration, acknowledged a 1983 case in which the office barred President Ronald Reagan from appointing a relative to an advisory committee, and a 2009 case in which it blocked President Barack Obama from appointing his brother-in-law and a half sister to advisory committees.
Mr. Kushner intends to sell some assets to his brother and to put others into a trust overseen by his mother, said Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer who has worked on the plan. Ms. Gorelick, who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said she had been consulting with federal ethics officials to try to address any conflict-of-interest issues associated with Mr. Kushner’s appointment. But, Mr. Koffsky maintained, those opinions failed to adequately address the impact of the special hiring authority that Congress gave the president for his personal staff as part of the 1978 law.
He will also be required to file a financial disclosure report that details his assets and income, and to divest holdings that could create conflicts of interest. He also wrote that it was unlikely that Congress could bar a president from obtaining informal, ad hoc policy advice from a relative, and a major consequence of allowing Mr. Kushner’s appointment to a formal role is that he will be subject to the usual ethics rules for White House employees, like conflict-of-interest laws.
In an email on Saturday, Ms. Gorelick said that “we believed that we had the better argument on this,” adding, “The Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department — in an opinion by a highly regarded career deputy assistant attorney general — adopted a position consistent with our own.” Mr. Kushner intends to sell some assets to his brother and to put others into a trust overseen by his mother, said Ms. Gorelick, who has worked on the plan. Ms. Gorelick said she had been consulting with federal ethics officials to try to address any conflict-of-interest issues associated with Mr. Kushner’s appointment.
Richard W. Painter, a White House lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said that while he had some doubts about the opinion, “it is a reasonable interpretation.” He will also be required to file a financial disclosure report that details his assets and income, and to divest some holdings that could create a conflict of interest.
“But what is important now,” he added, “is that Mr. Kushner complies with the conflict-of-interest and disclosure provisions, and I wish his father-in-law, the president, would do the same.” When Mr. Trump announced Mr. Kushner’s appointment, Ms. Gorelick told reporters that while there were arguments on both sides of the legal question, she believed the “better argument” was that it would be lawful. She also disclosed then that the Trump transition team would seek an Office of Legal Counsel opinion.
Other legal scholars, noting that the new opinion was not consistent with past interpretations of the law, questioned whether it might have been influenced by Ms. Gorelick or others. In an email on Saturday, Ms. Gorelick said that “we believed that we had the better argument on this,” adding that “the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department — in an opinion by a highly regarded career deputy assistant attorney general — adopted a position consistent with our own.”
“It walks back from earlier positions the Justice Department took,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor and ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It does seem to track one of the legal arguments that Jamie Gorelick put forward.” Richard W. Painter, who served as a White House lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said that while he had some doubts about the new opinion, “it is a reasonable interpretation” of the law. “But what is important now,” he added, “is that Mr. Kushner complies with the conflict-of-interest and disclosure provisions, and I wish his father-in-law, the president, would do the same.”
Mr. Painter said that during the Bush administration, he had informed a senior official that he was legally barred from granting a White House internship to his son. Mr. Painter said he had given that counsel based on the Justice Department’s reading of the anti-nepotism law in the case of Mr. Carter’s son.
Mr. Painter said it would have been a safer course for the Trump administration to ask Congress to resolve the issue.