The Golden Couple (Ivanka and Jared)

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

I have only one word to say to the disgusting little pampered princess in her golden tower  That word is Kapos.

From Wikipedia. She is not forced to be one, she chooses to be one.

 

Don't worry. Some things are worth saying more than once. 

[GrumpyGran]

She's a bit touchy, isn't she? I think this past weekend was an internal shit storm. And Bannon's the only one who came out unscathed.

Her twitter header or whatever makes me furious. "Look at me being a mommy and working too! Aren't I special?" And she is so special she stands in front of two flags! Because she's redundant?

[onekidanddone]

5 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Her twitter header or whatever makes me furious. "Look at me being a mommy and working too! Aren't I special?" And she is so special she stands in front of two flags! Because she's redundant?

She is not a working mom.She is the epitome of white privilege Little snowflake has no idea what it is like to work and raise a child with out 24/7 nannies. She can take off when ever fuck she feels like and never has to worry between buying food or paying rent.

[GrumpyGran]

7 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

She is not a working mom.She is the epitome of white privilege Little snowflake has no idea what it is like to work and raise a child with out 24/7 nannies. She can take off when ever fuck she feels like and never has to worry between buying food or paying rent.

And this is second, or even third generation privilege. She probably had a nanny and quite possibly her mother did also. She thinks she a great mom because she takes her kids to her office for photo ops and occasionally stops on the way through the kitchen to do a little dance with one of them. Following in Daddy's footsteps.

[Childless]

17 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

And this is second, or even third generation privilege. She probably had a nanny and quite possibly her mother did also. She thinks she a great mom because she takes her kids to her office for photo ops and occasionally stops on the way through the kitchen to do a little dance with one of them. Following in Daddy's footsteps.

Wasn't she the one who said she tries to spend an hour with them every day?  Ooh, one whole hour.  How lucky are they. 

[GrumpyGran]

1 minute ago, Childless said:

Wasn't she the one who said she tries to spend an hour with them every day?  Ooh, one whole hour.  How lucky are they. 

I'm gonna go with they ARE lucky it's only an hour. The nanny's got to be a better mother than her. Just the fact that she's having her child tutored in Chinese is nauseating. That's the kind of thing you personally choose to do when you are making your own decisions. If you want her to be bi-lingual, Ivanka, start with a language she can use now. This is an example of her arrogant belief that they are "different" from other people, special and capable of extraordinary things.

Let's face it, she's just setting Ariel up to be the go-between for her and the sweatshop workers in China. Then she can fire the translator she has now and claim Ariel is learning the "business" at a young age!

[GreyhoundFan]

19 minutes ago, Childless said:

Wasn't she the one who said she tries to spend an hour with them every day?  Ooh, one whole hour.  How lucky are they. 

I remember on Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess said she was an "involved parent" and Isobel said that surprised her because she figured that the children would be starched up for a brief appearance before tea every day. The DC replied, "but it was an hour every single day."  And, thinking of the fabulous Maggie Smith, I am sharing this video of some of the best burns she spoke as the Dowager Countess. I needed the smile with all the crap going on in the world.

 

[NCLunaLovegoodFan]

Ivanka strikes me as the pampered princess who's never had to account for her actions. Certainly, I can pity her as the Golden Child of a narcissist father...and going through her parents' bitter divorce. If she truly had values of equality for all and Jewish values (in terms of speaking out), she wouldn't be screwing about in DC. She and Jared should take their unqualified behinds back to New York. Won't be long until Mueller's looking into the corruption of the Kushner real estate.  

31 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

I remember on Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess said she was an "involved parent" and Isobel said that surprised her because she figured that the children would be starched up for a brief appearance before tea every day. The DC replied, "but it was an hour every single day."  And, thinking of the fabulous Maggie Smith, I am sharing this video of some of the best burns she spoke as the Dowager Countess. I needed the smile with all the crap going on in the world.

 

<3 Maggie Smith. My parents spent a month watching Downton Abbey last year and were sad when they finished the series. 

[fraurosena]

25 minutes ago, NCLunaLovegoodFan said:

Won't be long until Mueller's looking into the corruption of the Kushner real estate

According to Rachel Maddow last night he just might already be. Something about an Israeli fraudster arrested yesterday who had shady dealings with Kushner. 

I'm not remembering the details well, I'm afraid. When I find more info, I'll post about it. 

[GreyhoundFan]

45 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

According to Rachel Maddow last night he just might already be. Something about an Israeli fraudster arrested yesterday who had shady dealings with Kushner. 

I'm not remembering the details well, I'm afraid. When I find more info, I'll post about it. 

Yes, Beny Steinmetz. I have to run to an appointment, but if you haven't dug it up, I'll do so when I get back.

[fraurosena]

Found it!

Israeli Billionaire Beny Steinmetz Detained in Investigation

Spoiler

The billionaire Beny Steinmetz was detained by the Israeli police on Monday morning for questioning in connection with an investigation into money laundering, obstruction of justice and bribery, officials said.

Mr. Steinmetz, an Israeli diamonds, mining and real estate magnate, is already under scrutiny by law enforcement authorities in four other countries, including the United States. Federal prosecutors in the United States are investigating whether representatives of his firm bribed government officials in Guinea to secure a multibillion-dollar mining deal. In Switzerland and Guinea, prosecutors have conducted similar inquiries. He was previously detained and questioned in Israel in December.

Since 2013, the United States Justice Department has been investigating Mr. Steinmetz’s company, BSG Resources, over potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Guinean government has claimed that BSG Resources obtained an iron ore mining concession by paying more than $8 million in cash through a representative to the then-wife of the country’s president.

The focus of the Israeli investigation appears to be more expansive, based on an official statement that said that authorities were investigating “a number of people on suspicion that they acted systematically together with the main suspect in order to create and present fictitious contracts and deals, among other things in the field of real estate in a foreign country, for the purpose of transferring funds and money laundering.”

Mr. Steinmetz is also under indictment in Romania, as part of a broad investigation into money laundering and real estate there.

In April, The New York Times reported that a firm that claimed to invest money for Mr. Steinmetz’s brother and longtime business partner, Daniel, along with his son Raz, had partnered with Kushner Companies, the family real estate firm of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, on dozens of apartment buildings around Manhattan and Jersey City.

The Kushner Companies said its deals were with Beny Steinmetz’s nephew Raz, and not with Beny Steinmetz.

On Monday, Beny Steinmetz gave a statement in court. “This is how totalitarian states behave,” Israeli media reported him as saying. “This is like a dictatorship that decides and marks people.”

