The New Yorker broke a story about how Ivanka and Don Jr. managed to avoid a criminal indictment. The very next day, the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch) published an article “by” Ivanka offering advopice about the importance of technology in education. It seems that advocacy for ed tech is now part of her portfolio, as Middle East peace is a small part of husband Jared’s portfolio. The article was banal; the comments on it are hilarious.

The backstory: The New Yorker published a blockbuster revelation of a curious episode in the checkered history of the Trump family.

In 2012, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for inflating the sales at the Trump Organization’s new Trump Soho condo-hotel. Sales were going poorlyand apparently they claimed that the condos were selling fast. In New York, that is not Legal. Trump senior’s personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz made a $25,000 campaign contribution to the District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Kasowitz had a private meeting with Vance. The investigation was closed. Vance returned the money.

“Ultimately, Vance overruled his own prosecutors. Three months after the meeting, he told them to drop the case. Kasowitz subsequently boasted to colleagues about representing the Trump children, according to two people. He said that the case was “really dangerous,” one person said, and that it was “amazing I got them off.” (Kasowitz denied making such a statement.)

“Vance defended his decision. “I did not at the time believe beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime had been committed,” he told us. “I had to make a call and I made the call, and I think I made the right call.”
Just before the 2012 meeting, Vance’s campaign had returned Kasowitz’s twenty-five-thousand-dollar contribution, in keeping with what Vance describes as standard practice when a donor has a case before his office. Kasowitz “had no influence, and his contributions had no influence whatsoever on my decision-making in the case,” Vance said.

“But, less than six months after the D.A.’s office dropped the case, Kasowitz made an even larger donation to Vance’s campaign, and helped raise more from others—eventually, a total of more than fifty thousand dollars. After being asked about these donations as part of the reporting for this article—more than four years after the fact—Vance said he now plans to give back Kasowitz’s second contribution, too. “I don’t want the money to be a millstone around anybody’s neck, including the office’s,” he said.

“Kasowitz told us that his donations to Vance were unrelated to the case. “I donated to Cy Vance’s campaign because I was and remain extremely impressed by him as a person of impeccable integrity, as a brilliant lawyer and as a public servant with creative ideas and tremendous ability,” Kasowitz wrote in an e-mailed statement. “I have never made a contribution to anyone’s campaign, including Cy Vance’s, as a ‘quid-pro-quo’ for anything.”

“Last year, the Times reported the existence of the criminal investigation into the Trump SoHo project. But the prosecutor’s focus on Ivanka and Donald, Jr., and the e-mail evidence against them, as well as Kasowitz’s involvement, and Vance’s decision to overrule his prosecutors, had not previously been made public. This account is based on interviews with twenty sources familiar with the investigation, court records, and other public documents. We were not able to review copies of the e-mails that were the focal point of the inquiry. We are relying on the accounts of multiple individuals who have seen them.”

Grifters.