Ivanka’s $360 Million Vancouver Deal Is Reportedly Being Investigated by the F.B.I.

Even Ivanka Trump, the “princess royal” of the West Wing, is being sucked into the vortex of scandal that has encompassed her father’s administration. In the past week, her husband, Jared Kushner, lost his security clearance, lost his P.R. guard dog, was revealed as a top intelligence target for foreign spies, and was reported to have met with banking executives in the White House shortly before his family’s company received nearly half a billion dollars in loans. Donald Trump is said to be is “frustrated with Mr. Kushner, whom he now views as a liability” and “another problem to deal with,” and has suggested that both he and Ivanka move back to New York.

Ivanka, too, has her own set of problems. While the First Couple braced for an Intercept story that Kushner’s father had failed to secure a loan from the Qatari government just weeks before Kushner backed a blockade of Qatar, CNN dropped another bombshell: United States counterintelligence officials are probing a Trump Organization real-estate deal in Canada in which Ivanka played a leading role.

The financing and negotiations surrounding the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver have come under F.B.I. scrutiny, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke with CNN. It’s unclear why the F.B.I. is interested in the deal, which dates back to 2013, and in which Ivanka played a key role. But CNN reports that foreign buyers involved, as well as the timing of the $360 million project’s opening in February 2017, may have caught the agency’s attention. Like many Trump Organization deals, the New York-based company does not own the building but rather is paid licensing and marketing fees by the developer, the Holborn Group. Joo Kim Tiah, a member of one of Malaysia’s wealthiest families, runs the Canada-based development firm, and said in October 2015 that the First Daughter was closely involved: “Ivanka and myself approved everything, everything in this project,” he said during an interview.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka’s ethics counsel, dismissed the idea that there was anything untoward about the deal. “CNN is wrong that any hurdle, obstacle, concern, red flag, or problem has been raised with respect to Ms. Trump or her clearance application,” he said in a statement. He also denied that the investigation would impact Ivanka’s security clearance in any way: “Nothing in the new White House policy has changed Ms. Trump's ability to do the same work she has been doing since she joined the Administration.” Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, similarly played down the report, saying that “the company’s role was and is limited to licensing its brand and managing the hotel. Accordingly, the company would have had no involvement in the financing of the project or the sale of units.”

Though it’s unclear whether special counsel Robert Mueller is interested in Ivanka’s involvement in the Vancouver deal, her husband’s contacts with foreign entities has certainly garnered his attention. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that at least four foreign governments have discussed how they can use the Kushner Cos.’s financial woes and entanglements as leverage over the president’s son-in-law, The New York Times reported that Kushner Cos. received roughly $500 million in financing from two U.S. firms after Jared met with executives from the companies at the White House. (Christine Taylor, a spokeswoman for Kushner Cos., said in a statement that the Times story represented an “attempt to make insinuating connections that do not exist to disparage the financial institutions and companies involved.”)

The cascade of negative headlines has complicated matters for the duo in the White House. Amid an internal struggle with Kelly, who was responsible for altering the White House security-clearance policy—a move some saw as a targeted attack on Kushner—some aides have reportedly “expressed frustration that Mr. Kushner and his wife . . . have remained at the White House, despite Mr. Trump at times saying they never should have come to the White House and should leave.” The president, meanwhile, is reportedly mulling options to sideline them. Per the Times, while he has outwardly encouraged Jared and Ivanka to remain in their West Wing posts, he has also “privately asked Mr. Kelly for his help in moving them out.”