The Paparazzi Staked Outside Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s D.C. Home

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WASHINGTON — On a recent Monday morning, Ivanka Trump began her day as usual, with bad media coverage, a good get-up and a greeting at her front door by the paparazzi.

In the six seconds it took Ms. Trump to leave her home and climb into a black Secret Service car, a photographer for The Daily Mail, the British tabloid better known for covering the royal family and celebrity scandals, clicked away furiously behind a sidewalk barricade a few yards away.

Since 2017, when Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, moved to Kalorama, a luxe neighborhood for D.C. elites, paparazzi hired by The Daily Mail have staked out their teal-blue front door.

The photographers were there when Kim Kardashian West visited last year, after her meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office to discuss prison reform. “Keeping up with the Kushners!,” read The Daily Mail’s headline, trumpeting its “exclusive photos” of “Ivanka smiling at the window as she and Jared hosted Kim.”

They were there in March, the morning after Ms. Trump posted a widely mocked Twitter video in which she gushed about her sister-in-law Karlie Kloss’s star turn on “Project Runway.” “Rising above it? Ivanka flashes a bright smile as she steps out wearing a classy black suit and a $3,400 Chanel bag,” the headline read.

And they were there on a recent Friday to document Ms. Trump’s first “stylish summer ensemble” and her “bouncy blowout.”

“All I see of them is the veneer,” said Matthew D’Agostino, 45, a photographer from Baltimore who freelanced for The Daily Mail from 2017 until earlier this year. He described his former subjects as cordial. “When I was first shooting a lot, Jared once asked me, ‘Do you think that’s enough?’ and honestly, it was enough, so I said ‘Yeah, you’re right!’”

Mr. D’Agostino was one of about five photographers that The Daily Mail’s website, which is operated partly out of New York, pays to park outside the couple’s six-bedroom, $15,000-a-month colonial-style house and make like Steve Sands.

They are there before 7 a.m. to catch Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner departing for work. After switching shifts midday, they are also there at 8 p.m., when the couple usually return home. This repeats itself most days, including weekends and holidays.

Neighbors don’t seem to mind or even take notice. That’s because Kalorama already has its share of high-profile officials, with as many black town cars and Chevy Suburbans idling on its leafy drives as one might see in a gangster’s cortège.

The paparazzi stay sandwiched between the Secret Service detail guarding the Trump-Kushner residence and another detail guarding the Obamas, who live a block away. Across the street is the embassy of Guyana and the residence of the Jordanian ambassador.

Still, it’s a somniferous situation for the photographers, who camp out in their cars for hours at a time for a few seconds of activity.

To offset the tedium, Mr. D’Agostino began writing haikus in his boxy green Honda Element. “I call it paparazzaiku,” he said. “I don’t think I’m really good at it, but it’s a way of being creative when there’s a long stretch of time.”


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