During an appearance this Tuesday on the morning Fox program known as Fox & Friends, Trump son-in-law and past political team member Jared Kushner faced questioning about Donald harboring government docs.
A Justice Department investigation into the circumstances surrounding federal records taken to Mar-a-Lago drove the recent raid of the southern Florida Trump property by that name, where the former president has largely resided since leaving office, and additional details emerging since that raid reveal the broad scope of the problem. Federal authorities have recovered over 300 classified documents from Trump since he left the presidency, per a report from The New York Times. Materials found in an initial set of 15 boxes recovered from the former president by the National Archives in January included docs from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and in those boxes, classified materials stretched across more than 700 pages.
“Why would the former president have that many classified things at Mar-a-Lago?” co-host Steve Doocy asked Kushner on Tuesday, providing as clear a springboard as any for Kushner to launch some kind of attempted defense. Kushner largely failed.
“So I’m not familiar with what exactly the contents were,” Kushner said. “But what I’ll just say from my personal experience is, again, in the campaign, in the transition we had a very innocent meeting with the Russian ambassador. And then, four months later you’re reading that the intel agencies are leaking to The Washington Post that we requested this secret back-channel. And then The New York Times and CNN go crazy for a weekend accusing us of treason. And then it turns out, such a thing never really happened. And so, I just think you have to be very careful with what you read, and obviously just wait for the facts to develop. But I mean, there’s been so many things that have been hyper-ventilated about over the last years that turned out to be nothing.”
Watch Kushner below:
Steve Doocy: Why would the former president have that many classified things at Mar-a-Lago?
Jared Kushner: So I'm not familiar with what exactly the contents were. pic.twitter.com/UBnSdX0dhK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2022
Why on earth was his reaction to questions about Trump harboring highly sensitive government docs to say something to the effect of, “Hey guys, remember that time we got allegedly accused of treason because of that meeting with a Russian ambassador?” One of Kushner’s other attempted defenses is apparently: well, it might all be nothing. What? Does he understand that the FBI doesn’t raid a former president’s personal property because of a great, big misunderstanding? Agents recovered nearly a dozen sets of classified materials in the raid. The disclosure of some of what authorities have reclaimed from Trump since he left office could — potentially — put the lives of intelligence sources at risk, considering its highly restricted category. Amid all these developments, the Times also indicates Trump potentially bears personal responsibility for the exclusion of specific docs from what the Archives got in January. He “went through” the boxes before the agency got them, the paper says, suggesting he left particular things out.
