<b>Eric Lipton & Maggie Haberman</b>: Coffee with Ivanka Trump

Ivanka, is considering to play an informal role in her father's administration

Ozan M Ozkural, a London-based investment manager, found a creative way to gain one-on-one access to the new first family: He bid nearly $60,000 to have a cup of coffee with Ivanka Trump for a charity event she was hosting.

Ozkural wanted to meet with Ivanka Trump — who is considering playing an informal role in her father’s administration — to gain insight into topics like President-elect Donald J Trump’s possible future dealings with Turkey and other nations where Ozkural invests, he said.

“The nature of my business, we talk to a lot of different governments, a lot of politicians and lawmakers across the world,” Ozkural said in an interview on Thursday, adding that he recently had a conversation with the president of Argentina. “You end up getting a better sense of what the modus operandi will be.”

Ozkural is one of several high-profile bidders in a feverish competition to win time with one of Donald Trump’s children. Other bidders include the owner of a Tex-Mex restaurant chain from Houston who wants to press Donald Trump, through his daughter, about immigration policy, and a real estate executive and fringe presidential candidate from Florida who wants to send a message to Donald Trump about election fraud.

Now they may not get a chance to “Enjoy Coffee with Ivanka Trump in NYC or DC,” by winning the auction hosted by a New York company called Charitybuzz. The money was to go to a foundation led by Ivanka Trump’s brother Eric to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital of Tennessee.

But Eric Trump told The New York Times on Thursday that he was considering shutting down the bidding — 10 days after it started — about an hour after The Times raised questions about the auction.

Ivanka Trump. Photo: Reuters

The Obama administration prohibited any member of the first family from directly soliciting charitable donations, said Norm Eisen, who served as an ethics lawyer early in President Obama’s tenure. Obama and his wife, Michelle, have attended occasional charitable fund-raising events, including the Congressional Black Caucus annual dinners. The Obamas also allowed their daughters’ high school to auction off magazines they had signed, Eisen said, but they did not auction off access to themselves.

“You never, ever want to have government officials using their public office for the private gain, even for a worthy charity,” Eisen said. “That was how we did it.”

The circumstance with the Trumps is not an exact parallel; all of the incoming first family will not live in the White House.

In a brief telephone interview about the auction, Eric Trump — who is expected to remain at the Trump Organization — said that he was trying to navigate the “new world” he is in since his father’s win.

“We’ve done this every year,” he said, referring to his foundation, which typically raises about $5 million annually, has a single paid staff member and gives almost all its revenues to St Jude’s. “We utilised Charitybuzz to raise significant funds. Every single year we’ve auctioned off a lunch with one of ourselves. It’s nothing more than an effort to raise a lot of money in an effort to help sick children.”

In a statement, Ivanka Trump said it was an “honour” to raise “additional money to benefit terminally ill children through the donation of my personal time.”

Charity auctions by celebrities and others are not uncommon, and Charitybuzz is a website that celebrities use to help raise money through auctions. (On the same site that listed Ivanka Trump’s auction, a former New York Times editor raised money for a children’s charity by auctioning off a tour of The Times.)

The possible cancellation of the auction would be the second concession by Ivanka Trump that she might have overstepped ethical bounds. A jewellery company she owns apologised last month after a senior executive there sent out a notice to reporters promoting a $10,800 gold bracelet Ivanka Trump had worn during a television interview with her father.

Officials in Washington have long accepted donations to charities from special interests pursuing favours. The charity of Senator Orrin G Hatch, Republican of Utah, accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, and the Congressional Black Caucus takes in millions of dollars annually from corporate donors that are pushing legislation in Congress.

© 2016 The New York Times