Ivanka Trump is offering deep-pocketed bidders a chance to chat with her over coffee for a cool $50,000.
In a listing posted last week on auction site Charitybuzz, the daughter of the President-elect and Trump Organization executive vice president volunteered 30-45 minutes of her time for a “private meet and greet.” The two winners, who must pass criminal background checks and be approved by the Secret Service, will have the opportunity to meet with Ivanka Trump sometime in 2017.
Though the listing makes reference only to her business experience and family with husband Jared Kushner, it speaks to the blurred line between her political and business roles.
Winners will meet with Trump either “at Trump Tower in NYC or Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.,” depending on her schedule. The listing says Secret Service agents will sit in on the coffee date to ensure her safety.
Already, 14 bidders have ponied up huge sums in the hopes of meeting the real estate heir and beauty mogul. While the coffee date is valued at $50,000, the highest bid as of Monday afternoon was $23,000.
Trump’s eldest daughter was one of his closest advisers during the campaign, and is a member of his White House transition team. She has also sat in on meetings with foreign leaders aside the President-elect, and is reportedly moving her family to Washington, D.C. once her father is inaugurated, although the Trump Organization is based in New York City.
While a federal anti-nepotism law prevents public officials, including the president, from appointing family members to government posts, Trump said Sunday that he would “love” to have both his daughter and Kushner in his administration. He told Fox News that he was consulting with experts to see whether legal structures could be created to make that possible, although he previously announced plans to turn over management of the Trump Organization to Ivanka and his two adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
Ethics experts have raised red flags at the prospect of the President-elect merely passing control of his business, which has interests across the globe, to his children.
“Charitybuzz is an apolitical platform,” Jan Friedlander Svendsen, Chief Marketing Officer for parent company Charity Network, told TPM in a statement. “Our online auctions feature hundreds of acclaimed actors and musicians, sports stars, as well as business and political leaders with varying political views.”
Representatives for the Ivanka Trump Collection did not immediately respond Monday to TPM’s request for comment.
Proceeds from the coffee date will go to Eric Trump’s foundation to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The same arrangement was put into place for the proceeds from a Trump Organization internship that the family offered for $100,000 on Charitybuzz this summer.
This post has been updated.
