Ivanka Trump set to inherit office in White House space typically reserved for First Lady

[Stephan Bobb]

Ivanka Trump set to inherit office in White House space typically reserved for First Lady

BYADAM EDELMAN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Updated: Thursday, December 15, 2016, 11:16 AM

Ivanka Trump will reportedly inherit an office in the same White House space typically used by the First Lady — the latest evidence the President-elect's eldest daughter is preparing to take on a substantial White House role in her father's administration.

According to CNN, the younger Trump, who has been increasingly involved not only in her father's presidential transition but also in prospective policy initiatives, hasn't yet been given a formal title for a potential White House job, but she will receive an office in the "same space reserved for First Lady" inside the White House, which is usually the East Wing.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition told CNBC the report was “false” and that “no decisions regarding Ivanka's involvement have been made.”

Initially Trump, 35, had been slated to, along with her brothers Eric and Donald, Jr., take over their father's sprawling business empire as he assumed the presidency. But in recent weeks, Ivanka Trump appeared destined for a formal administrative post, as news developments signaled her being increasingly involved in her father's political affairs.

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Earlier this month, Politico ran a piece titled "Ivanka Trump, climate czar?" in which numerous experts speculated the heiress was likely to have a more prominent White House role — particularly related to climate change activism — than even First Lady Melania Trump, who won't be moving to Washington, D.C., until June 2017, so her son with Donald, Barron, can finish the school year.

Days later, Ivanka Trump met privately with Al Gore inside Trump Tower moments before the climate crusader and former veep sat down with the elder Trump. Later that week, daddy and daughter Trump both sat down inside the mogul's Midtown abode with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, another environmental activist.

In addition, Ivanka Trump sat in on a meeting between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — Trump's first as President-elect with a foreign head of government — and reportedly was on a post-election phone call between her father and Argentine President Mauricio Macri.

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All signs point to Ivanka Trump having a much more prominent role in the White House than stepmother, Melania.

 (JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

The biggest red flag that the younger Trump could see a piece of action inside the White House, however, came earlier this week when Donald Trump announced that he would postpone revealing his specific plans for stepping away from his company while he is in the White House — a plan he had originally been scheduled to discuss Thursday.

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But in tweeting out news of the delay, as well as his oft-stated intention to leave the Trump Organization in the hands of his children, he only mentioned his two adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr. — not Ivanka.

She and her husband Jared Kushner are reportedly planning to move to Washington in the new year, and the President-elect has said he’d like Kushner to have a role in his administration.

He suggested to the New York Times that Kushner could help with the Middle East peace process.

“They’re both very talented people,” he said of the couple in an interview with "Fox News Sunday."

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"I would love to be able to have them involved."

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"If you look at Ivanka — she's so strongly, as you know, into the women's issues and childcare ... Nobody could do better than her," Trump said.

He also acknowledged anti-nepotism rules could interfere with his plans, and that his team was checking how “the laws read.”

All of the Trumps, however, have so far mostly muddled the lines between their family business and official presidential business. All three of Trump's adult children Ivanka currently hold executive positions in their father's company and simultaneously sit on their father's presidential transition executive committee.

News emerged earlier Wednesday that Donald Jr. was integrally involved in the interview process for selecting his father's interior secretary, which ended up being Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.).

The three Trump children also attended a meeting with their father and a group of high-profile Silicon Valley leaders at Trump Tower on Wednesday.

Trump told the group — including CEOs like Apple's Tim Cook, Alphabet's Larry Page, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Intel's Brian Krzanich, IBM's Ginni Rometty, Oracle's Safra Catz, Cisco Systems' Chuck Robbins and Tesla's Elon Musk and Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg — that his administration was "here to help you folks do well.''

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Ivanka Trump has been spotted by the President-elect’s side on many important occasions.

 (CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)

"We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. Anything we can do to help this go on, we will be there for you,'' Trump told the roundtable inside his eponymous Midtown abode.

"We'll be there for you, and you'll call my people, you'll call me — it doesn't make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here," Trump said.

Trump's warm opening remarks appeared to represent an attempted reset with industry leaders he criticized during the campaign — and who’d critcized him as well.

The meeting, however, wasn't totally devoid of the kind of retribution various industry figures had feared Trump would bring to the presidency. Noticeably absent from the meeting was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who Politico reported was "bounced" from being included because his social media company refused to approve an emoji version of the hashtag "#CrookedHillary" during the campaign — a decision that personally angered Trump.

An official with the Trump transition team claimed that Twitter wasn't included in the meeting because it wasn't "big enough."