What are we supposed to make of the news
that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House
adviser, met with the Russian ambassador in December to discuss
establishing a back channel between the incoming Trump administration
and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities?
Start
with the reactions from America’s intelligence community, whose job it
is to monitor foreign actors’ attempts to steal the nation’s most
closely guarded secrets.
Michael Hayden, the former C.I.A. director, said this:
“What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you
have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a
good or an appropriate idea?” Another former top intelligence official called it “extremely naïve or absolutely crazy.”
Mr. Kushner is now under scrutiny
by F.B.I. investigators looking into whether the Trump campaign
colluded with Russian officials to influence the outcome of the 2016
presidential election.
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Stupidity,
paranoia, malevolence — it’s hard to distinguish among competing
explanations for the behavior of people in this administration. In the
case of Mr. Kushner’s meeting with Sergey Kislyak, the ambassador, and
his meeting that month with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker with close
ties to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence, even the most benign of the various working theories suggests that Mr. Kushner, who had no experience in politics or diplomacy before Mr. Trump’s campaign, is in way over his head.
Maybe he was talking to Mr. Kislyak about Syria strategy and other security issues. Perhaps he was wooing Mr. Gorkov and other Russian investors to help offset his huge real estate debt. (Adding to the confusion, everyone has a different explanation of the Gorkov meeting’s purpose.)
Meanwhile,
if reports of the Kislyak meeting are accurate (the White House has not
denied them), the fact is Mr. Kushner, while still a private citizen,
met secretly with officials from a hostile power that had just
orchestrated a campaign aimed at damaging American democracy and
swinging the election to Mr. Trump. He discussed setting up a direct
line with that power that would be hidden entirely from American
intelligence.
And then, only weeks later, he forgot all about it — or so claims his lawyer, who characterized Mr. Kushner’s failure to mention the meetings
on his security-clearance application, along with dozens of others he
held with foreign officials, as a mere “error.” For his sake, it better
have been; falsifying or concealing material facts is a federal crime
punishable by up to five years in prison.
The problem isn’t establishing a back channel; presidential administrations and transitions have used them throughout history
as a way to keep a low profile during sensitive negotiations. But
communicating through Russian facilities would have exposed Mr. Kushner
and others to serious risks of extortion. And there’s the bizarre and
repeated secrecy around meetings with the Russian ambassador (see, e.g.,
Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions) that has already caused a lot of collateral damage to this administration.
At
a minimum, this pattern of meetings and concealment, whether by design
or through carelessness, raises larger concerns about Mr. Kushner’s
fitness for the hugely consequential role Mr. Trump has given him — a
vast portfolio of responsibilities that includes negotiating
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and reinventing the federal government.
Democrats in Congress are calling
for Mr. Kushner’s security clearance to be suspended or revoked, which
seems reasonable enough, but also like a distraction from the main
question: What is Mr. Kushner doing in this job? He has told friends
that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, will regularly re-evaluate
whether to return to their natural habitat among New York City’s real
estate and social elites. Given Mr. Trump’s clannish reflexes and
obsession with loyalty, he is unlikely to encourage such a move, but he
should, in his own interest as well as the public’s. His son-in-law, a
man he won’t fire, his closest and perhaps most influential confidant
and executive, is already struggling with his role — and is now dealing
with the distraction of an active investigation. No other White House —
no business, except maybe a wholly owned and rather tawdry and
occasionally bankrupt casino operation — would be run this way.
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