NEPOTISM & CORRUPTION GOING WILD IN WHITE HOUSE

Jared & Ivanka

 

 Rob & Hope

 

How many others will see the writing-on-the-wall and decide to leave the White House?

 

It is appearing that the short month of February 2018 may be listed as the worst week ever for the president and for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

 

It was all stated best by Leon Panetta, the former White House Chief of Staff, US Defense Secretary and CIA Director in Democratic administrations. “This was predictable from the get-go. Under the best of circumstances, these are tough jobs. But when you add to that list, family members who have no clear-cut role, no experience, no real understanding of the rules and a host of financial connections and business dealings that can obviously be used to manipulate you, then that is a prescription for the kind of chaos you’re seeing in the White House.”

 

This is all in reference to the bad month that Ivanka, Jared and the president have had for February, 2018.

 

The month started down-hill with the two young couples of Jared and Ivanka, and Presidential Secretary, Rob Porter and the Director of Communication. Hope Hicks.  These two couples with special privileges and direct access to the president, both couples had actually double-dated in January.

 

But by the end of last month, Rob Porter had resigned due to accusations of harassment by his two former wives.  Hope Hicks, the longest and closest assistant to the president that was never expected to leave, after saying to a House investigating committee that she had told “white lies” for the president, she then gave her notice that she was leaving.

 

For Jared Kushner, he is now stripped of his access to the nation’s deepest secrets, and is isolated and badly weakened inside the administration.  Jared is also under scrutiny for his mixing his business and government work and is facing the possibility of grave legal issues inside the Russia probe.

Kushner’s has serious tensions between him and the Chief of Staff, John Kelly, and that has now gone public.  Meanwhile, other rivalries have resurfaced. Some colleagues have privately mock Kushner as being only a shadow of his former self.  One White House official likened the work of his Office of American Innovation to headlines in the satirical news website “The Onion”. Others officials have said that fear of the Russia probe has made some officials back off of interacting with Kushner on sensitive matters. And his reputation as having a focus of working with foreign governments has been undermined by the lowering of his security clearance level.  Foreign dignitaries are very hesitant to share any information with Kushner due to his lower security level.

 

Many inside and outside of the White House are asking if February 2018 could mark the “Fall of the House of Kushner”.

 

All of this started with paparazzi tabloid photos of Hicks and Porter out on the town which set the current crisis in motion. Shortly after the photos were published, both of Porter’s ex-wives came forward with allegations of domestic abuse.  When a photo of one of Porter’s former wives was published showing a black eye that she said Porter gave her, this forced Porter to resign from the White House.  However, this also caused some serious questions about the administration’s poor vetting and security clearance process, including the special privileges that were afforded to Kushner.

 

The end result was delivered in a memo by Kelly, where he stripped a number of staffers, including Kushner and Ivanka, of their access to top secrets because of the interim status of their security clearances.  Not having achieved a top secret clearance status after more than a year, was caused by complications with their FBI background checks.  Kushner alone has had to revise his security applications multiple times due to his leaving out serious business relationships with foreign banks and diplomats.

 

According to White House leaks, privately, the president has reiterated his long-standing concerns. He was angry that Kushner and his daughter Ivanka were, in his view, being dishonestly maligned. But he also said this week that everything might be better for them if they simply gave up their government jobs and returned to New York.  For once, probably some good advice from the president.

 

This portrait of Kushner’s standing in this especially turbulent period of Trump’s presidency, is all based on interviews with 20 senior administration officials by senior Washington Post reporters, of congressional aides, and other advisers to the president, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

 

Because of the Chief of Staff’s actions, Kushner no longer receives the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), a daily digest that’s restricted to Trump and a dozen other top officials with top secret clearances. These people said that Kushner was also removed from a number of less-exclusive, but still highly classified intelligence reports that are sent daily to senior administration officials. His chances of eventually having his clearance access restored or made permanent remain unclear.

 

For months, Kelly had been considering changes to the security clearance process, and he was alarmed by how many staffers had interim clearances.  He was also concerned how lax the enforcement of access to classified materials seemed to be inside the White House.

 

Because of the Rob Porter scandal, Kelly then hastened his process and issued a public directive of changes. He coordinated with the White House Personnel Security Office, in part to insulate himself from allegations that he was personally targeting Kushner.

 

Kelly had insisted on treating Kushner just like any other staffer and when Trump was asked last week whether a special exception should be made for his son-in-law, the president said he deferred that decision to Kelly.

 

Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired as White House Communications Director by Kelly said the following: “The Rob Porter scandal was a crisis of John Kelly’s own doing, and he flipped it into a discussion of security clearances and used it as a foil against Jared. This is how Washington works. It was a coordinated hit.”

Barry Bennett, a former senior Trump campaign adviser, said Kushner had entered a Washington ecosystem that resented his wealth and proximity to the president. “You couldn’t blame him if he just said the hell with it,” Bennett said.

 

One senior White House official described Kushner as looking “really beaten down” this past week, even if the outside world no longer sees him as “the main artery to the president.”

An official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the uncertainty surrounding special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe has cast a black cloud over Kushner in particular.  “Some of his administration colleagues are just more reluctant to have conversations with him or to be in his company because they’re not sure if he’s a witness or a target of the Mueller investigation.”

 

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and a mentor to Kushner, wrote Thursday that Kushner had become a political target for all of the president’s adversaries. Describing Mueller’s interest in Kushner’s business dealings and foreign contacts, the editorial continued: “Only he and his lawyers know if there are other vulnerabilities. If there are, he and President Trump would both [be] better off if Mr. Kushner were out of the White House before the issues became public.”

 

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that officials in at least four countries have discussed ways to manipulate Kushner through his myriad financial interests.  This is the key factor in his inability to obtain a security clearance. On a separate issue, the New York Times reported that Apollo, a private equity firm, and Citigroup loaned more than $500 million combined to the Kushner family real estate business.  But this was only after the executives of the firms attended meetings with Kushner at the White House.  This is seriously reflecting badly on Kushner.

William M. Daley, a former White House Chief of Staff and a Department of Commerce secretary under Democratic presidents, said, “A family member with no experience at anything other than real estate, no real profile other than a family-run business with a shady past, then being given incredibly complicated tasks, was a big joke.”

 

Finally, by this week, that once powerful foursome of Jared, Ivanka, Hicks and Porter, was totally fractured into varying states of disarray.

 

Porter left the administration last month in disgrace and he is no longer dating Hicks.  The White House Communications Director and Trump assistant, Hope Hicks, then abruptly announced that she is giving up her post after six years of working for the Trump family in one capacity or another.

 

In former times of duress, Kushner has leaned on Josh Raffel, a deputy White House Communications Director, to help with Jared’s unflattering coverage. But with the latest crises mounting, Kushner now needs to look elsewhere, as Raffel has seen the writing on the wall, and he too announced that he is leaving.

 

Are the rats leaving a sinking ship?  Stay tuned.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018