Key aide’s resignation a new blow for President

White House communications director Hope Hicks, one of President Donald Trump's most trusted and longestserving aides, abruptly announced her resignation yesterday, leaving a void around a president who values loyalty and affirmation.

The news came amid claims foreign officials believed Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law and senior adviser, was someone who could be manipulated.

The White House announced Hicks, 29, was leaving a day after she spent nine hours in a closed hearing of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Her departure cast a pall over the West Wing at a trying time for the President. It leaves Trump increasingly without support of the familiar aides who surrounded him during his campaign, and marks the latest in a string of high-level departures in the Administration's second year.

Hicks worked as a one-woman communications shop during his campaign and has been a central participant in or witness to nearly every milestone and controversy of the Trump campaign and White House. She began her White House tenure as director of strategic communications — a title that only partly captured her more expansive role as the President's gatekeeper to the press.

Hicks acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that she has occasionally told “white lies” for Trump. But she said she had not lied about anything relevant to the Russia investigation. She has also been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team about her role in crafting a statement about Donald Trump jnr's 2016 meeting with Russians, as Mueller’s expansive probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential misdeeds committed by those in the President's orbit moves ever closer to the Oval Office.

Meanwhile, officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Kushner by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former US officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner's contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

Kushner was also the focus of a New York Times report yesterday that claimed Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies, last year received loans of US$184 million ($255m) from Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, and US$325m from Citigroup after meeting executives from each of the companies at the White House.

The Times said there was little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplated sizeable loans to his business, according to government ethics experts.

A spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said Kushner “has met with hundreds of business people” since joining the White House staff.

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