As he has done previously, he blamed his multinational legal issues on the billionaire hedge fund titan George Soros, who he has said directed a smear campaign against him and his companies. In April, two of his firms sued Mr. Soros in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Steinmetz’s lawyer, Ronen Rosenblum, told reporters outside the courtroom: “We understand that the case that prompted the opening of the investigation – the Guinea case – has no basis and no substance.” He added: “We are confident that just as no charges have been filed until today in any of the investigations, the same will be true in this case.”

Mr. Steinmetz was detained along with four others, including Tal Silberstein, a political consultant who has worked for Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister, and other Israeli leaders. Israeli media reported that David Granot, the chief executive of Bezeq, a telecommunications company, was also questioned.

Police officials said their investigation was being conducted with international cooperation and said each of those involved was suspected of different violations. Some of their homes and offices were searched Monday morning, officials said.

Mr. Silberstein’s lawyer, Eyal Rosovsky, said most of the court hearing was based on material that only the court had been privy to so far, not the lawyers or clients.

“As far as we understand, at issue are questions about events that occurred in 2011. Now, it is 2017,” he said, adding that his client denied all the accusations against him.

Although nothing has been said about Mueller directly, the very fact that the feds are investigating would make it hard to believe that Mueller doesn't know about this real estate money laundering setup and Kushner's involvement in it. Of couse he knows, and has added this to his own investigation. Any prosecutor worth his salt would, and Mueller supposedly is one of the best.

[Cartmann99]

Oh look, here's Ivanka and her two oldest brothers taking a stand against bigotry:

For those having trouble seeing the pictures:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/897594515304919040/photo/1

https://mobile.twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/897594515304919040/photo/2

[candygirl200413]

 Glenn Thrush tweeted

(it also made me mad because earlier today someone commented about how fuckface can't be anti-semantic because of his Jewish son-in- law and daughter ) . They will forever be complacent and could give any fucks.

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Oh look, here's Ivanka and her two oldest brothers taking a stand against bigotry:

For those having trouble seeing the pictures:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/897594515304919040/photo/1

https://mobile.twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/897594515304919040/photo/2

Seriously? Aren't they sensitive little snowflakes. I'm sure Marlee isn't losing any sleep over this. I wouldn't want criminals and white supremacists following me on Twitter.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Another open letter to Jared Kushner"

Spoiler

Dear Jared,

Hey there. It’s been a while since I wrote last. I hope you had a lovely vacation in Vermont earlier this week. I was up in the Green Mountain State at the same time, picking up my daughter from camp! Such a small world. It’s funny how you always seem to be on vacation when things get cray-cray with your father-in-law, the president of the United States.

I thought I would drop you a note again. The first time I wrote it was because, amidst a tsunami of speculation about whether Donald Trump was a racist or an anti-Semite, you stepped into the breach to settle the matter. You issued a statement declaring this to be, how you say, fake news:

The difference between me and the journalists and Twitter throngs who find it so convenient to dismiss my father in law is simple. I know him and they don’t …

The fact is that my father in law is an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife. His support has been unwavering and from the heart. I have personally seen him embrace people of all racial and religious backgrounds, at his companies and in his personal life. This caricature that some want to paint as someone who has “allowed” or encouraged intolerance just doesn’t reflect the Donald Trump I know.

Now at the time, I pointed out that since the rest of America did not have your intimate view of Trump, we could only judge him based on his public actions. They were not encouraging throughout his life right up to the 2016 election.

It’s 2017 now, and hoo boy. There are a lot of things that are very disturbing about the president’s multiple statements about Charlottesville. The Atlantic’s David Graham does a good job of explaining the basic problem:

Trump wants to speak to Americans who disdain Nazis and disavow white supremacists, but who share their sense of cultural displacement, angry resentment at a diversifying nation, and conviction that white Americans are the real victims. Just as he converted birtherism from a fringe, racist belief into a mainstream (though no less racist) movement, Trump is trying to draw a line around a group of people who have beliefs that are substantially similar to those of white nationalists (and in some matters, neo-Nazis) — who are literally willing to march alongside them — and to make them acceptable in polite society because they say they are not neo-Nazis or white nationalists, but simply wish to protect their culture.

This wasn’t a mistake or a misinterpretation. For Pete’s sake, the White House put out talking points on this for fellow Republicans. They couldn’t have been bothered to do that for health care. Your father-in-law clearly believes he said nothing wrong, and the rest of Washington thinks that he did.

But I’m digressing, Jared. Here’s the thing: see if you can detect a pattern in some of the stories that have come out over the past 48 hours:

Associated Press: “Presidential advisers hunkered down, offering no public defense while privately expressing frustration with his comments.”

New York Times: “Gary D. Cohn, the director of the president’s National Economic Council, who is Jewish, was described by several people close to him as ‘disgusted’ and ‘deeply upset’ by the president’s remarks. But Mr. Cohn has not publicly expressed those views.”

Also the New York Times: “Members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private.”

That last quote is the most damning, Jared, because it completely undercuts your 2016 defense of your father-in-law. As both Jonathan Chait and Greg Sargent noted yesterday, it seems like the only thing that surprised the White House staff was that Trump said these things in public. That these are his actual beliefs is already an accepted fact among the White House staff.

If it is true that Trump’s public comments on Tuesday were simply a reflection of his private thoughts all along, then one of two things must follow:

1. You have no comprehension of the values your father-in-law holds dear; or
2. You have been lying about Donald Trump’s character all along.

Which one is it? I’m genuinely curious whether you have knowingly lied on behalf of your father-in-law or whether you are actually this shallow of a human being. My money is on the latter, in case you were wondering.

While you and Ivanka are truly world-class in your ability not to comment, I don’t think you can escape this imbroglio, Jared. The muck is starting to seep onto the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.

You are hardly the only Jewish person to work for this White House — but you are the one who stuck his neck out last year and loudly declared that the president was neither a racist nor an anti-Semite. So you have a choice. You can disavow the president’s remarks, like, say, the military service commanders. Or you can try to better articulate your evidence that Trump is not the ignorant racist that he has seemed to be this past week.

You can’t be Switzerland anymore, Jared. If you just look the other way while this goes down, then the rest of us can draw only one conclusion: You, Jared Kushner, are bad for the Jews.

Sincerely,

Daniel Drezner

Excellent letter.

[nvmbr02]

I think Jared might be racing his father in law to the bottom of the swamp. 

 

[Cartmann99]

[hoipolloi]

@Cartmann99 -- thanks for posting the link. That's actually a good article tho a bit of a long read.

