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Critics point out her lack of government experience, but defenders note her father ran a campaign explicitly on his record as a businessman and on the message of being an outsider and taking an unconventional approach to governing.
While it’s unusual for a President’s child to serve an administration, it’s a familiar role for Trump — she had been her father’s trusted adviser through her young adulthood to her time as executive vice president at the Trump Organization, and, ultimately, to his 2016 presidential campaign.
In the two years since joining the West Wing staff, Ivanka Trump has developed a cadre of signature issues, most of which have bipartisan support and are largely noncontroversial. The President’s eldest daughter does not receive a paycheck for her work, according to White House records. She reports to work regularly at the White House, where she has a second-floor West Wing office.
It’s not out of the ordinary for senior — and even some lower-level — White House aides to obtain security clearances, and Ivanka Trump’s role has the breadth and depth to require one for her interactions with the President, other officials and world leaders.
The White House did not respond to a CNN request for comment on Ivanka Trump’s role.
What does Ivanka Trump do?
Ivanka Trump’s portfolio includes a few key components: women’s economic empowerment and working family issues, workforce development and promoting STEM education and combating human trafficking.
On Wednesday, for example, she will participate in a meeting at the White House with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which she co-chairs with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. She’s traveled the country and abroad to see best practices for workforce development and skills-based training, including a visit to Walmart Academies in Texas, a UPS training facility in Georgia and a Siemens vocational training center in Germany.
She has also supported her husband’s efforts on criminal justice reform.
It’s unclear how many White House aides report to Ivanka Trump directly, but she does have a small staff, including her chief of staff, Julie Radford, who has been on her team since April 2017.
While the White House has said Trump is laser-focused on the topics in her West Wing portfolio, it’s clear that she continues to advise her father on a broad range of issues, including immigration.
Clearance
It’s unclear what the specific concerns were raised during the approval process.
Because Trump and Kushner are a married couple, concerns that surfaced during one person’s security clearance investigation could stall or block both of them from receiving a full clearance. But officials had concerns about granting Trump a clearance that were separate from those raised about her husband, according to one of the sources, though it’s unclear what the concerns regarding her were.
At the time, the couple told associates they believed that then-chief of staff John Kelly was blocking them from getting clearances because he did not feel like they belonged in the West Wing.
The President pushed harder for his son-in-law to get a clearance because of his wide-ranging portfolio, which includes a Middle East peace proposal, and because of heightened scrutiny on Kushner’s inability to secure a clearance, sources said.
His daughter’s portfolio did not require a high-level security clearance, though as a senior adviser who sits in meetings with other senior officials, she is privy to sensitive information.
CNN’s Pamela Brown and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.
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