Jack of Clubs: Jared Kushner, Saudi profiteer, acknowledges: “No Election Fraud”

 

“The Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar has coined the term “mafia state” to describe the creation of “political families” (which can include a ruler’s actual family, as in the examples of Trump’s, Orbán’s, Bolsonaro’s and Erdoğan’s children, with especially nefarious roles reserved for sons-in-law); these families then use the state to enrich themselves.”

 

Kushner on reality:

You have to understand the separation between what exists in the print media and what exists in reality. It’s important to never lose track of reality.”

 nymag.com, Aug. 6, 2004

 

Reality:

 

Jared Kushner Remains Full of Praise for Mohammed bin Salman, His Problematic Fave

The former first son-in-law insists Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose country’s wealth fund gave his investment firm $2 billion, is a “visionary leader.”

BY BESS LEVIN

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/jared-kushner-mohammed-bin-salman-visionary-leader

Jared Kushner Could Be Made Secretary of State in Second Trump Term, and No, That’s Not a Joke

Yes, the same Jared Kushner who supposedly brought peace to the Middle East.

BY BESS LEVIN

DECEMBER 7, 2023

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/12/jared-kushner-donald-trump-secretary-of-state

One of the funniest—“funniest”—subplots to Donald Trump’s time in the White House was the contention that his son-in-law Jared Kushner could and would bring peace to the Middle East.

“If [Jared] can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” Trump declared on the eve of his inauguration, adding, “All my life, I’ve been hearing that’s the toughest deal to make, but I have a feeling Jared is going to do a great job.” 

Spoiler alert: Jared did not do a great job, and that’s despite reading “25 books” on the matter, which as he suggested in January of 2020 made him a bona fide expert. Instead, Kushner:

  • Laid out an “economic vision” for peace in the region that garnered such reviews, from actual Middle East experts, as “The authors of the plan clearly understand nothing” and “[This] is the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives…. Leaving aside that this reads like an investment prospectus for a project that an intern conceived of a week ago, literally none of it is actionable.”
  • Enlisted WeWork founder Adam Neumann to help “produce a slick video…that would showcase what an economically transformed West Bank and Gaza would look like,” which Kushner showed at a conference in Bahrain after his widely panned economic plan was laid out.
  • Came up with the Abraham Accords, which established formal relations between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates—three countries that already had significant ties, and were not at war—and, per The Guardian, “made little mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
  • Wildly claimed that the Abraham Accords “exposed the [Israel-Palestinian] conflict as nothing more than a real-estate dispute.”
  • Proclaimed, “We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict” and basically declared, “mission accomplished.”

Except, y’know, not so much. Nevertheless, on Tuesday, in an article about the people who could make up Trump’s cabinet in a potential second term, Axios reported this insane news, sourced to people who “talk often” with Trump:

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Subpoenaed in Jan. 6 Investigation

The special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to retain power after the 2020 election wants the former president’s daughter and son-in-law to testify to a grand jury.

Maggie Haberman and 

Feb. 22, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/us/politics/jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-jan-6

Former President Donald J. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have been subpoenaed by the special counsel to testify before a federal grand jury about Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election and his role in a pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The decision by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to subpoena Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner underscores how deeply into Mr. Trump’s inner circle Mr. Smith is reaching, and is the latest sign that no potential high-level witness is off limits.

These Trump associates have appeared before the Jan. 6 grand jury

BY ALEX GANGITANO 

07/20/23

https://thehill.com/homenews/4108569-these-trump-associates-have-appeared-before-the-jan-6-grand-jury/

[Excerpt:]

Multiple associates of former President Trump have appeared before the grand jury investigating Jan. 6, 2021, that informed Trump on Sunday he’s a target of their probe — likely indicating charges are coming soon.

The grand jury, convened by special counsel Jack Smith, has been looking into whether Trump knew he lost the 2020 presidential election, along with broader efforts to interfere with the transfer of power following election.

Trump’s former associates have reportedly been asked whether the former president acknowledged he lost the presidency while he was publicly outraged and claiming the election was stolen. 