The tl;dr for me was that these two are enmeshed in all of it up to their keisters, including the Russian shit.

There are no innocents or "better angels" in dolt45's administration. 

 

[GrumpyGran]

11 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Thanks @Cartmann99. I'm sick of these brats. I need them to go away now. She didn't ask for this? Shut the fuck up. As I recall you are the one who encouraged this and I will forever hold you responsible for this fiasco, Ivanka. And that nasty piece of work you're married to? Neither one of you has built a business. You were both given businesses and people who actually run them, while you two posture your way through life.

I love how they're devout Orthodox Jews who are unavailable every Saturday so Daddy can conveniently have a Twitter meltdown. Unless there's a high-profile overseas trip. Then we can blow off that Jewish thing, no problem. That's a perfect reflection of who they really are.

[candygirl200413]

These two are the epitome of first world problems. They are enablers who deserve nothing.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love how this "partner" is described in the first sentence of the article. It fits in with the Drumpf family: "The Trouble With Ivanka’s Business Partner"

Spoiler

His vendors call him a “career grifter.” His father’s creditors claim he’s a fraud and a serial extortionist who shakes people down with trumped-up threats of criminal charges. With these and other allegations piling up in court records along with judgments—against him, his wife and his businesses—for millions of dollars, his lawyers are abandoning him, saying he’s a deadbeat. All the while, he’s been living in one of the most luxurious mansions in the Bronx.

Meet Ivanka Trump’s longtime friend, matchmaker and business partner, Moshe Lax.

For the past decade, Lax, a 43-year-old New York diamond heir and entrepreneur, has been Trump’s partner in Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, the first major venture of her business career.

Trump and her family have continued to associate with Lax even as his legal problems have mounted and Trump has been dragged into Lax’s business disputes. On election night, Lax and his wife stood at the front of the ballroom at the Trump campaign’s victory party in New York, and Lax went on to visit Trump Tower during the transition, while Tiffany Trump attended the launch party for a new Lax venture in February. Ivanka Trump has even continued to rely on Lax’s advice in recent years: In depositions they gave for an unrelated case last summer, both Trump and her brother, Don Jr., cited advice they received from Lax in assessing another business partner.

And according to court records, Trump renewed her licensing agreement with Lax in 2011, allowing him to continue using her name even after his company defaulted on payments and he violated numerous terms of their agreement.

“He cheated not just us, he also cheated Ivanka,” says Mahipal Singhvi of KGK, a company that was recently awarded a multimillion-dollar judgment against Lax, his wife and their businesses after they kept, but did not pay for, a large shipment of KGK diamonds.

Trump’s relationship with Lax and the mountain of legal and financial troubles—reported here for the first time based on dozens of interviews and public records—raise serious questions about the first daughter’s judgment, even as she continues to serve as a powerful White House adviser. In response to detailed questions sent to the White House and the Trump Organization, White House spokesman Josh Raffel requested more information about this article but did not provide comment. Following publication, a person close to Trump contacted POLITICO Magazine to say Lax was not a "close friend" of hers, and Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten wrote in an email that the Trump family business "is still owed a significant amount of money" from Lax after terminating its licensing deal with him at the end of last year.

Lax initially agreed to a telephone interview about his relationship with Trump, but then said he might be traveling to Washington imminently and would prefer to meet in person. In response to an email listing detailed questions about the judgments and allegations against him, Lax responded that he was the victim of a blackmail and extortion scheme by one of his creditors.

“I do have all the hard evidence that this is an extortion case for money,” he wrote. “I will pursue criminally.” Lax declined to elaborate, and POLITICO Magazine is withholding the name of the creditor, for lack of any evidence of wrongdoing.

***

Lax grew up in Brooklyn the son of a diamond magnate with a sideline in real estate. He began his partnership with Trump a decade ago when both were rich kids looking to make their mark in the world of business. In 2007, Lax approached Trump pitching her on a land deal in Fort Myers, Florida.

Trump found herself drawn to Lax, seeing him as a kindred spirit. “Moshe was looking to take his business to a whole new level,” she recounts in “The Trump Card,” a 2010 memoir in which the entire final chapter is devoted to her partnership with Lax. “In that way, I suppose, we were a lot alike, trying to make our own way along a path set out for us by our fathers and trying to extend that path in exciting new directions, which I guess explains why we hit it off.”

Lax was not the only person Trump would hit it off with through the proposed deal. Soon after meeting Trump, he called a meeting of real estate heirs to discuss business opportunities at Prime Grill, a steakhouse across the street from Trump Tower, according to an April profile of Lax in Mishpacha, a magazine serving the Orthodox Jewish diaspora. At Lax’s networking lunch, Trump met her future husband, Jared Kushner, for the first time (in the profile, Lax joked that it was a “state secret” whether he received a matchmaking fee and said he had gained an appreciation for President Donald Trump’s “decency” and “sense of humor” by working with him up close).

The real estate deal went nowhere, but Trump and Lax soon embarked on a more promising venture together. At the time, Lax had a steady supply of diamonds from his family’s business, but was having trouble differentiating his product. Trump had a famous name with which to brand jewelry and ideas about how to create a shopping experience geared toward working women buying for themselves—a break from other diamond retailers that catered to husbands and boyfriends.

The pair decided to embark on a joint business venture, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, converting Lax’s retail space on Madison Avenue into their flagship boutique.

According to Trump’s memoir, the partnership was a home run. “As of now, in this tough economy, we’re doing very well,” she wrote in 2010. “Actually we’re doing better than ‘very well’ … We’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.”

But beneath the rosy picture Trump painted in public, there were a number of problems. In June 2011, Trump and Lax entered into a new licensing agreement. This agreement, which has since surfaced in litigation, states that Lax’s company defaulted on licensing payments to Trump and that Lax or his company committed numerous violations of the original deal, including entering into unauthorized sublicensing agreements and failing to keep accurate records. The agreement charges Lax’s company $300,000 per year and 36 percent of net proceeds for the right to use Trump’s name.

Despite those problems, Trump remained in business with Lax as troubles kept piling up.

In 2012, Lax’s company, Madison Avenue Diamonds, found itself in court after it accepted delivery of millions of dollars in diamonds but refused to pay for them, claiming that the vendor, KGK, had breached their agreement by delivering some computer files related to the diamonds late. Lax was represented by David Scharf of Morrison Cohen, who in the past had done extensive legal work for the Trump Organization (the firm later went to court with the Trump Organization over half a million dollars in disputed legal fees).

The diamond dispute entangled Trump in a web of litigation against her will. At one point, Judge Charles Ramos became agitated with Trump’s attempts to avoid testifying about her relationship with Lax.

