What You Need To Know About Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's Son-In-Law And Newly Appointed Advisor
Today, the Donald Trump transition team revealed that Jared Kushner, husband to Trump's daughter Ivanka, would play a special advisory role in the Trump White House, despite ethical concerns related to nepotism rules.
Kushner played a crucial role in Trump's campaign, but has never been involved in politics before that. So, how did Kushner end up gaining special access to America's president-elect? Here's what you need to know.
Kushner Began Work For Trump's Campaign By Advising Him On Issues With Israel
Soon after his first foray into the campaign, Kushner began putting his mark on increasingly more things:
It was Jared who helped prepare Trump for an appearance before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, and Jared who helped broker a truce with Fox News when Trump fought with Megyn Kelly, the network's star anchor. After Trump fired Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager, in June, it was reported that Ivanka had demanded Lewandowski's dismissal for trying to marginalize Jared's influence…Most recently, Jared was on hand to help Trump choose Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate—over and above, it did not go unnoticed, the great nemesis of the Kushner family, Chris Christie.
[Esquire]
Eventually, Kushner Organized And Ran The Marketing And Data Operation Of Trump's Campaign
Kushner walked into a campaign with very little central power and took over — running the campaign like a start-up:
Kushner structured the operation with a focus on maximizing the return for every dollar spent. "We played Moneyball, asking ourselves which states will get the best ROI for the electoral vote," Kushner says. "I asked, How can we get Trump's message to that consumer for the least amount of cost?" FEC filings through mid-October indicate the Trump campaign spent roughly half as much as the Clinton campaign did.
[Forbes]
Kushner And His Team Used Unorthodox Political Tactics To Create Hype Around Trump
Trump's own approach to self-promotion, reinforced by Kushner's advice, was at odds with the highly targeted logic of the web. "If you're running a burger shop, you have to let people know that your burgers are good and get them into your shop to buy them," says a source close to the candidate. "It's pretty similar with voting: You have to find out what people want and then convince them why your product is the right one."
Kushner Runs His Family's Business Empire, Which Includes Media And Real Estate
Unlike the Trump Organization, which has shifted its focus from acquisition to branding of the Trump name, the Kushner family business, led by Mr. Kushner, is a major real estate investor across the New York area and beyond. The company has participated in roughly $7 billion in acquisitions in the last decade, many of them backed by opaque foreign money, as well as financial institutions Mr. Kushner's father-in-law will soon have a hand in regulating.
Kushner And His Companies Have Major Conflicts Of Interest With Government Service, Which Rival Trump's
Kushner has a loan from an Israeli bank under Justice Department investigation. He does business with a Chinese company that the Obama administration has blocked from acquiring some American hotels out of security concerns. Investors in some of his projects have benefited from a federal program that hands out US visas in exchange for hefty investments in American companies.
[Vox]
As Trump's Son-In-Law, The Appointment Raises Questions About Nepotism
Federal government guidelines stipulate that employees at federal agencies are not permitted to hire family members, though Kushner's legal representatives have argued that the White House is not a federal agency.
Questions Remain, But A 1993 Case Involving Hillary Clinton Might Provide Precedent
When President Bill Clinton appointed his wife to chair the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, a lobbying group filed a lawsuit in the D.C. courts. The central legal question in that case wasn't actually about the anti-nepotism statute – it was about whether Hillary Clinton's task force had to publicly disclose records. But almost as a passing mention in the D.C. Circuit's 1993 opinion, the court said that the federal anti-nepotism statute does not appear to cover staff in the White House or in the Executive Office of the President.
[NPR]
Kushner Is An Orthodox Jew, And Has Faced Criticism For Supporting Trump Who Is Associated With Anti-Semitic Politics
In an article published in The Observer, which he owns, a Jewish employee called him out for supporting an "anti-Semetic" ticket:
You went to Harvard, and hold two graduate degrees. Please do not condescend to me and pretend you don't understand the imagery of a six-sided star when juxtaposed with money and accusations of financial dishonesty.
The next day, Kushner responded, saying that Trump has proved to him personally that he is supportive of the Jewish faith:
Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he's not a racist. Despite the best efforts of his political opponents and a large swath of the media to hold Donald Trump accountable for the utterances of even the most fringe of his supporters—a standard to which no other candidate is ever held—the worst that his detractors can fairly say about him is that he has been careless in retweeting imagery that can be interpreted as offensive.
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