Here are the most notable Trump associates who have appeared before the Jan. 6 grand jury.

Jared Kushner 

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner gave testimony recently, the New York Times first reported.

He was reportedly asked about Trump’s mindset in the time between losing in the 2020 election in November to the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, reportedly told prosecutors Trump genuinely believed the election was stolen.

Jared Kushner ‘Cooperating’ With Trump Indictment, Michael Cohen Believes

https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-cooperating-trump-indictment-michael-cohen-believes

 

Could Jared and Ivanka Return to the Trump Campaign Fold?

[Excerpts:]

On the evening of July 19, Donald Trump hosted a private screening of the child-trafficking movie Sound of Freedom at his Bedminister golf club. The guest list included the film’s QAnon-promoting starJim Caviezel, and other MAGA elites, such as former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and newscaster turned election denier Kari Lake. Trump, standing in a blue suit and red tie, called Caviezel a “great star” and lauded the movie’s $100 million-plus box office haul as “really something.” But the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner is what has gotten Trumpworld buzzing.

According to Trump advisers, Ivanka and Kushner have been more visible lately, stoking speculation that the pair could take an active role in Trump’s 2024 campaign.  “They’ve made it clear they’re supportive. 

But with Trump dominating the 2024 Republican primary, some sources suggested Kushner and Ivanka might hop on the Trump train. “Now that the president is 40 points ahead, of course Jared is pretending he’s involved. If he’s president again, Jared needs to protect his turf, especially in the Middle East,” a former Trump administration official said.

Last fall, the couple made it clear they were done with politics. “I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family,” Ivanka said in a statement released on November 15, the day Trump launched his presidential campaign at Mar-a-Lago. Kushner, meanwhile, was focused on his private-equity firm. Months after leaving the White House, Kushner received a controversial $2 billion investment from the fund led by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Kushner and Ivanka’s decision to back away from Trump seemed like a smart career move at the time. Trump’s political fortunes were dwindling. Many of the midterm candidates he endorsed––such as Lake, Doug Mastriano, and Herschel Walker–– lost winnable races. A Politico–Morning Consult poll found that 65% of voters said Trump should “probably or definitely not run again.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis looked formidable after his crushing 19-point reelection victory. A poll commissioned by the Texas Republican Party found that Texas Republicans preferred DeSantis over Trump by more than 10 points. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was all in on DeSantis, famously running a New York Post cover with the headline “DeFUTURE.”

As Trump slumped, Kushner and Ivanka spent little time at Mar-a-Lago, a source said. That echoed their White House habit of disappearing during scandals but claiming credit for victories. But they’ve been closer to Trump this summer, with the ex-president having reasserted his grip on the Republican electorate. 

One red flag for Kushner and Ivanka surely is the onslaught of legal threats facing Trump, who has already been criminally indicted twice this year, in connection to the hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels and his alleged mishandling of classified materials. (Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases.) And the former president could be indicted imminently in both federal and Georgia cases related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Kushner and Ivanka are highly protective of their brands and likely would not want to be publicly associated with Trump if he were to be convicted on federal or state charges.

But if Trump returns to the White House, Kushner and Ivanka’s calculus might change. “Everyone loves a winner!” a former Trump 2020 campaign adviser said.

Letters from an American, HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

December 7, 2022

Last night the chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, Ron Wyden (D-OR), and the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, asking for information in their “ongoing investigations into whether former Senior White House Adviser Jared Kushner’s financial conflicts of interest may have led him to improperly influence U.S. tax, trade, and national security policies for his own financial gain.” 

The letter outlines the timing of the 2018 financial bailout of the badly leveraged Kushner property at 666 Fifth Avenue (now known as 660 Fifth Avenue) with more than $1 billion paid in advance from Qatar. Qatar had repeatedly refused to invest in the property, but after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed a blockade on Qatar—after Kushner discussed isolating Qatar with them without informing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—Qatar suddenly threw in the necessary cash. Shortly after that, the Saudi and UAE governments lifted the blockade, with Kushner taking credit for brokering the agreement. 

