When Donald Trump was running for president, it was always assumed that if he won, he would try to bring aboard some of his family member in a professional capacity. So the moment Trump won the White House, reporters turned to experts in government ethics to interpret the federal anti-nepotism law, which states that “a public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.”

The consensus seemed to be that Trump could skirt the law if family members were unpaid and not federal employees. But instead, hours after he was inaugurated in January, the Justice Department declared in a 14-page opinion that the new president was exempt from the anti-nepotism law. Trump then appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser, and later made his daughter Ivanka—Kushner’s wife—an assistant to the president. While the press made a minor fuss over these hires, they made barely a ripple among Republicans and even Democrats. As son Eric Trump put it in April, nepotism “is a beautiful thing.”

Now, predictably, two of the president’s children have been caught in political controversy, showing in very different ways the dangers of nepotism in the White House.

At a G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, Ivanka Trump took her father’s seat at the table alongside such world leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Father and daughter were also photographed hobnobbing with Xi, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Although Merkel downplayed the Ivanka’s prominence, many critics seized on it as an example of the Trump administration’s scorn for democratic norms. “What qualifications and experience does Ivanka Trump have in her background that should put her at the table with world leaders like Theresa May and Vladimir Putin?” Zerlina Maxwell, a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer asked on MSNBC. “This just goes to, I think, the level of inherent corruption in this administration.”

Trump brushed aside these complaints. “I’m very proud of my daughter Ivanka, always have been from day one,” he said on Saturday. “I have to tell you that, from day one. If she weren’t my daughter, it’d be so much easier for her. It might be the only bad thing she has going, if you want to know the truth.” But Trump was rattled enough to return to defending himself on this issue on Twitter on Monday: