Why, as of today, Jared Kushner is over — what it means, what is next
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly appears to have triumphed over “Wonder Boy”:
A memo sent Friday downgraded the presidential son-in-law and adviser and other White House aides who had been working on interim clearances.
Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded — a move that will prevent him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he once had unfettered access.
Kushner is not alone. All White House aides working on the highest-level interim clearances — at the Top Secret/SCI-level — were informed in a memo sent Friday that their clearances would be downgraded to the Secret level, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.
The SCI acronym stands for sensitive compartmentalized information, a category of information that comes from sensitive intelligence sources and must be walled off.
The memo was not signed by chief of staff John Kelly, but it comes as the retired Marine general and other top White House aides are grappling with the fallout of a scandal involving former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, which revealed that dozens of White House aides had yet to receive permanent clearances but nonetheless had access to some of the country’s deepest secrets.
Reuters adds:
[T]he White House [has] move[d] to impose greater discipline on access to secrets, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The news hit at almost the same time that we learned
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner’s spokesman is leaving the White House, administration officials said Tuesday, becoming the latest official to depart the West Wing.
Josh Raffel was first hired last spring to serve as a spokesman for the Office of American Innovation, a White House office headed by Mr. Kushner that was assigned the task of replicating private-sector efficiency inside the federal government.
It is also worth mentioning that Kushner is unable to manage his own mouth:
An ethics group said Jared Kushner appears to have violated federal law by praising President Trump’s new campaign manager.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tweeted Tuesday that their lawyers were looking at taking legal action against Kushner for possibly violating the Hatch Act.
But the big takeaway, pardon the pun, is the stripping of Kushner’s access to the Presidential Daily Briefing. Horrors! How will he ever be able to save his businesses by cleverly bartering information now?
What the headlines mean:
- Stick a fork in him: Kushner is done in the West Wing.
- Kelly got his way, ending Kushner’s ability to do anything of substance, and has regained control over a job that had been rumored to be on the rocks.
- The State Department may actually have to man up and start dealing with crises in the Middle East and relations with China, two of the top initiatives in Kushner’s portfolio.
- The fact that Kushner has been stripped of his top-secret access and his publicist is fleeing comes as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe appears to be putting Trump’s son-in-law under scrutiny.
What next? Expect Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to be permanently back in New York within a couple of weeks.
