The New York Times on Friday released a dynamite revelation that President Donald Trump has privately urged Gen. John Kelly to help move his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner out of the administration, despite publicly praising their work at the White House.
.. Kelly appears secure for now, but that could change if the president blames him for the chaos in the administration. Kelly’s biggest job is to maintain order in the White House and stop the leaks. Recent reports prove that staffers are frequently leaking information to the press and feeding the ongoing personal feuds in the administration
Report: White House Planning Ouster of H.R. McMaster
The White House is planning to replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster, five sources confirmed to NBC News on Thursday.
.. Stephen Biegun, a former senior national security staffer under then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has been rumored a possible replacement for McMaster. Biegun is currently an executive at Ford Motors.
Kushner’s overseas contacts raise concerns as foreign officials seek leverage
Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience
.. Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico
.. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report.
.. The issue of foreign officials talking about their meetings with Kushner and their perceptions of his vulnerabilities was a subject raised in McMaster’s daily intelligence briefings
.. Kushner’s lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him
.. Officials in the White House were concerned that Kushner was “naive and being tricked”
.. conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel
.. White House officials said McMaster was taken aback by some of Kushner’s foreign contacts.
.. Kushner came to his position with an unusually complex set of business holdings and a family company facing significant debt issues.
.. Officials from the UAE identified Kushner as early as the spring of 2017 as particularly manipulable because of his family’s search for investors in their real estate company
.. Not fully disclosing foreign contacts ordinarily would result in a clearance being denied, experts said.
.. One of his top business concerns was what to do with his family’s investment in 666 Fifth Ave. in New York, which the company bought under his direction for $1.8 billion in 2007, the highest price paid at the time for a U.S. office tower
.. leaving the company with a $1.2 billion debt that comes due in January 2019.
.. The Manhattan property has been a particularly nettlesome problem inside the government because Kushner’s company has sought foreign money on the project.
.. Kushner and his company had proposed a redevelopment plan that would double the building’s size, requiring major new investment.
.. They met with an executive of a Chinese-run insurance company, Anbang
.. They also discussed a possible investment by the former finance minister of Qatar
.. Questions have also been raised about whether Kushner discussed financing with a Russian banker. He met in December 2016 with Sergey Gorkov
.. The bank has said they talked about “promising business lines and sectors,”
.. With the deadline for the $1.2 billion debt looming, the company has continued to search for a lender. The redevelopment plan appears to be on hold
.. The company, which is privately held, has stressed that the Fifth Avenue property is a small fraction of its assets and that it is doing well financially.
The Clear and Present Danger of Trump
His weekend Twitter outburst calls into question his ability to discharge his powers.
President Trump’s out-of-control weekend Twitter storm has raised these concerns to new heights. Our European allies no longer know what to believe. “Is it deeds? Is it words? Is it tweets?” asked Germany’s foreign minister at the annual Munich Security Conference. While senior administration officials offered reaffirmations of traditional American positions, our allies did not know whether they were speaking for the president and if so, for how long.
We know what is required of every American citizen. It is enshrined in the oath that every naturalized citizen must take—to “defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Surely no less is required of the president. But when his own national security adviser stated that “the evidence is now incontrovertible” that Russia worked to undermine our most basic constitutional processes during the past election, Mr. Trump slapped him down with a tendentious tweet.
He has repeatedly chosen to take the word of Vladimir Putin, the autocratic ruler of Russia and a former KGB agent, over the judgment of the entire U.S. intelligence community.
Mr. Putin’s Russia, which is waging war in Eastern Europe and propping up Bashar Assad in Syria, has become an enemy of the U.S. Can any fair-minded person say that the president is doing what he should to defend our Constitution and laws against this threat?
.. President Trump regards any affirmation of Russian electoral influence as an attack on the legitimacy of his 2016 victory. He cannot distinguish between the national interest and his own insecurities, making it impossible for him to acknowledge the nature of the Russian threat.
.. It is time for the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and the national security adviser to confront Mr. Trump, collectively and directly, to inform him that unless he publicly affirms the reality of the Russian threat and authorizes the strongest possible response to it, they will have no honorable alternative to resignation. They swore an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, not to Mr. Trump.
.. With Mr. Trump, we face the incapacitation of character—an inability to master his passions sufficiently to distinguish between the country’s well-being and his fathomless self-regard.
.. The Americans who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 had genuine grievances that both parties had neglected for far too long.
But he is a deeply, dangerously flawed instrument of their purposes. In choosing him, they made a mistake that threatens America and the world.