Ramos expressed special annoyance at the fact that Trump submitted an affidavit from her lawyer in an attempt to quash a subpoena, rather than submitting one herself. “You know something, if she does not want to testify she can tell me she doesn’t want to testify,” Ramos said at a hearing on the matter. “She has not done that. She does it through counsel? Thanks a lot. The deposition will go forward.” Trump also made the unusual request that the deposition take place at her office in Trump Tower, which the judge denied.

At her deposition, Trump’s lawyer revealed that in addition to her licensing agreement with Lax, Trump had an ownership stake in Madison Avenue Diamonds through an entity called IHoldings Madison LLC. It’s not clear how large a share of the company Trump held, or for how long. In the personal financial disclosure she made this year upon entering the White House, Trump says she served as president of IHoldings Madison until this May.

In 2015, the court ordered Lax’s company and his wife, Shaindy—who had personally guaranteed payment of the diamonds and in whose name Lax conducts many of his financial dealings—to pay the stiffed vendor $2.4 million plus interest. Singvhi of KGK says the company has still not received the payments due, which at this point amount to $3.5 million.

In the meantime, Lax has had other problems.

***

In 2008, Lax’s father died, leaving him as co-executor of a vast estate. But his father also left vast debts, including $27 million owed to the IRS and a multimillion-dollar loan guaranteed by the Brooklyn real estate developers Joseph Brunner and Abe Mandel.

The fallout from that loan has led to some of the most disturbing charges against Lax: that he has been extorting members of his tight-knit religious community, threatening to bring criminal charges against them if they do not pay him—and that he engaged in a massive financial fraud to hide tens of millions of dollars left by his father from the government and creditors.

In 2014, Brunner and Mandel sued Lax, his wife, his brother-in-law Martin Ehrenfeld, his father’s estate, his father’s family trust and various corporate entities, claiming the defendants had used a series of shell corporations to hide Lax’s father’s money and avoid paying his father’s debts. The developers say that before his death, Lax’s father showed them documentation that his net worth was $174 million. According to their complaint, Lax and his co-defendants managed to make the fortune disappear—so that when creditors came calling, the estate had no assets to repossess.

The developers also claimed that Lax attempted to extort them in a scheme to avoid paying on the debts. In a sworn affidavit, Mandel said he received a call from Scharf in March 2014 informing him that a legal complaint was being prepared that would “destroy” him and Brunner and inviting him to a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue at Scharf’s office.

At the meeting, Scharf allegedly told the developers that his client was working with a former prosecutor, was prepared to accuse them of racketeering and would demand $20 million in damages—that is, unless they negotiated with Lax and his brother-in-law “to make this go away.”

In the affidavit, Mandel also said that a private intelligence firm had been approaching his business and personal contacts, telling them Mandel and his partner were under investigation and telling a charity he had given to that his gift was made with “stolen funds.” The developers submitted business card from the firm Sage Intelligence bearing the name Herman Weisberg, a former New York Police Department detective, that had been left with one of their acquaintances. Weisberg declined to comment for this story.

The developers said they were not the only victims, and that the defendants had been engaging in a “pattern and practice” of extorting and trying to extort other members of the Orthodox Jewish community, to which all involved belong, through “sham” entities called Diligence I LLC and Prudence LLC.

“Brunner and I inquired in our community about Scharf, Lax and Ehrenfeld,” states Mandel in a sworn affidavit. “We learned that they have been shaking down other people in our community for large settlement payments by threatening criminal actions.”

The Laxes and Ehrenfeld have denied wrongdoing. Scharf and his firm, who were never named as defendants, also deny any wrongdoing. Morrison Cohen has since withdrawn as counsel for Lax’s father’s estate, citing a conflict of interest (in June, the firm also withdrew from the KGK case, saying Lax and Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry had failed pay them).

Morrison Cohen’s withdrawal was just one of many bizarre turns the Brunner and Mandel case has taken. At one point, an attorney for Diligence claimed not to know who actually controlled the shell corporation he was representing. At another point, Lax claimed not to know the original identities of the lenders for the loan under dispute.

Judge Shirley Kornreich later concluded that Lax was lying, and over the course of the case she grew increasingly frustrated with such shenanigans. “A theme in this case is the pleading of ignorance by defendants and their counsel,” she wrote in one court order, listing off assertions that she did not find credible.

In June 2015, the lawyer for Diligence, Steven Schlesinger, withdrew from the case, saying his client had failed to communicate with him and had stiffed him on $85,000 worth of legal fees. Diligence then got a replacement lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, but he also withdrew from the case this January.

In his request to abandon the case, Jaroslawicz said he had been retained by someone named Elridge Glasford running a corporate services firm on the Caribbean island of Nevis—population 11,000—that he was “not computer literate” because of a disability, and that he was never paid for his work. In November, a lawyer representing Lax’s sister, Zlaty Schwartz, and his father’s estate, withdrew from the case, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the estate.

Since then, the case has settled, according to the developers’ lawyer, William Fried, who declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement.

***

Those cases represent only a small sample of the suits filed against Lax in recent years. In September 2013, the law firm Cohen & Perfetto sued Lax, claiming he stiffed them for $48,000 in legal fees. The case settled, with Scharf representing Lax.

Last January, Lax’s cousin, Aron, sued Lax and his sister for allegedly pursuing “unjust enrichment” by trying to evict Aron and his wife from a Brooklyn condo that they have resided in since 2006 but whose mortgage is in the name of Lax’s late father. Last October, the firm Porzio, Bromberg & Newman sued Lax for $100,000 in unpaid legal fees. And in June, the law firm Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone sued Lax for $20,000 in unpaid legal fees. The cases remain ongoing. Lax has also been named as a defendant in a number of cases claiming failures to make mortgage payments.

Lax’s problems have continued to entangle Ivanka Trump. In recent years, the state of New York has issued at least three warrants for unpaid taxes against Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, totaling over $300,000. The outstanding taxes were eventually paid.

The financial travails of Lax and his wife have also put Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry in danger of at least partly falling into the hands of the highest bidder at a public auction in order to satisfy their unpaid debts. In January, a New York couple, Michael and Rachel Goldenberg, sued Lax and his wife for stiffing them on a six-figure loan. Lax’s wife owned at least part of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, and in April, a New York court ordered her to turn over her stake in the company to the city so that it could be auctioned off to settle the debt. She apparently failed to do so, leading the Goldenbergs to request in May that she be held in contempt of court. In July, the court ordered the Laxs to pay the Goldenbergs $675,000, and the motion for contempt has been put on hold until September 19, the deadline for paying the debt.

