Jared Kushner tries his last hurrah as the walls cave in on him
Jared Kushner is screwed and he knows it. There’s no subtle way to put it. Special Counsel Robert Mueller only gave Michael Flynn a plea deal because he believes Flynn’s evidence against Kushner is enough to take him down. That means we’re looking at a relatively short window before Mueller indicts, charges, and arrests Kushner. Maybe Kushner thinks he can beat it. Maybe he’s planning to cut a deal. But first he’s trying his hand at one last major hurrah.
When it became clear that Flynn was going to cut a deal, multiple major news outlets ran stories claiming that Kushner’s White House role had been reduced to nearly zero, and that Kushner’s only remaining focus was on achieving Middle East peace. These stories all read as if they were planted by Kushner himself. This sounded like he was laying the groundwork for his own departure from the White House before the Russia scandal enveloped him, and that he really only wanted to pull off something in the Middle East before bailing.
Today the Trump administration announced that it’s moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. This has been a publicly stated goal of the Trump administration from the start, and it’s long appeared that Kushner was the driving force behind it. This leads to the obvious question: why now? Why didn’t this move get made earlier in the year? Why now, out of nowhere? It’s difficult to imagine that this move isn’t related to the suddenly very short window of time that Kushner is now facing, before he has to decide whether to cut a deal or let himself get arrested and fight the charges.
Last month Jared Kushner secretly traveled to Saudi Arabia and met with the Crown Prince. Immediately afterward, the Crown Prince overthrew the rest of the royal family. Now Kushner is moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which will set off total chaos. This is some bizarre “peace plan.” But whatever it is, it comes off as Kushner’s last big hurrah before he makes his big fateful decision about Trump-Russia.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report