The number of things Trump son-in-law and one-time Golden Boy Jared Kushner failed to disclose to the Office of Government Ethics has grown once again.
Jared Kushner failed to disclose his role as a co-director of the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation from 2006 to 2015, a time when the group funded an Israeli settlement considered to be illegal under international law, on financial records he filed with the Office of Government Ethics earlier this year.
The latest development follows reports on Friday indicating the White House senior adviser attempted to sway a United Nations Security Council vote against an anti-settlement resolution passed just before Donald Trump took office, which condemned the structure of West Bank settlements. The failure to disclose his role in the foundation—at a time when he was being tasked with serving as the president’s Middle East peace envoy—follows a pattern of egregious omissions that would bar any other official from continuing to serve in the West Wing, experts and officials told Newsweek.
Kushner forgot to mention his key director-level position in something called the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation? Must have slipped his mind.
Kushner's repeated material omissions, in his required government disclosures, paint a pattern of willful disregard for the accuracy of his statements. There is no possible way Jared Kushner could not afford adequate legal or financial assistance to work his way through the same disclosures that all other newly installed government figures are required to produce. Jared Kushner is purportedly very f--king rich; if Jared Kushner cannot manage to complete the same paperwork that White House advisers have been required to produce as matter of course, it points to either incompetence or maliciousness.
There was a time when not paying proper taxes in the hiring of a gardener or nanny was considered a Beltway scandal that could kick you out of politics, by the way. That was the pre-Trump, pre-Republican-collapse-into-a-gelatinous-blob-of-shiftless-amoral-ooze standard that top political figures were held to.
Of particular interest on this one is that Kushner isn't simply failing to disclose his private ties and interests, as he advises Team Garbage Fire in what to do about related political issues. He appears to have taken concrete actions to advance those interests.
Kushner demanded future National Security Adviser Mike Flynn "get on the phone to every member of the Security Council and tell them to delay the vote" on the West Bank settlement resolution, Buzzfeed reported Friday. The move may have violated over the 200-years-old law called the Logan Act, which bars "unauthorized citizens" from negotiating with "foreign governments having a dispute with the United States."
Being forever unable to fill out financial disclosure forms is probably, at this point, well down the list of problems Jared's lawyers need to be concerned about. But he'd better hope his legal team is more competent than his accountants have been.
