Jared’s inside job
Book: Denied W.H. clearance after Tower theft-try
First son-in-law Jared Kushner’s quest for a White House security clearance was derailed by allegations he used a pass key to illicitly enter a Trump Tower apartment, a bombshell new book reveals.
Kushner’s aim was to steal a computer belonging to a friend of the estranged wife of Ken Kurson, the editor of the New York Observer, author Michael Wolff says in a White House tell-all book, “Siege.”
Kushner was the Observer’s owner and publisher until 2017. It is now owned by a trust controlled by Kushner’s family.
The revelation sheds some light on the ongoing mystery over why Kushner, one of President Trump’s most trusted White House advisers, never got top secret clearance.
According to the best-selling author, whose first Trump administration book sold 4 million copies, Kushner saw himself as a “problem solver” in the White House. But by the spring of 2018, as the Mueller probe surged forward, Kushner became just another problem.
Kushner’s clandestine operation came to light after he tried to get Kurson, one of his cronies, a spot on the board of the National Endowment of the Arts.
It was during Kurson’s background check for the post in the spring of 2018 that the FBI delved into sordid claims that the ex-scribe had stalked his wife’s best friend, a doctor at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital.
“The doctor was holding emails and other electronic information that might be damaging to Kurson, information not only related to the marriage but potentially to the New York Observer and Kushner,” Wolff writes in the book.
The doctor was so worried about her safety, The New York Times reported, that Mount Sinai arranged for a chaperone to escort her to and from work. Kurson and his wife “in better days” had helped the doctor lease her apartment in Trump Tower, the book says.
“Prosecutors and the FBI had been told that Kushner, using a pass key from the building, had entered the doctor’s apartment seeking to take her computer,” Wolff writes.
The book doesn’t say if the FBI or the Brooklyn federal prosecutors ever confirmed the allegation, but Kushner, through his lawyer, denied the veracity of the claim.
“Like so many other things hat Wolff has written and said, this is 100% false and completely crazy,” said a spokesman for Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s lawyer.
The New York real estate scion was originally denied a top security clearance, according to reports, for foreign influence, private business interests and personal conduct.
Kurson and his ex-wife did not respond to requests for comment.