The Laxes’ finances are further obscured by the fact that they are sometimes conducted under the name Chana Weisz, an alias used by his wife, Shaindy. Lax will sometimes write checks from a checkbook made in the name of Chana Weisz, according to a person who has seen him do this. The person recently received a five-figure check from Lax out of that checkbook but said they were unable to cash it because, as an alarmed bank teller pointed out, Lax’s signature did match the name on the check.

Amid so many setbacks, Lax did score at least one massive, if temporary, reprieve thanks to some highly irregular tax relief. In October 2015, the IRS released a $27 million tax lien against his father’s estate, saying the obligation had been satisfied. But last May, the IRS reinstated the lien, saying it had been released by mistake and that the $27 million in back taxes had never actually been paid.

Michael Macgillivray, a prominent Chicago attorney specializing in tax collections and a veteran of the IRS collections department, was gobsmacked by the botched lien release. “That is extremely extraordinary,” he said. “Of the things I’ve seen in my practice, nothing has even remotely approached a million dollars when there was an erroneously released lien.”

MacGillivray added that he had difficulty fathoming the explanation the IRS offered on the form reinstating the lien—that the lien had been released “mistakenly.” A spokesman for the IRS said the agency does not comment on individual cases.

“I could not believe that on a $27 million issue somebody would just make a mistake like that. You’d think there’d be a lot of due diligence,” MacGillivray said. “I can’t say its corruption because the IRS has 80,000 employees and there are incompetents.”

***

As Lax’s problems mounted, Trump did not sever ties or disavow him. The continued relationship briefly came up last summer, when she gave a deposition in a dispute between the Trump Organization and restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian, who years before had ended a partnership with Lax amid acrimony and litigation.

In her testimony, Trump recalls receiving advice about Zakarian’s character from Lax, which she passed along to her older brother, Don Jr. “I recall telling my brother to make sure that he got a good guarantee, because I had heard from a partner of mine that Zakarian had treated him very badly in a deal,” Trump said. “Moshe certainly feels that Geoffrey is not a very good human being.” Don Jr. also cites Lax’s advice in his deposition for the suit.

In November, Lax and his wife attended the Trump campaign’s official election night party at the Midtown Hilton. A few days later, with the new president-elect and his team holed up at Trump Tower to chart the course of his administration, Lax was spotted in the lobby, taking an elevator upstairs.

In March, Trump’s company announced it was discontinuing the Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry line to focus on a mass-market collection, leaving the current status of her business relationship with Lax unclear. Until his LinkedIn profile was taken down this week, it listed him as the current chairman of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry. Pieces from the line remain available for sale alongside glamorous black-and-white photos of Trump at IvankaTrumpFineJewelry.com, a website registered to the Trump Organization.

Despite all his problems, Lax has been residing of late in a luxurious mansion in Riverdale, an exclusive section of the Bronx, according to a subpoena response submitted by his wife earlier this year. The house is named Ochre Point after a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and at one point last year, it was the second-most expensive residence on the market in the entire borough, featuring “eight bedrooms, an elevator, a motor court, a three-car garage, and an outdoor pool,” with a $7.75 million asking price, according to the real estate publication Curbed. The house is part of the Villanova Heights development, where houses rent for between $17,500 and $25,000 per month, according to the New York Post.

Meanwhile, Lax has continued to pursue new ventures and keep his name in the news. Earlier this year, he launched Code, a 10,000-square-foot “conceptual fashion retail gallery harboring a Community of Designers” at 800 Fifth Avenue. Trump’s younger sister Tiffany attended the launch party, along with Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who happens to be the landlord.

In July, Lax announced a new diamond gallery, Facet of Love, slated to open on August 15, also at 800 Fifth Ave. But Lax has fallen afoul of Spitzer, according to a person close to the building, who said Lax is now being booted from it “as a consequence of his failure to pay rent.”

Facet of Love has not yet opened, and it is not clear when it will, if ever. “I really can’t give a date,” said Lax’s publicist Ronni Kairey, whose website lists Trump as a former client and who also said she did not know when Lax might be available for an interview. “He’s just very busy.”

Indeed, despite it all, Lax continues to exhibit the same hustle that first drew Trump to him all those years ago. “My new associate was an entrepreneur through and through,” the future first daughter recalled in her memoir. “I admired that about him.”

Shady, shady, shady.

[GrumpyGran]

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I love how this "partner" is described in the first sentence of the article. It fits in with the Drumpf family: "The Trouble With Ivanka’s Business Partner"

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His vendors call him a “career grifter.” His father’s creditors claim he’s a fraud and a serial extortionist who shakes people down with trumped-up threats of criminal charges. With these and other allegations piling up in court records along with judgments—against him, his wife and his businesses—for millions of dollars, his lawyers are abandoning him, saying he’s a deadbeat. All the while, he’s been living in one of the most luxurious mansions in the Bronx.

Meet Ivanka Trump’s longtime friend, matchmaker and business partner, Moshe Lax.

For the past decade, Lax, a 43-year-old New York diamond heir and entrepreneur, has been Trump’s partner in Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, the first major venture of her business career.

Trump and her family have continued to associate with Lax even as his legal problems have mounted and Trump has been dragged into Lax’s business disputes. On election night, Lax and his wife stood at the front of the ballroom at the Trump campaign’s victory party in New York, and Lax went on to visit Trump Tower during the transition, while Tiffany Trump attended the launch party for a new Lax venture in February. Ivanka Trump has even continued to rely on Lax’s advice in recent years: In depositions they gave for an unrelated case last summer, both Trump and her brother, Don Jr., cited advice they received from Lax in assessing another business partner.

And according to court records, Trump renewed her licensing agreement with Lax in 2011, allowing him to continue using her name even after his company defaulted on payments and he violated numerous terms of their agreement.

“He cheated not just us, he also cheated Ivanka,” says Mahipal Singhvi of KGK, a company that was recently awarded a multimillion-dollar judgment against Lax, his wife and their businesses after they kept, but did not pay for, a large shipment of KGK diamonds.

Trump’s relationship with Lax and the mountain of legal and financial troubles—reported here for the first time based on dozens of interviews and public records—raise serious questions about the first daughter’s judgment, even as she continues to serve as a powerful White House adviser. In response to detailed questions sent to the White House and the Trump Organization, White House spokesman Josh Raffel requested more information about this article but did not provide comment. Following publication, a person close to Trump contacted POLITICO Magazine to say Lax was not a "close friend" of hers, and Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten wrote in an email that the Trump family business "is still owed a significant amount of money" from Lax after terminating its licensing deal with him at the end of last year.

