Date Night: Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump make an attractive pair at the 8th Annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards at the Skylight SOHO in New York. Image by Getty Images

By Aiden Pink May 10, 2017

Members of the Trump and Kushner families are corrupt “princelings” using their access to the White House to steer business towards their companies, journalist Jill Abramson argued in a New York Times op-ed Thursday.

Abramson compared Trump and Kushner families to the Chinese children of government leaders who use their family connections to enrich themselves. She cited recent incidents where Jared Kushner’s sister dropped his name when pitching Chinese investors on a real estate project, and the Chinese government’s trademark approval for Ivanka Trump’s company on the same day the Chinese president dined with the First Family at Mar-a-Lago.

While President Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Kushner have removed themselves from business life, “the legal arrangements to keep them at arm’s length from those businesses remain opaque,” Abramson noted.

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“Since I began covering the corrupting influence of money on politics 30 years ago, profiteering by family members of the president has invited scandal,” Abramson wrote. But, she added, “the oligarchy emerging on Pennsylvania Avenue today is something not seen before.”

The column by Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, marked her first return to the paper after being fired under acrimonious circumstances in 2014.

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

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