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Ivanka Trump Is Starting Her Own Foundation, And Foreign Governments Are Donating

By JohnThomas Didymus
Published on: 07:46 PST, Apr 26, 2017

First daughter Ivanka Trump has reportedly started her own foundation “to economically empower women,” and several foreign governments, leaders, and corporations have already made significant commitments to the fund.

Axios’ Mike Allen reports that Ivanka personally confirmed from Berlin that she has started building a “massive fund” to benefit female entrepreneurs around the world. A source told Axios that the fund will accept contributions from foreign countries and global corporations.

“The statistics and results prove that when you invest in women and girls, it benefits both developed and developing economies,” Ivanka said from Berlin. “Women are an enormous untapped resource, critical to the growth of all countries.”

According to Axios, a source revealed that many foreign countries, including Canada, Germany, and Middle Eastern countries, have made commitments to the fund being set up to provide working and growth capital to small and medium-sized enterprises run by women entrepreneurs in developed and developing economies around the world.

Ivanka has reportedly consulted with the World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim on how to set up and grow the fund, and President Trump is reportedly a “huge supporter” of his daughter’s global charity initiative.

Analysts have wasted no time pointing out that Ivanka’s planned fund is disturbingly reminiscent of the heavily criticized Clinton Foundation which the Republicans, including then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, targeted with accusations of conflict of interest and described as a corrupt pay-to-play scheme.

According to Salon’s Matthew Rozsa, Ivanka’s foundation would be “like the Clinton Foundation all over again.” But others pointed out that the conflict of interest issues for Ivanka’s global charity would be worse than Clinton’s because it is a foundation being run by the daughter of the president who has special access to her father and “who also runs her own large international company and has two brothers who are currently running their father’s company and trying to rake in as much money as possible on the fame and power of the presidency.”

Clinton came under heavy fire from her Republican opponents, including Donald Trump, who accused her of using her global charity foundation as a tool for influence mongering during her tenure as secretary of state. She was accused of running a corrupt pay-to-play scheme in which foreign governments, politicians, and corporations donated to her foundation in the hope of being rewarded with access.

Clinton was widely regarded at the time as a likely future president of the United States.

The Trump campaign gleefully exploited the controversy surrounding the Clinton Foundation, portraying Clinton as a poster child for the corrupt Washington establishment. During a campaign rally in October of 2016, Trump personally accused Clinton of engaging in “pay for play” by accepting an invitation to speak at a Clinton Global Initiative event in Morocco in exchange for a $12 million donation by the country’s king.

“Now from WikiLeaks, we just learned she tried to get 12 million (dollars) from the king of Morocco for an appearance,” Trump said, according to CNN. “More pay for pay for play.”

Trump then said that as president he would introduce ethic reforms that would prevent members of Congress and the executive branch from serving as lobbyists for at least five years after their government service. He also called for imposing term limits on Congress members.

But CNN noted at the time that none of the Trump’s proposed reforms would have addressed the “pay for play” he alleged Clinton was engaged in. CNN also pointed out that Clinton did not attend the Clinton Global Initiative summit that took place in Morocco in May of 2015.

Clinton was eventually forced to pledge during her 2016 campaign to stop accepting donations from foreign countries if she becomes the U.S. president.

But the new report that Ivanka Trump is planning to start a global charity foundation from inside the White House with the approval of Trump, who had railed against the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from foreign governments and interests, has raised comments, with analysts wondering why Trump is not applying the same moral and ethical standards to his daughter’s initiative.

[Featured Image by Clemens Bilan/Getty Images]

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