Lax initially agreed to a telephone interview about his relationship with Trump, but then said he might be traveling to Washington imminently and would prefer to meet in person. In response to an email listing detailed questions about the judgments and allegations against him, Lax responded that he was the victim of a blackmail and extortion scheme by one of his creditors.

“I do have all the hard evidence that this is an extortion case for money,” he wrote. “I will pursue criminally.” Lax declined to elaborate, and POLITICO Magazine is withholding the name of the creditor, for lack of any evidence of wrongdoing.

***

Lax grew up in Brooklyn the son of a diamond magnate with a sideline in real estate. He began his partnership with Trump a decade ago when both were rich kids looking to make their mark in the world of business. In 2007, Lax approached Trump pitching her on a land deal in Fort Myers, Florida.

Trump found herself drawn to Lax, seeing him as a kindred spirit. “Moshe was looking to take his business to a whole new level,” she recounts in “The Trump Card,” a 2010 memoir in which the entire final chapter is devoted to her partnership with Lax. “In that way, I suppose, we were a lot alike, trying to make our own way along a path set out for us by our fathers and trying to extend that path in exciting new directions, which I guess explains why we hit it off.”

Lax was not the only person Trump would hit it off with through the proposed deal. Soon after meeting Trump, he called a meeting of real estate heirs to discuss business opportunities at Prime Grill, a steakhouse across the street from Trump Tower, according to an April profile of Lax in Mishpacha, a magazine serving the Orthodox Jewish diaspora. At Lax’s networking lunch, Trump met her future husband, Jared Kushner, for the first time (in the profile, Lax joked that it was a “state secret” whether he received a matchmaking fee and said he had gained an appreciation for President Donald Trump’s “decency” and “sense of humor” by working with him up close).

The real estate deal went nowhere, but Trump and Lax soon embarked on a more promising venture together. At the time, Lax had a steady supply of diamonds from his family’s business, but was having trouble differentiating his product. Trump had a famous name with which to brand jewelry and ideas about how to create a shopping experience geared toward working women buying for themselves—a break from other diamond retailers that catered to husbands and boyfriends.

The pair decided to embark on a joint business venture, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, converting Lax’s retail space on Madison Avenue into their flagship boutique.

According to Trump’s memoir, the partnership was a home run. “As of now, in this tough economy, we’re doing very well,” she wrote in 2010. “Actually we’re doing better than ‘very well’ … We’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.”

But beneath the rosy picture Trump painted in public, there were a number of problems. In June 2011, Trump and Lax entered into a new licensing agreement. This agreement, which has since surfaced in litigation, states that Lax’s company defaulted on licensing payments to Trump and that Lax or his company committed numerous violations of the original deal, including entering into unauthorized sublicensing agreements and failing to keep accurate records. The agreement charges Lax’s company $300,000 per year and 36 percent of net proceeds for the right to use Trump’s name.

Despite those problems, Trump remained in business with Lax as troubles kept piling up.

In 2012, Lax’s company, Madison Avenue Diamonds, found itself in court after it accepted delivery of millions of dollars in diamonds but refused to pay for them, claiming that the vendor, KGK, had breached their agreement by delivering some computer files related to the diamonds late. Lax was represented by David Scharf of Morrison Cohen, who in the past had done extensive legal work for the Trump Organization (the firm later went to court with the Trump Organization over half a million dollars in disputed legal fees).

The diamond dispute entangled Trump in a web of litigation against her will. At one point, Judge Charles Ramos became agitated with Trump’s attempts to avoid testifying about her relationship with Lax.

Ramos expressed special annoyance at the fact that Trump submitted an affidavit from her lawyer in an attempt to quash a subpoena, rather than submitting one herself. “You know something, if she does not want to testify she can tell me she doesn’t want to testify,” Ramos said at a hearing on the matter. “She has not done that. She does it through counsel? Thanks a lot. The deposition will go forward.” Trump also made the unusual request that the deposition take place at her office in Trump Tower, which the judge denied.

At her deposition, Trump’s lawyer revealed that in addition to her licensing agreement with Lax, Trump had an ownership stake in Madison Avenue Diamonds through an entity called IHoldings Madison LLC. It’s not clear how large a share of the company Trump held, or for how long. In the personal financial disclosure she made this year upon entering the White House, Trump says she served as president of IHoldings Madison until this May.

In 2015, the court ordered Lax’s company and his wife, Shaindy—who had personally guaranteed payment of the diamonds and in whose name Lax conducts many of his financial dealings—to pay the stiffed vendor $2.4 million plus interest. Singvhi of KGK says the company has still not received the payments due, which at this point amount to $3.5 million.

In the meantime, Lax has had other problems.

***

In 2008, Lax’s father died, leaving him as co-executor of a vast estate. But his father also left vast debts, including $27 million owed to the IRS and a multimillion-dollar loan guaranteed by the Brooklyn real estate developers Joseph Brunner and Abe Mandel.

The fallout from that loan has led to some of the most disturbing charges against Lax: that he has been extorting members of his tight-knit religious community, threatening to bring criminal charges against them if they do not pay him—and that he engaged in a massive financial fraud to hide tens of millions of dollars left by his father from the government and creditors.

In 2014, Brunner and Mandel sued Lax, his wife, his brother-in-law Martin Ehrenfeld, his father’s estate, his father’s family trust and various corporate entities, claiming the defendants had used a series of shell corporations to hide Lax’s father’s money and avoid paying his father’s debts. The developers say that before his death, Lax’s father showed them documentation that his net worth was $174 million. According to their complaint, Lax and his co-defendants managed to make the fortune disappear—so that when creditors came calling, the estate had no assets to repossess.

The developers also claimed that Lax attempted to extort them in a scheme to avoid paying on the debts. In a sworn affidavit, Mandel said he received a call from Scharf in March 2014 informing him that a legal complaint was being prepared that would “destroy” him and Brunner and inviting him to a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue at Scharf’s office.

At the meeting, Scharf allegedly told the developers that his client was working with a former prosecutor, was prepared to accuse them of racketeering and would demand $20 million in damages—that is, unless they negotiated with Lax and his brother-in-law “to make this go away.”

In the affidavit, Mandel also said that a private intelligence firm had been approaching his business and personal contacts, telling them Mandel and his partner were under investigation and telling a charity he had given to that his gift was made with “stolen funds.” The developers submitted business card from the firm Sage Intelligence bearing the name Herman Weisberg, a former New York Police Department detective, that had been left with one of their acquaintances. Weisberg declined to comment for this story.