Because of this case, and a number of others covered in the letter, the committees have asked the Defense Department to provide any correspondence it had with the Kushners during the Trump administration, or about the various dealings in which business and government appeared to overlap. They have asked for the information by January 13, 2023.

Jared and Ivanka, Without the Power or the Masks

In stark videotaped interviews, Ivanka Trump accepted the notion that there had been no fraud in the 2020 election. Jared Kushner complained that a White House counsel had been “whining.”

[Excerpts:]

Next was Mr. Kushner. In his video he was pressed by Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, about whether he was aware that the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, had been threatening to resign because Mr. Trump was making increasingly outlandish efforts to stay in power.

“Like I said,” said Mr. Kushner, who was rarely heard from in public during his father-in-law’s presidency, “my interest at that time was on trying to get as many” presidential pardons finished as possible. Mr. Kushner repeatedly inserted himself into the pardons process, prompting complaints from legal experts and some of his colleagues. He added that he knew that Mr. Cipollone and “the team were always saying, ‘Oh we are going to resign, we are not going to be there if this happens, if that happens.’ So I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.”

Ms. Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, sounding grim, spoke to the hearing room after the video ended. “Whining,” she said. “There’s a reason why people serving in our government take an oath to the constitution. As our founding fathers recognized, democracy is fragile. The people in positions of public trust are duty bound to defend it, to step forward when action is required. In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual or a political party.”

Mr. Kushner’s words enraged Mr. Cipollone’s former colleagues, many of whom traded messages as they complained to reporters and one another as the hearing went on that the former president’s son-in-law was “arrogant.”

No two people had positioned themselves as prominently in Mr. Trump’s White House as his daughter and his son-in-law, who came on as official advisers despite anti-nepotism laws and warnings from other aides that hiring family members can be fraught. Over four years, the two tended carefully to their images.

Aides feared getting on the wrong side of the couple, who lived in Washington’s expensive Kalorama neighborhood and hosted dinners for the city’s political elite.

The videos made clear that both were aware that things were going awry within the White House. But according to more than a half-dozen former Trump advisers, although both have attempted to distance themselves from that period, neither made much of an effort to pull Mr. Trump away from his obsession with staying in power.

Instead, they left that task to the paid staff, who in turn kept waiting for the family to intervene more aggressively. Shortly after Election Day, most aides tried to avoid the Oval Office, fearful of having to listen to Mr. Trump vent. They were also eager to avoid the worst- case scenario: a directive from Mr. Trump that might have been illegal, and could have ensnared them in an investigation.

 

Mother Jones Daily Newsletter

By Inae Oh

June 8, 2022

There’s a new report on MAGA world’s favorite nepotism babies that’s got me chuckling today.

No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen, according to people close to them. While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.

The report goes on to detail how, in the final days of the Trump White House, Jared Kushner would tell anyone who’d listen—and it looks like the New York Times sure did—that he and the wife essentially knew that Dad was a loser before it had been officially called, and that they’d leave even if Trump didn’t accept the results.

It’s hardly a coincidence that this latest one, which could help shield the couple from any accusation that they played a role in fomenting violence at the Capitol, is emerging just as the January 6 committee is presenting them as the hearings’ star attraction.

Plus, does it make Javanka look any better if they indeed bolted, allowing the likes of Rudy Giuliani and other conspiracy-addled morons to fuel election lies and eventually the attack on the Capitol? Nah. But head here for the only reason you should maybe read the latest drivel on Jared and Ivanka. I sincerely hope you LOL with me.

Mr. Kushner’s role in the final months of the Trump White House could come into sharp relief once the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol opens hearings.

 

Jared Kushner’s PE firm secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia despite objections he was too inexperienced to manage the money, report says

May 11. 2022

https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-private-equity-firm-funding-from-saudi-arabia-report-2022-4

[Excerpts:]

Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment for his private equity firm from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund last summer, The New York Times reported.

