But his WhatsApp
Oh, huh, that’s interesting: Jared Kushner is using WhatsApp to talk to foreign contacts.
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, uses the online messaging service WhatsApp for official business – including communication with foreign contacts, according to a new letter from congressional investigators.
The letter, sent to the White House by the House oversight committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, on Thursday, also says Ivanka Trump, Kushner’s wife and the president’s daughter, is not preserving all of her official emails, as required by federal law.
The new disclosures came in the letter to the White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and demands documents related to the use of personal email and messaging accounts by White House aides.
Maddow’s first segment yesterday was about the fact that Trump and his gang are refusing to send any documents to Congress or to allow any staff to testify. Any at all. This is unprecedented, she said. Presidents have resisted on specifics before, but no president has ever just said No, nothing, forget it. Again, he’s acting like an emperor in a system that doesn’t have emperors and does have a constitution.
“The White House’s failure to provide documents and information is obstructing the committee’s investigation into allegations of violations of federal records laws by White House officials,” Cummings, the Maryland Democrat, wrote.
The Presidential Records Act prohibits senior White House officials from using non-official email or messaging accounts for government business, unless they send copies of the messages to their official accounts.
Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner and Ivanka Trump, told the committee in December that Kushner was still using WhatsApp as part of his official duties at the White House, including for communications with people outside the United States.
The fact that Jared Kushner, who couldn’t get a security clearance (or even his job) without nepotism, uses WhatsApp *clandestinely* and *illegally* to communicate with foreign officials outside official channels is another sign of his dangerous lack of fitness for public office.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 21, 2019
Kushner is an ignoramus and a crook, and this is what he’s doing. Grotesque doesn’t even cover it.
He doesn’t actually hold a “public office” does he? Isn’t he more a private embarrassment?
Are any of Trump’s supporters yelling “Lock him up”? What? No, I thought not.
The foreign officials must also be aware of the dodgy nature of making official communications via Whatsapp, if only because it’s a service which, unlike texting or e-mail, requires a personal invite for each individual to be added to the user’s Whatsapp contacts. It is obviously a ‘back-door’ method of communicating that which is meant to be kept from official scrutiny, so obvious in fact that only a Trumpkin could think it fools anybody.
Bruce, my understanding is that he does hold an actual government office as Senior Advisor to the president, which is a particular type of Assistant to the President. Whether he chooses to draw it or not, he is I believe eligible for salary and benefits, and subject to various ethics laws and other restrictions (including records retention laws).
It’s not an elected office, and it’s not a Senate-confirmable position, but then neither is Chief of Staff or many other White House positions.
I think Ivanka’s is the one that’s more invented? Unpaid, and not in any existing category? I’ve always assumed Kushner is paid, since it was talked about that she isn’t. (Could just look it up. Asking silly questions instead. Just ignore me.)
AOC and Hillary are having a bit of fun with your headline, Ophelia. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/hillary-clinton-aoc-jared-kushner-trump-whatsapp-emails-ivanka-a8835426.html