WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, senior advisers to President Donald Trump, were both fined $200 for missing deadlines to submit financial reports required by government ethics rules, according to documents and interviews.
It’s the second time that Kushner has been fined for late filing as part of his monthslong process of divesting pieces of his vast business empire to serve in the White House.
In addition, the president’s son-in-law and daughter, who serve as unpaid aides to him, listed vastly different values for some of their joint assets, with some discrepancies of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
Kushner, Trump and other senior officials are required to file personal financial disclosure statements outlining their finances, and those of their spouses, for the previous year. They must also file personal transaction reports shortly after buying or selling real estate, stock or other assets.
But Kushner appears to have had difficulty getting his right. In total, Kushner has made changes to his financial disclosure form 39 times — in many cases in response to questions from the Office of Government Ethics — after receiving an initial 18-day filing extension. Ivanka Trump amended her form just four times.
“It suggests a lack of organization … chaos on the part of the lawyers or the principal,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics lawyer who previously worked for D.C. government and the Senate Judiciary Committee and now teaches at Washington University School of Law. “It’s not the preferred way of handling things.”
Ethics experts and government watchdog groups have complained for months that Trump’s administration hasn’t made ethics a priority, despite his pledge to “drain the swamp” of business as usual.
Kushner and Trump had investments in real estate and other companies worth up to $740 million, according to documents released by the White House in March.
