Washington: The Justice Department has issued an opinion saying that US President Donald Trump's appointment of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser does not violate federal anti-nepotism laws.
In a 14-page opinion issued on Friday by the department's Office of Legal Counsel, government lawyers said the president's special hiring authority exempted White House positions from federal laws barring the president from appointing relatives to lead a federal agency.
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Some legal experts had raised concerns that Kushner's appointment violated a 1967 law that was intended to curtail nepotism in the federal government. Six years earlier, president John F. Kennedy had appointed his brother Robert as attorney-general.
The new Justice Department opinion cited a subsequent 1978 law that gives the president the authority to appoint White House staff members without regard to other laws restricting employment and compensation of federal employees.
The opinion, issued shortly after Trump was sworn into office, appeared to reverse previous ones from the Justice Department. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the opinion noted, the department said his son could not serve as an unpaid assistant to a White House staff member.
It did not say how Kushner's situation was different from the one involving Carter's son.
The decision issued on Saturday paves the way for Kushner, 35, to have nearly unfettered access to Trump in the Oval Office. Kushner is Trump's closest adviser and was a figure of stability throughout the tumultuous campaign and the transition.
Kushner married Trump's daughter Ivanka in 2009. He has run his family's vast real estate company and has owned a newspaper, The New York Observer.
![Jared Kushner at the inaugural parade with his wife Ivanka Trump.](/web/20170123151341im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/e/e/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw9ga.png/1485063617389.jpg)
Trump announced on January 9 that he would appoint Kushner to the post and that Kushner would not accept a salary. His portfolio is expected to include the Middle East and Israel, government partnerships with the private sector and matters involving free trade.
On Thursday, Trump lavished praise on Kushner at a candlelight dinner for donors at Union Station in Washington.
![Jared Kushner, flanked by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (left) and US Vice-President Mike Pence, watches his ...](/web/20170123151341im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/e/e/8/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw9ga.png/1485063617389.jpg)
"If you can't produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can," Trump said.
Some prominent Washington ethics lawyers - including White House ethics lawyers in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations - had said they supported allowing Kushner to hold a formal position in the White House because that would make him subject to conflict of interest laws. He will be legally prevented from taking any action that could benefit his businesses or those of his family, including his wife.
![Jared Kushner arrives at the presidential inauguration on Friday US time.](/web/20170123151341im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/e/e/d/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw9ga.png/1485063617389.jpg)
Kushner intends to sell some assets to his brother and to put others into a trust overseen by his mother, said Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer who has worked on the plan. Gorelick, who was deputy attorney-general in the Clinton administration, said she had been consulting with federal ethics officials to try to address any conflict-of-interest issues associated with Kushner's appointment.
He will also be required to file a financial disclosure report that details his assets and income, and to divest holdings that could create a conflict of interest.
In an email on Saturday, Gorelick said that "we believed that we had the better argument on this", adding: "The Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department - in an opinion by a highly regarded career deputy assistant attorney-general - adopted a position consistent with our own."
Richard W. Painter, a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, said that while he had some doubts about the opinion, "it is a reasonable interpretation".
"But what is important now," he added, "is that Mr Kushner complies with the conflict of interest and disclosure provisions, and I wish his father-in-law, the President, would do the same."
Other legal scholars, noting that the new opinion was not consistent with past interpretations of the law, questioned whether it might have been influenced by Gorelick or others.
"It walks back from earlier positions the Justice Department took," said Kathleen Clark, a law professor and ethics expert at Washington University in St Louis. "It does seem to track one of the legal arguments that Jamie Gorelick put forward."
Painter said that during the Bush administration he had informed a senior official that he was legally barred from granting a White House internship to his son. Painter said he had given that counsel based on the Justice Department's reading of the anti-nepotism law in the case of Carter's son.
Painter said it would have been a safer course for the Trump administration to ask Congress to resolve the issue.
New York Times