Kushner set up Affinity Partners in July following his departure from the White House, where he served as a senior advisor to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.

Reports have since detailed how Kushner has traveled the Middle East trying to drum up investment, with mixed success.

Though said to have been rebuffed by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in July, The Times reported.

However, citing an internal document dated June 30, The Times reported that an internal PIF panel tasked with assessing the feasibility of investment was reluctant to support Kushner’s fund, citing his lack of experience.

The group also flagged that its background check found that Affinity Partners was “unsatisfactory in all aspects” and that there were “public relations risks” given Kushner was a former senior adviser to Trump, The Times said.

But the panel was overruled by the board of the PIF, The Times reported. The chairman of the board is  Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader who has formed a close bond with Kushner since 2017.

The PIF and Kushner Companies, the Kushner family firm, did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Kushner and Crown Prince Mohammed are on a first-name basis, texting often and informally when Kushner was in the White House, The Times previously reported.

In 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed gifted Kushner two swords and a dagger worth $48,000, The Times said.

In turn, Kushner defended Crown Prince Mohammed in 2018 following the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

It appears that Crown Prince Mohammed and Kushner remained close after Trump’s presidency, with Bloomberg reporting that Kushner met the crown prince in Saudi Arabia during a tour of the Middle East earlier in 2022.

In filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 31, Affinity Partners said it had a total of $2.5 billion under management, almost all of which appears to comprise the Saudi investment, according to The Times.

Kushner’s close links with Crown Prince Mohammed and the existence of the investment in Affinity Partners are likely to raise ethical questions should Kushner return to the White House with Trump, should the latter run for and win the 2024 election. Trump has not said whether he is running for office again.

However, NBC News reported that Kushner recently volunteered to give six hours of testimony to the House committee investigating the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and Trump’s role in it. According to a source who spoke with NBC News, Kushner was being cooperative and friendly.

A source close to Kushner previously told Axios there is no guarantee that Kushner will follow Trump into a 2024 run.

“He can’t live his life just waiting on what [Trump] may or may not do,” the person said.

 

JARED KUSHNER AND DONALD TRUMP PROBABLY WON’T BE SPLITTING A MILKSHAKE WITH TWO STRAWS ANY TIME SOON

The former first son-in-law reportedly gave the House January 6 committee “valuable” and “helpful” information about the events surrounding the attack on the Capitol.
[Excerpt:]

Kushner’s apparent helpfulness to the committee—which could change should he be asked to turn over documents—is in stark contrast to numerous other insiders. In November, former senior White House adviser Stephen Bannon was criminally charged for ignoring a subpoena from the panel. In January, the House voted to hold Meadows in criminal contempt, after he initially said he would cooperate—and turned over thousands of pages of documents—before abruptly changing his mind. And just this week, the panel unanimously voted to hold former Trump advisers Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro in contempt of Congress.

According to the committee, it is in talks with Ivanka Trump for her to answer questions, but a final agreement has not been reached. “The expectation is that it will take place, as to when I can’t tell you right now, I know we are engaging her as a committee,” chairman Bennie Thompson said Wednesday. In a letter sent to the former first daughter in January, the committee noted that she was in the Oval Office during a phone call between her father and Mike Pence on the morning of January 6.

That’s the phone call the president reportedly told his V.P. he didn’t have “the courage” to block the certification of Biden’s win. Rep. Liz Cheney has also said the committee had “firsthand testimony” that Ivanka asked her father “at least twice” to stop the riot. (For her part Ivanka tweeted that day “the violence must stop,” which would have meant more if she hadn’t initially addressed the people attacking the Capitol as “American patriots.”)

 

These Two Lawyers Breathed Life Into Trump’s Big Lie, but Did They Even Believe It?

March. 10, 2022 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-lawyers-john-eastman-and-jeffrey-clark-breathed-life-into-trumps-big-lie

[Excerpts:]

Trump’s despotic strategy relied on two main parts: interrupting congressional certification of the electoral ballot count and spreading lies about Joe Biden’s victorious election results, according to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. Both were legal quagmires that flouted the U.S. Constitution—and Trump had a lawyer for each one. [This reference is to John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, respectively].