The developers said they were not the only victims, and that the defendants had been engaging in a “pattern and practice” of extorting and trying to extort other members of the Orthodox Jewish community, to which all involved belong, through “sham” entities called Diligence I LLC and Prudence LLC.

“Brunner and I inquired in our community about Scharf, Lax and Ehrenfeld,” states Mandel in a sworn affidavit. “We learned that they have been shaking down other people in our community for large settlement payments by threatening criminal actions.”

The Laxes and Ehrenfeld have denied wrongdoing. Scharf and his firm, who were never named as defendants, also deny any wrongdoing. Morrison Cohen has since withdrawn as counsel for Lax’s father’s estate, citing a conflict of interest (in June, the firm also withdrew from the KGK case, saying Lax and Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry had failed pay them).

Morrison Cohen’s withdrawal was just one of many bizarre turns the Brunner and Mandel case has taken. At one point, an attorney for Diligence claimed not to know who actually controlled the shell corporation he was representing. At another point, Lax claimed not to know the original identities of the lenders for the loan under dispute.

Judge Shirley Kornreich later concluded that Lax was lying, and over the course of the case she grew increasingly frustrated with such shenanigans. “A theme in this case is the pleading of ignorance by defendants and their counsel,” she wrote in one court order, listing off assertions that she did not find credible.

In June 2015, the lawyer for Diligence, Steven Schlesinger, withdrew from the case, saying his client had failed to communicate with him and had stiffed him on $85,000 worth of legal fees. Diligence then got a replacement lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, but he also withdrew from the case this January.

In his request to abandon the case, Jaroslawicz said he had been retained by someone named Elridge Glasford running a corporate services firm on the Caribbean island of Nevis—population 11,000—that he was “not computer literate” because of a disability, and that he was never paid for his work. In November, a lawyer representing Lax’s sister, Zlaty Schwartz, and his father’s estate, withdrew from the case, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the estate.

Since then, the case has settled, according to the developers’ lawyer, William Fried, who declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement.

***

Those cases represent only a small sample of the suits filed against Lax in recent years. In September 2013, the law firm Cohen & Perfetto sued Lax, claiming he stiffed them for $48,000 in legal fees. The case settled, with Scharf representing Lax.

Last January, Lax’s cousin, Aron, sued Lax and his sister for allegedly pursuing “unjust enrichment” by trying to evict Aron and his wife from a Brooklyn condo that they have resided in since 2006 but whose mortgage is in the name of Lax’s late father. Last October, the firm Porzio, Bromberg & Newman sued Lax for $100,000 in unpaid legal fees. And in June, the law firm Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone sued Lax for $20,000 in unpaid legal fees. The cases remain ongoing. Lax has also been named as a defendant in a number of cases claiming failures to make mortgage payments.

Lax’s problems have continued to entangle Ivanka Trump. In recent years, the state of New York has issued at least three warrants for unpaid taxes against Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, totaling over $300,000. The outstanding taxes were eventually paid.

The financial travails of Lax and his wife have also put Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry in danger of at least partly falling into the hands of the highest bidder at a public auction in order to satisfy their unpaid debts. In January, a New York couple, Michael and Rachel Goldenberg, sued Lax and his wife for stiffing them on a six-figure loan. Lax’s wife owned at least part of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, and in April, a New York court ordered her to turn over her stake in the company to the city so that it could be auctioned off to settle the debt. She apparently failed to do so, leading the Goldenbergs to request in May that she be held in contempt of court. In July, the court ordered the Laxs to pay the Goldenbergs $675,000, and the motion for contempt has been put on hold until September 19, the deadline for paying the debt.

The Laxes’ finances are further obscured by the fact that they are sometimes conducted under the name Chana Weisz, an alias used by his wife, Shaindy. Lax will sometimes write checks from a checkbook made in the name of Chana Weisz, according to a person who has seen him do this. The person recently received a five-figure check from Lax out of that checkbook but said they were unable to cash it because, as an alarmed bank teller pointed out, Lax’s signature did match the name on the check.

Amid so many setbacks, Lax did score at least one massive, if temporary, reprieve thanks to some highly irregular tax relief. In October 2015, the IRS released a $27 million tax lien against his father’s estate, saying the obligation had been satisfied. But last May, the IRS reinstated the lien, saying it had been released by mistake and that the $27 million in back taxes had never actually been paid.

Michael Macgillivray, a prominent Chicago attorney specializing in tax collections and a veteran of the IRS collections department, was gobsmacked by the botched lien release. “That is extremely extraordinary,” he said. “Of the things I’ve seen in my practice, nothing has even remotely approached a million dollars when there was an erroneously released lien.”

MacGillivray added that he had difficulty fathoming the explanation the IRS offered on the form reinstating the lien—that the lien had been released “mistakenly.” A spokesman for the IRS said the agency does not comment on individual cases.

“I could not believe that on a $27 million issue somebody would just make a mistake like that. You’d think there’d be a lot of due diligence,” MacGillivray said. “I can’t say its corruption because the IRS has 80,000 employees and there are incompetents.”

***

As Lax’s problems mounted, Trump did not sever ties or disavow him. The continued relationship briefly came up last summer, when she gave a deposition in a dispute between the Trump Organization and restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian, who years before had ended a partnership with Lax amid acrimony and litigation.

In her testimony, Trump recalls receiving advice about Zakarian’s character from Lax, which she passed along to her older brother, Don Jr. “I recall telling my brother to make sure that he got a good guarantee, because I had heard from a partner of mine that Zakarian had treated him very badly in a deal,” Trump said. “Moshe certainly feels that Geoffrey is not a very good human being.” Don Jr. also cites Lax’s advice in his deposition for the suit.

In November, Lax and his wife attended the Trump campaign’s official election night party at the Midtown Hilton. A few days later, with the new president-elect and his team holed up at Trump Tower to chart the course of his administration, Lax was spotted in the lobby, taking an elevator upstairs.

In March, Trump’s company announced it was discontinuing the Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry line to focus on a mass-market collection, leaving the current status of her business relationship with Lax unclear. Until his LinkedIn profile was taken down this week, it listed him as the current chairman of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry. Pieces from the line remain available for sale alongside glamorous black-and-white photos of Trump at IvankaTrumpFineJewelry.com, a website registered to the Trump Organization.

