UPDATE: The Associated Press appeared to confirm these reports later, saying Kushner is the “very senior” official named in Flynn’s guilty plea.
BREAKING: AP source: Jared Kushner is ‘very senior’ Trump transition official who directed Flynn to contact Russians on UN vote.
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 1, 2017
The original story follows below:
Reports in multiple outlets Friday claim White House Advisor and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is responsible for directing then-candidate for National Security Advisor Micheal Flynn to make the phone call about which he later lied to the FBI.
UPDATE: The Associated Press appeared to confirm these reports later, saying Kushner is the “very senior” official named in Flynn’s guilty plea.
BREAKING: AP source: Jared Kushner is ‘very senior’ Trump transition official who directed Flynn to contact Russians on UN vote.
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 1, 2017
Bloomberg News cites “[t]wo former officials with the Trump transition team” claiming that Flynn was acting on Kushner’s say-so when he called diplomatic officials of other United Nations Security Council members, including Russia, and asked them to delay an expected vote condemning Israeli settlements.
“On or about December 22, 2016, Flynn did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution,” reads one of the statements to the FBI that Flynn has now admitted is false, pleading guilty to a felony in the process.
Flynn, according to these sources, did make such a call, and he did so because Jared asked him to intervene to prevent the Security Counsel vote coming up while Barack Obama was still president. The Obama administration had made clear its intention to abstain from the vote after a 36-year-long U.S. policy of vetoing condemnations of Israel’s settlements, despite President-elect Trump’s stated opposition. Obama’s Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power did, in fact, abstain, allowing the resolution to pass in a major international embarrassment for Israel.
At the time a senior Israeli official told Breitbart News:
President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory.
“Jared called Flynn and told him you need to get on the phone to every member of the Security Council and tell them to delay the vote,” Buzzfeed News quotes a source that may be the same as those cited by Bloomberg.
Kushner allegedly called Flynn at the Trump transition team’s headquarters in Washington, DC, claiming that “this was a top priority for the president.” Flynn then told the room that “the president wants this done ASAP.”
Kushner’s lawyers responded to neither Bloomberg or Buzzfeed’s requests for comment.
If the sources cited in these reports are correct, they would represent yet another example of the president’s son-in-law playing a central role in a major setback for the administration. Kushner’s tenure at the White House has included a series of missteps that have undermined the administration’s credibility and effectiveness.
Referred to in his family’s investment materials as “Mr. Perfect” and one half of “Javanka,” along with first daughter Ivanka Trump, Kushner is reportedly taking a smaller and smaller role in the White House after initially being given a massive, wide-reaching portfolio. A Friday Reuters report suggested he may be on the way out of the administration after tax reform is passed.
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