President Donald Trump’s administration continues to threaten the very foundation of American security. Just in recent days, The New York Times revealed that the president had gone around staffers in the White House and the intelligence community to get his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a security clearance, and on MSNBC, security analyst Malcolm Nance walked through some of the most serious aspects of the situation.
Kushner has no background in government service outside of the Trump administration, but he has had varying access to some of the most guarded secrets of the American government — and he’s utilized that access to an astonishing degree, reportedly ranking as one of those to most often seeking intelligence besides staffers on the National Security Council, which is a high bar since they “bathe” in classified information, as Nance put it.
He continued:
‘It makes you want to question — why do you need all that data? Maybe he was… reading intelligence assessments just to give himself that backgrounder — we will give him that… The worst case scenario is when he went and had that meeting with the Russian VEB bank — the bank of spies led by an ex-Russian intelligence officer — and asked them for whoever knows what, maybe there was some quid pro quo. I don’t believe that would happen because… the intelligence people and the CIA would have picked up on that way, but Jared Kushner’s problem is and what I think is going on is he is trading intelligence for favors.’
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In other words, Kushner has concealed some of the most nefarious aspects of his position, and wasn’t stupid enough to blatantly ask opponents of the United States for something in return for American intelligence in a way that could be easily picked up, but he’s engaged in the exchange anyway.
Nance discussed the Saudi regime’s claim that they carried out a recent purge of “tax cheats” that included procuring massive amounts of cash from the targets thanks to intelligence that Kushner shared with them, and the analyst fears that this could represent a trend. The president pushing the intelligence community out of Kushner’s security clearance process means that there’s little allowed oversight of his activities.
Kushner has long cozied up to the Saudi regime as led in its present form by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who he pushed for the nascent Trump administration to support. Last year, a real estate venture he partially owns was reportedly in talks to procure some $100 million in investments from a Japan-based fund that is largely funded by Gulf governments including the Saudis.
The troubling nature of these connections continues, because rather than the Saudi government exacting some kind of democratic process towards their opponents — they went so far as to orchestrate the murder of dissident, U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside their consulate in Turkey.
In the aftermath of that globally-reverberating incident, the Trump administration has not backed down from its support for the regime — and through it all, Jared Kushner still has a security clearance, being allowed to operate close to unchecked in an environment where untold numbers of lives are at stake.
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