The Trump Kids Are Not All Right
The latest revelations about Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. must not get lost in the noise.
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Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more revelations about the Trump kids and their spouses, we got a weekend chockablock with them. On Saturday we learned that Donald Trump’s namesake was texting with his dad’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, about overturning the 2020 presidential election before his father had even been declared the loser. On November 5, 2020, Don Jr. texted Meadows the following message: “It’s very simple … We have multiple paths We control them all.” According to CNN, the rest of the text “outlines a strategy that is nearly identical to what allies of the former President attempted to carry out in the months that followed. Trump Jr. makes specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake ‘Trump electors.’” That same day, Junior texted Meadows that, “We have operational control Total leverage. Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now.”
The irony of Junior claiming moral high ground aside, these texts are meaningful because they occurred just two days after the 2020 election, showing that even then Trumpworld was already plotting. Junior previewed the fake-Republican-electors strategy that other Trumpers would later shop.
On Nov. 4, 2020, according to the House January 6 select committee, former Trump energy secretary Rick Perry texted Meadows, “HERE’s an AGRESSIVE [sic] STRATEGY: Why can t [sic] the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS.” Either a lot of people in Trumpworld had the same idea at the same time, or they were all working together. It’s a high bar to prove the latter, but it also seems unlikely that this was all some kind of coincidence.
I asked University of Alabama law professor and former United States attorney Joyce Vance if there are possible legal consequences for Junior’s texting with Meadows. “The short answer is that if their conduct violates a law (all federal crimes are statutory) and the government has evidence to prove every element of those crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, they could be tried in front of a jury,” she told me. “Junior’s texts merit investigation to see whether he was part of a criminal conspiracy. Not all investigations uncover probable crimes. But with allegations of an insurrection, it’s important to investigate and determine whether there’s chargeable conduct.”
If it was a bad weekend for Junior, it was an even worse one for his sister’s husband, Jared Kushner. You remember Jared: He’s the guy who brought peace to the Middle East. In March 2021, he wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal (owned by News Corp, whose executive chairman is Rupert Murdoch), in which he said, “As Jews and Muslims now travel more freely through the region, they return to the tradition of ages past, when members of the Abrahamic faiths lived peacefully side by side.” Two months later, “a shooting war between Israel and the Palestinians” erupted, but Trumpworld never lets facts get in the way of a good narrative.
One thing Jared did do, early in Trump’s term? Bond with Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader. The New York Times reported that Kushner and MBS were communicating on a first-name basis and that their “exchanges continued even after the Oct. 2 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents, according to two former senior American officials and the two people briefed by the Saudis.”
Jared was one of MBS’s biggest defenders, “urging the [then] president to stand by the prince,” as the Times also reported. “Mr. Kushner has argued that the crown prince can survive the outrage just as he has weathered past criticism.”
For his loyalty, it appears to some, Jared was rewarded with $2 billion. Kushner, despite limited experience in private equity, formed Affinity Partners last year and secured a $2 billion investment from the $620 billion fund led by bin Salman.
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s investment screening panel had some concerns, which included, per the Times, “‘the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management’; the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for ‘the bulk of the investment and risk’; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them ‘unsatisfactory in all aspects’; a proposed asset management fee that ‘seems excessive’; and ‘public relations risks’ from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump.”
“Especially as the GOP pushes to raise questions about Hunter Biden allegedly profiting off his father’s name and power, it’s not difficult to grasp how sketchy this is,” Aaron Blake of The Washington Post points out.
Imagine if Jared were married to Ashley Biden. Republicans would have him in Gitmo right now. I understand that Democrats are scared of blowback, but they are the only thing preventing America from becoming a Trumpocracy. If we’ve learned anything from four years of Trump it’s that even the most well-intentioned Republican is ultimately unwilling or unable to stand up to Trump. Democrats must stand up for the rule of law because no one else will.