Russia investigation may turn to Ivanka Trump as Mueller examines empire
Robert Mueller has issued a subpoena for documents from the Trump Organization, where Ivanka Trump has played a leading role
Ivanka Trump is likely to face new legal scrutiny by Robert Mueller following reports that the special counsel has demanded documents from the Trump Organization, where she served as a senior executive.
Trump, who is married to Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser who was recently stripped of his security clearance, has been described by her father as a “natural-born dealmaker” and was known to have played a leading role in deals between the Trump Organization and a Russian national who has come under scrutiny and bragged about his ties to top Kremlin officials.
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Mueller, the former FBI director who is leading an independent criminal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, has issued the Trump Organization with a subpoena for documents in recent weeks, including documents related to Russia, according to a report in the New York Times.
While it is not clear precisely what deal or deals Mueller is examining, Democratic congressional investigators this week claimed in a memo that they had learned that the Trump Organization was “actively negotiating” a deal in Moscow during the election campaign that involved a Russian bank that was under US sanctions. The deal never went through and it is not clear which bank the congressional investigators were referring to.
The president has repeatedly denied having had any business dealings with Russia when he has been asked about it by reporters, and has described the criminal investigation into his campaign as a “witch-hunt”.
Ivanka Trump served as a senior executive at the Trump Organization, with a special focus on acquisitions, before leaving her post to serve her father in the White House last year. By all accounts, including in flattering business profiles of the first daughter, she has been described as an integral part of her father’s empire.
That role has also led to legal trouble in the past.
In 2006, when she was 24 years old, Ivanka Trump and her brother Donald Trump Jr, signed a licensing deal to build the Trump SoHo with two businessmen who would go on to be close business partners of the Trump Organization, Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif. Sater and Arif ran a real estate group called Bayrock and were born in the former Soviet Union.