According to the knowledgeable sources, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House aide, privately admitted that a lot of what Trump’s lawyers were pushing was a fraud and farce.

Nevertheless, Team Trump continued to hold up Kushner as an example of a supposed true-believer—despite his obvious lack of commitment to the cause.

“Jared has been more hardcore in fighting back on this [election outcome] than anybody,” Trump’s then-senior adviser Jason Miller told The Daily Beast in early November 2020.

 

These Two Lawyers Breathed Life Into Trump’s Big Lie, but Did They Even Believe It?

Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House attorney, said it was “very unfortunate” that Trump’s advisers “fed him nonsense about the election results” because it likely led to Jan. 6.

Jose Pagliery, Political Investigations Reporter

Asawin Suebsaeng, Senior Political Reporter

Published Mar. 10, 2022 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-lawyers-john-eastman-and-jeffrey-clark-breathed-life-into-trumps-big-lie

Trump’s despotic strategy relied on two main parts: interrupting congressional certification of the electoral ballot count and spreading lies about Joe Biden’s victorious election results, according to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. Both were legal quagmires that flouted the U.S. Constitution—and Trump had a lawyer for each one. [This reference is to John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, respectively].

In the earlier days of his anti-democratic crusade that began right afterElection Night 2020, Trump would discuss with senior administration officials and aides some of the nonsensical ideas he’d heard from Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and several other key election deadenders. Trump was getting inundated with theories (however baseless and lie-heavy) from a band of committed Trumpists, and wanted to get advice on what his other advisers thought of the theories, and what they thought of Powell, Giuliani, and company.

On a number of occasions in that brief time period, according to three people familiar with the matter, the then-president was told that Powell and the other election denialists were “crazy,” or opportunists who were just telling him what they thought he wanted to hear. Trump was warned that Powell and the gang were trying to sell him on something that was doomed in a courtroom.

Trump would often respond to this early counsel with phrases such as “maybe you’re right,” “I guess you might be right,” or even “I guess you’re right.”

But as the post-election days dragged on, it didn’t matter. Trump was all-in on his “fraud” and “rigged election” propaganda, and he jumped on virtually every opportunity or fanatic proposal.

In his final months in office, Trump was surrounded by lieutenants and sycophants willing to take his multi-pronged effort to its logical, menacing extremes. People of influence close to Trump who didn’t believe a word of it played along anyway, and often actively worked to support the outgoing president’s bogus claims.

According to the knowledgeable sources, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House aide, privately admitted that a lot of what Trump’s lawyers were pushing was a fraud and farce. Nevertheless, Team Trump continued to hold up Kushner as an example of a supposed true-believer—despite his obvious lack of commitment to the cause.

“Jared has been more hardcore in fighting back on this [election outcome] than anybody,” Trump’s then-senior adviser Jason Miller told The Daily Beast in early November 2020.  [Boldface added]

Similarly,top aides on Trump’s reelection campaign, including his 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien, also—again, privatelyexpressed their conclusion that the legal challenges were doomed and that the MAGA lawyers’ work was built on little more than embarrassing conspiracy theories. And yet, they pretended not to be embarrassed, and publicly claimed “we are here to support” Giuliani and his legal team, even as official campaign surrogates were freely admitting that Trump had lost, fair and square.

With more than a year’s distance from the bloody assault on the U.S. Capitol, vanishingly few prominent Republicans are willing to blame the ex-president for the riot, or admit that the Trumpists’ “stolen election” lies have no basis in reality. The small number of conservatives who do, though, often do not spend much time publicly calling out Trump by name, despite the fact that he was responsible for all of it.

Instead, they generally reserve their scorn for a handful of aides and lawyers—the Eastmans and the Clarks of the world—who did their best to protect and enable Trump.

Last month, during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Pence’s former chief of staff told host Chuck Todd that the president received bad legal advice—but he wasn’t sure if this was merely a case where Trump simply heard exactly what he wanted to hear.