Despite all his problems, Lax has been residing of late in a luxurious mansion in Riverdale, an exclusive section of the Bronx, according to a subpoena response submitted by his wife earlier this year. The house is named Ochre Point after a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and at one point last year, it was the second-most expensive residence on the market in the entire borough, featuring “eight bedrooms, an elevator, a motor court, a three-car garage, and an outdoor pool,” with a $7.75 million asking price, according to the real estate publication Curbed. The house is part of the Villanova Heights development, where houses rent for between $17,500 and $25,000 per month, according to the New York Post.

Meanwhile, Lax has continued to pursue new ventures and keep his name in the news. Earlier this year, he launched Code, a 10,000-square-foot “conceptual fashion retail gallery harboring a Community of Designers” at 800 Fifth Avenue. Trump’s younger sister Tiffany attended the launch party, along with Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who happens to be the landlord.

In July, Lax announced a new diamond gallery, Facet of Love, slated to open on August 15, also at 800 Fifth Ave. But Lax has fallen afoul of Spitzer, according to a person close to the building, who said Lax is now being booted from it “as a consequence of his failure to pay rent.”

Facet of Love has not yet opened, and it is not clear when it will, if ever. “I really can’t give a date,” said Lax’s publicist Ronni Kairey, whose website lists Trump as a former client and who also said she did not know when Lax might be available for an interview. “He’s just very busy.”

Indeed, despite it all, Lax continues to exhibit the same hustle that first drew Trump to him all those years ago. “My new associate was an entrepreneur through and through,” the future first daughter recalled in her memoir. “I admired that about him.”

Shady, shady, shady.

TL so I did not read all of this but, Good Lord, even their Temple is a swamp! I wonder how many of her "successful" businesses have this problem. Association with criminals, she may be in danger of being blackmailed on several fronts.

[GreyhoundFan]

"With Ivanka Trump’s Blessing, White House Ditches Equal Pay Rule"

Spoiler

Days after issuing a bland statement supporting women’s equality, the Trump administration halted a key equal pay initiative on Tuesday put in place by the Obama administration.

The scrapped provision would have required employers to report aggregate information on how much they pay workers ― broken down by gender, race and ethnicity ― and would have been a critical first step in figuring out the scope of the pay gap at different companies.

Instead, the Office of Management and Budget said in a memo this week that it was halting implementation so it could review the provision, citing concerns about paperwork and privacy.

Ivanka Trump, who speaks frequently about the importance of equal pay for women and who promised last summer that her father feels similarly, issued a statement supporting the move.

“Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,” Trump said on Tuesday. “We look forward to continuing to work with [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], [the Office of Management and Budget], Congress and all relevant stakeholders on robust policies aimed at eliminating the gender wage gap.”

She offered no further explanation for the administration’s action or her endorsement of it.

Women’s groups universally decried the move.

“This is not a technical tweak as they would have you believe. Make no mistake— it’s an all-out attack on equal pay,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Today’s action sends a clear message to employers,” Graves added. “If you want to ignore pay inequities and sweep them under the rug, this Administration has your back.”

They also took aim at the president’s eldest daughter for betraying her purported commitment to working women.

“For somebody who has long held herself out as a champion for women and for gender equality, it’s really disappointing,” Vicki Shabo, vice president for workplace policy and strategy at the National Partnership for Women and Families, told HuffPost on Wednesday.

“[This] spits in the eye of gender equality and in the eyes of women and people of color who are so often paid less and do not know.”

On average, women in the U.S. are paid 80 cents for every dollar men earn, according to federal data. The pay gap for women of color is even worse. Hispanic women earn 54 cents on the dollar, while black women make 63 cents. Even when researchers analyze the data and account for differences in education and time spent in the labor force, the wage gap persists. 

Interestingly, Ivanka Trump’s book, a bland treatise called Women Who Work, mentions the term “equal pay” only once, focusing more on individual moves women can make to achieve success in the workplace. “When you’re passionate and work hard you can achieve great things,” she writes.

But even when a woman is going full-steam ahead at work, she may not realize that her male peers are out-earning her. After 19 years as a manager at a Goodyear plant in Alabama, Lilly Ledbetter famously found out she had been making less than her male colleagues after someone sent her an anonymous note. Her lawsuit led to the passage of equal pay legislation in 2009.

Employers are now required to report information about the race, ethnicity and gender of their employees. Starting a few years ago, tech companies have made their Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports public, which has led to a painful ― but fruitful ― discussion about the lack of women in the tech industry.

It’s easy to imagine how pay data would’ve advanced the conversation even further and made it easier for federal regulators to spot patterns of discrimination.

“Having pay data in summary form will help us identify patterns that may warrant further investigation,” the former chairwoman of the EEOC said last year at a conference in New York. In the past, she said, “we’d learn about a pay-discrimination problem because someone saw a piece of paper left on a copy machine or someone was complaining about their salary to co-workers.”

Companies with more than 100 workers were set to receive a new form to report the data in September and start providing more detailed information to the EEOC in 2018. 

Most employers were already preparing to file this data, according to Shabo. Indeed, in recent years, activist shareholders have been pressuring public companies to report data ― a few companies, including Apple and Amazon, have started opening up about gender and pay.

Stopping the Obama administration provision from going into effect was the result of an orchestrated effort by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the federal contractors business lobby and anti-worker and anti-regulatory senators on the Hill, Shabo said.

It’s even more disappointing because the provision already represented a compromised effort, she added. “It wasn’t as comprehensive or as detailed as we would’ve liked. This was something that was put together with the ease and efficiency of the employer community in mind.”

Still, there had been rumors since January that this would happen, and it’s hard to be surprised that the White House, which has been openly hostile to women’s rights ― by rolling back provisions on contraception and reinstating harsh restrictions on women’s health around the world ― would make such a move.

“This is not a woman- or family-friendly administration,” Shabo said.

So another Ivanka "policy" goes down the tubes.

[GrumpyGran]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Interestingly, Ivanka Trump’s book, a bland treatise called Women Who Work, mentions the term “equal pay” only once, focusing more on individual moves women can make to achieve success in the workplace. “When you’re passionate and work hard you can achieve great things,” she writes.

First, be born into a wealthy family. Then be willing to have fluid ethics so you can take advantage of any opportunity that arises. Next, make friends with those who have already shown that they will do whatever it takes to get to the top. Finally make a good match for yourself so you have the emotional support that a fellow con-artist can give you. See, it's easy-peasy!

Has there been an Ivanka policy that's gone anywhere BUT down the tubes? At least she consistent. In failure.

[fraurosena]

Relevant question.

 

The answer is simple: the repugs don't care as long as they are in power. The minute their power is in jeopardy is the minute they'll drop these parasites like a hot brick. Not one second sooner.