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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIvanka Trump has an army of White House employees scrambling to address her every need
Full article posted with the permission of Newsweek -- DonBY NINA BURLEIGH ON 11/2/17 AT 9:14 AM
Ever wonder how many government employees, employee hours and bits of correspondence it takes to get an hour and a half of Ivanka Trumps time at a public event?
A new cache of hundreds of emails obtained from the Department of Education (DOE) through the Freedom of Information Act shows that for one brief event at the Air & Space Museum in March, at least 21 employees and at least 150 emails were required to arrange President Donald Trumps daughters presence. The emails were obtained by the nonprofit American Oversight and shared exclusively with Newsweek.
The staff hours, angst and emailing that goes into putting a political principal like White House Adviser Ivanka Trump on stage at any event in Washington is always an exercise in theatrical production and people-management skills, what with the squads of coat-brushing, purse-holding, door-opening flunkies fighting for facetime. But in this case, it required the mobilization of at least 21 government employees (some of the emails were fully redacted) to choreograph less than an hour in the schedule of a woman who was not yet an official employee (who happened to be the presidents daughter). And high-ranking DOE staff were happy to oblige.
The emails offer a window into the genesis of a typical federal agency publicity event, this one ostensibly arranged to inform the public about the administrations interest in STEM for girls. It was attended by mostly African American, local schoolchildren and featured a screening of the hit movie Shadow Figures plus short remarks from Betsy DeVos, Ivanka Trump and a female NASA astronaut, Kathryn (Kay) Hire.
The event was the brainchild of the office of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who Ivanka had run into at a bill signing in the White House on February 28. On March 1, she emailed DeVos (using her private Ivanka Kushner email account) to inform her that she wanted their staffs to continue [to] discuss...opportunities to collaborate on locational/workforce development and k-12 STEM education.
The next day, DeVoss chief of staff, Josh Venable, was sending emails around the White House, looking for Julie in Ivankass office. By that time, Ivanka already had space in the White House, and a staff including Julie Radford, the daughter of a Louisiana Republican, who would eventually be given the title of Ivankas White House chief of staff.
DeVos had been searching for a way to connect with Jared and Ivanka since as early as February 6, the day on which she was barely confirmed to her post when Vice President Mike Pence, a fellow evangelical, cast the tie-breaking Senate vote, according to another email from an Education Department staffer.
Throughout March, Radford and other White House staffers exchanged numerous emails with staff in DeVoss office, arranging, canceling and rearranging meeting times, and discussing the various intricacies of Ivankas appearance. DeVoss chief of staff emailed Radford, to follow up on Ivankas conversation with Secretary DeVos outside the Oval, during which Ivanka had mentioned shed like to participate in a DOE Womens History Month event, scheduled for March 28. Radford responded: Ivanka would love to come by the event and deliver a few brief remarks highlighting her support for STEM efforts and thanking Secretary DeVos for her leadership in this area.
The emails highlight the careful attention paid to Ivankas branding on social mediaand SnapChats involvement in that endeavor. On March 21, Radford emailed DeVoss chief of staff that SnapChat recently expressed interest in having Ivanka snapchat from events that engage with young peoplewould your team be open to something like that?
Ivankas unofficial office left nothing to chance: Staff vetted invitations to the event, studied seating and stage charts, requested floor maps and inquired about DeVoss social media language and whether the event would be open or closed press, which would determine Ivankas arrival and departure times, presumably to control contact.
Ivankas unofficial office eventually requestedand gotextra seats for students she wanted to invite, agreed that it was 100% fine to use her name as long as DeVoss name was also on the invitation, and set up a meet and greet with students, saying, thats always a favorite of Ivankas. The press release ultimately listed the participants and included Ivanka Trump White House.
A last-minute panic ensued during the final days before the event, as Ivankas staff was unable to give the DOE organizers a time for her arrival and departure, even as the participants were doing a walkthrough. [S]o sorry to bug, wrote DOE staffer Laura Riggs, one of several emails to the White House that tried to get a final time. Any way we can nail down her arrival/departure today? Radford replied that they had scheduled Ivanka for 45 minutes (the organizers wanted an hour and a half) but were "working to move things around" to arrive a little earlier to comply with DOE's plan.
On March 28, the spectacle and photo op went off without a hitch. The Washington Post made Ivanka the lead item in its coverage: At an event at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum for local school kids getting Excited About STEM on Tuesday morning, Ivanka Trump needed no introduction. Or at least she didnt get one. The powerful first daughter was announced to the crowd simply by her name, with no title because she doesnt really have one, although she has claimed an office in the West Wing.
A day later, she had a title, assistant to the president. She was then required to file financial reports and comply with ethics and conflict of interest regulations. At that point, she also got a White House email address. Newsweek has been exclusively given access to emails she sent well into July, indicating that she continued to use private email for months after taking the official post.
Part Two of this report will follow.
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http://www.newsweek.com/ivanka-trump-devos-education-emails-698752
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Ivanka Trump has an army of White House employees scrambling to address her every need (Original Post)
DonViejo
Nov 2017
OP
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)1. The money shot is that someone hacked and leaked Ivanka's private email.
msongs
(67,413 posts)2. and these leeches are conducted government business on private emails instead of official
emails, thus keeping this huge financial burden on the taxpayers a secret for their own personal gain
genxlib
(5,528 posts)3. I think they meant the movie Hidden Figures
Or maybe Hidden Fences if they wanted to be snarky.
But Shadow Figures? WTF does a movie about African American Women have to do to get some respect?