“I think, unfortunately, the president had many bad advisers that were basically snake oil salesmen giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do,” Marc Short said.

JARED AND IVANKA TRY TO REENTER POLITE SOCIETY, ARE PROMPTLY TOLD TO F–K OFF

December 1, 2021

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-louis-vuitton-fashion-show

[Excerpt:]
In other Javanka news, The New York Timesreported on Friday that Kushner’s Saudi ass-kissing and murder-excusing may soon pay offin the form of a very large check for his new investment firm.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner distance themselves from the former President and his constant complaints

By Kate Bennett and Gabby Orr, CNN

Updated June 23, 2021

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/23/politics/donald-trump-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/index.html

[Excerpts]

With each passing day away from Washington, former President Donald Trump’s grievances continue unabated. And those complaints appear to be driving away two of the people who were closest to him during his White House tenure: his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Sometimes the former President complains for several hours about the “stolen” 2020 election. Other times, his frustrations emerge in fits and starts — more likely when he is discussing his hopeful return to national politics.

The former President has also started to question the role that Kushner — one of the few people who were able to stay close to Trump throughout his two presidential campaigns and White House tenure — has played in his presidential legacy.

According to two acquaintances. Ivanka Trump has to walk a fine line between embracing her father and distancing herself from his election lies.

Simultaneously, the disappearance of Kushner — once the ringleader of Trump’s policy operations — was also apparent.

It wasn’t the distance that kept Kushner away, say those who know his thinking — it was the desire to be far from Trump’s constant stream of contempt, and the chorus of voices cheering him on. “Trump always has an array of characters around him,” says a person who worked in the administration.

Without input from his elder daughter and her husband, Trump is isolated from their influence.

Now Trump finds himself more often in the company of an ever-changing circle of advisers. Trump allies say he is once again interacting with characters who should require supervision — noting that he has been in frequent touch with One America News anchor Christina Bobb, a prolific proponent of far-fetched theories about the 2020 election, in addition to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has encouraged Trump to keep challenging the 2020 election results in several states. 

Trump has privately started to question Kushner’s contributions to his legacy. One person who spoke with the former President in the last two weeks recounted a conversation in which Trump complained about Kushner inking a book deal that he thinks his son-in-law will use to take credit for some of his achievements. Another source confirms there is jealousy from Trump about Kushner’s book, which a Kushner associate says was a “seven-figure deal” with Broadside Books, the conservative branch of mega-publisher HarperCollins.

“He’s always been suspicious of Jared,” this person said, noting that Trump has previously discounted Kushner’s role in some of the key policies he enacted as president, including Middle East peace deals and criminal justice revisions. Two people familiar with conversations Trump has had since his arrival in May at Bedminster say he questioned whether Kushner “accomplish[ed] peace in the Middle East after all” after tensions between Israel and Hamas erupted into a violent series of airstrikes last month. 

thehill.comFeb. 13, 2021

“When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol, ”Republican  U.S. Rep. Herrera Beutler (WA) said in her statement.

“McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,'” the statement added.

Hiding from the rioters in a secret location away from the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) appealed to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. 

washingtonpost.com, Jan. 11, 2021

But as senators and House members trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday begged for immediate help during the siege, they struggled to get through to the president, who — safely ensconced in the West Wing — was too busy watching fiery TV images of the crisis unfolding around them to act or even bother to hear their pleas. ‘Six hours of paralysis: Inside Trump’s failure to act after a mob stormed the Capitol’

 

 

 

Jared Kushner advising Trump to ‘pursue his legal remedies’ to the election.

nbcnews.com, Nov. 9, 2020

“Today, the strange career of John Eastman raises questions about whether any of those values—civil discourse, careful analysis, mutual respect, the entire small-l liberal
intellectual project—have any substance at all, or are just fairy tales that disguise the grim reality that law, and everything else in American politics, is nothing more noble than a knife fight in the dark.”

— Garrett Epps