Jared Kushner page
Wikipedia.org
Political activity
Earlier career and family history
Jared Kushner had been a life-long Democrat and had made major donations to its candidates for years before reportedly undergoing an “ideological conversion” and supporting the 2015–16 Trump campaign.[48][49][50][51] Kushner has had no prior involvement in campaign politics or in government before his father-in-law, Trump’s, campaign.[52]
Trump presidential campaign
From the outset of the presidential campaign of his father-in-law Donald Trump, Kushner was the architect of Trump’s digital, online and social media campaigns, enlisting talent from Silicon Valley to run a 100-person social-media team dubbed “Project Alamo”.[7] Kushner has also helped as a speechwriter and was tasked with working to establish a plan for Trump’s White House transition team should he be elected.[53] He was for a time seen as Trump’s de facto campaign manager, succeeding Corey Lewandowski, who was fired in part on Kushner’s recommendation in June 2016.[54] He has been intimately involved with campaign strategy, coordinating Trump’s visit in late August to Mexico and he was believed to be responsible for the choice of Mike Pence as Trump’s running mate.[7][55] Kushner’s “sprawling digital fundraising database and social media campaign” has been described as “the locus of his father-in-law’s presidential bid”.[56]
According to Eric Schmidt, “Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election, Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources.“[5] Eric Schmidt said, “Jared understood the online world in a way the traditional media folks didn’t. He managed to assemble a presidential campaign on a shoestring using new technology and won. That’s a big deal. Remember all those articles about how they had no money, no people, organizational structure? Well, they won, and Jared ran it.”[5] Peter Thiel said “If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer.”[5]
On July 5, 2016, Kushner wrote an open letter in the New York Observer addressing the controversy around a tweet from the Trump campaign containing allegedly antisemitic imagery. He was responding to his own paper’s editorial by Dana Schwartz criticizing Kushner’s involvement with the Trump campaign.[57] In the letter, Kushner wrote, “In my opinion, accusations like “racist” and “anti-Semite” are being thrown around with a carelessness that risks rendering these words meaningless.”[58]
Trump presidential transition
During the presidential transition, Kushner was said to be his father-in-law’s “confidant”[59] and one of Donald Trump’s closest advisors, even more so than Trump’s four adult children.[60] Trump was reported to have requested the top-secret security clearance for him to attend the Presidential daily intelligence briefings as his staff-level companion, along with General Mike Flynn who already had the clearance prior to his resignation.[61]
The Washington Post, New York Times and numerous other national news authorities explain Kushner was an influential factor behind the firing of New Jersey governor Chris Christie as head of the transition team, as well as the dismissal from the Donald Trump transition team of anyone connected to Christie.[62][63] A source familiar with the Trump campaign explained that “Jared doesn’t like Christie. He’s always held [the prosecution of his father, Charles Kushner] against Christie.”[64] Kushner told Forbes that the reports that he was involved in Christie’s dismissal were false: “Six months ago Governor Christie and I decided this election was much bigger than any differences we may have had in the past, and we worked very well together. The media has speculated on a lot of different things, and since I don’t talk to the press, they go as they go, but I was not behind pushing out him or his people.”[65]
Senior Advisor to President Trump
In January 2017, Kushner was named a Senior White House Advisor to President Trump. Kushner’s appointment was questioned on the basis of a 1967 anti-nepotism law.[66] On January 20, 2017 the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion stating “the President may appoint relatives to his immediate staff of advisors.”[67][68] Kushner was sworn in on January 22, 2017.[69]
Trump put Kushner in charge of brokering peace in Israeli–Palestinian conflict as well as making deals with foreign countries, although in what way he is in charge is unclear.[70][71][72] Furthermore, after Donald Trump became President-elect, Kushner and his wife met with Japanese Prime Minister and other Japanese officials while his wife was conducting a licensing deal between her namesake clothing brand and a Japanese government-owned company.[73] His wife sat in on a meeting between her father, then President-elect Donald Trump and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.[74] In February 2017, his wife Ivanka Trump was a surprise attendee at the Chinese Embassy’s New Year’s party.[75] In late March 2017 he was also given the new role of leading the “White House Office of American Innovation”.[76][77]
Around April 2017, it was revealed that Kushner failed to disclose, that he had met with Russian officials, including the head of a Moscow government-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, and the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, on his top secret security clearance application form.[78] Kushner’s lawyer has called the omissions an “oversight.” Democratic lawmakers, including some members of the House of Representatives have called for suspension or revoking of Kushner’s security clearance, and have written request letters to the Director of the FBI James Comey and Charles Phalen, director of the National Background Investigations Bureau.[79]