If President Donald Trump needed another reason to stop tweeting, this might be it.
In mid-November, the then-president-elect shot down news reports that he was seeking security clearance for his daughter Ivanka. Today, less than four months later, that is no longer entirely true.
I am not trying to get “top level security clearance” for my children. This was a typically false news story.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 16, 2016
Trump’s tweet resurfaced on Tuesday after Politico reported that Ivanka Trump will occupy an office in the White House’s West Wing and serve as her father’s “eyes and ears,” according to her attorney, Jamie Gorelick. Trump “is also in the process of obtaining a security clearance,” Politico‘s Annie Karni reports, meaning she’ll be authorized to view classified material.
This—this is a tweet that definitely did not age well. pic.twitter.com/W4wWz1T8Qf
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 21, 2017
“She will get a security clearance,” Gorelick told CBS News. “It is not the intention that she will participate in classified matters but rather that, if she happens to come into possession of such information while in the White House, such information will be properly protected.”
Although the president’s daughter will not be an employee of the U.S. government, she will serve as an adviser and counsel her father on “initiatives that are important to her,” Gorelick said.
Ivanka Trump’s role in the Trump administration is unprecedented and raises ethical concerns over her conflicts of interest—she still owns a fashion brand and plans to publish a book this spring—while challenging the limits of anti-nepotism laws. This is compounded by the fact that her husband, Jared Kushner, is an official White House adviser.
If Ivanka’s security clearance does turn into a scandal, at least Americans can rest assured that the president will tweet about it.
