After a slew of brutal reviews, Jared Kushner’s ailing book promo tour was hit with another setback Friday during an excruciating interview in which he was forced to get creative when asked to explain why Trump was being investigated for keeping classified documents in his Florida resort.
Speaking to the U.K.’s Sky News, the former president’s son-in-law artlessly attempted to crowbar his upcoming White House memoir into a non-answer when pressed about Trump taking home files containing state secrets.
“You’d have to ask him that question,” Kushner told Sky’s Kay Burley. “But what I will say is that, if you look at my book, you’ll see that he was under constant attack…”
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“But he took Top Secret documents home,” Burley interjected, “Potentially risking the security of the United States?”
Kushner then delivered an incredible defense of his father-in-law: “This seems like it’s an issue of paperwork that should’ve been able to be worked out between the DOJ and [Trump]. I don’t know what he took or what he didn’t take, but I think right now that we’re relying on leaks to the media, which is the same thing that we’ve…”
Again, Burley stepped in to curtail Kushner’s media-bashing spiel, making reference to an FBI photo published by the DOJ showing documents scattered across the floor of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office in which many of the files are clearly marked “Top Secret.” She further pressed Kushner to clarify if he was saying that people should “wait and see” if the documents really were classified, “even though we’re being told by the FBI that they were?”
Ever the salesman, Kushner replied by shilling his memoir some more. “Yeah like I said, I go into my book the accusations that were made of Trump…”
“If you could just answer that question,” an impatient Burley interrupted.
“I mean, first of all, he was the president of the United States,” Kushner replies. “He had the highest clearance in the world, so I don’t know if… Look, this may be a paperwork issue, this may be a… I don’t know, like I said, I haven’t been involved in the details of it.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Jared.
Trump’s own legal team has previously tried to justify his unauthorized possession of classified documents by arguing that the FBI should have expected him to have “sensitive information” among his presidential records, and that the documents’ discovery should “have never been cause for alarm.”
Meanwhile, the pressure mounting on Trump from the investigation has left some Democrat lawmakers concerned that the capricious former president could publish the classified material in a bid to defend himself.
