Tag: Trump nepotism

Palestinians rally against Kushner’s economic peace plan

GAZA/RAMALLAH (Reuters) – Palestinians burned portraits of President Donald Trump as they protested in both the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday against U.S.-led plans for a conference on their economy in Bahrain.

Many Palestinian business groups have said they will boycott the June 25-26 event, billed as part of Washington’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and spearheaded by Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“Down with Bahrain, down with Trump, down with the Manama conference,” chanted crowds in Gaza, which is ruled by the armed Islamist group Hamas. Some burned large paintings of Trump marked with the words: “Deal of the devil”.

View the complete June 24 article by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Rami Ayyub on the Reuters website.

‘Profound ignorance’: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace explains why Jared and Ivanka are ‘the rot’ inside the White House

Jared Kushner gave a disastrous interview to Axios’ Jonathan Swan as shown in the second season premiere of the outlet’s HBO series, which was released over the weekend. And the president’s son-in-law and top advisers is now getting appropriately raked over the coals.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace tore into Kushner on Monday during a panel discussion on her show “Deadline: White House.” She zeroed in on Kushner and Ivanka as two of the major deleterious forces within the administration.

She noted how Kushner “drove Rex Tillerson out of the administration. He repelled top-tier talent for the chief of staff job. It would seem to be that if there’s rot in this White House, the malignancy is Jared and Ivanka.”

View the complete June 3 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Report: Kushner Uses Private Email, WhatsApp For White House Business

Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is expressing concerns over senior White House aide Jared Kushner’s use of the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp and his personal e-mail account for official government business.

Cummings has revealed that Kushner’s use of WhatsApp was discussed during a December 19 meeting that the Maryland Democrat attended along with Rep. Trey Gowdy and Abbe Lowell, who is Kushner’s attorney. And Cummings voiced his concerns over Kushner’s use of WhatsApp for government matters in a March 21 letter to White House Counsel Pat A. Cipollone. Continue reading “Report: Kushner Uses Private Email, WhatsApp For White House Business”

Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance

The president’s son-in-law has traveled around the world, conducting high-level work on behalf of the White House. Yet the Department of Justice found substantial issues related to his security clearance.CreditCreditSaul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

View the complete February 28 article by Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman and Annie Karni on The New York Times website here.

Trump demanded top-secret security clearance for Jared Kushner last year despite concerns of John Kelly and intelligence officials

In 2018, President Trump ordered chief of staff John Kelly to give his son-in-law Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance, despite officials’ concerns. (Reuters)

President Trump early last year directed his then-chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to give presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance — a move that made Kelly so uncomfortable that he documented the request in writing, according to current and former administration officials.

After Kushner, a senior White House adviser, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, pressured the president to grant Kushner the long-delayed clearance, Trump instructed Kelly to fix the problem, according to a person familiar with Kelly’s account, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Kelly told colleagues that the decision to give Kushner top-secret clearance was not supported by career intelligence officials, and he memorialized Trump’s request in an internal memo, according to two people familiar with the memo and the then-chief of staff’s concerns.

View the complete February 28 article by Josh Dawsey, Seung Min Kim and Shane Harris on The Washington Post website.