As you’ve probably heard by now, things between Donald Trump and his eldest daughter and his son-in-law have been extremely awkward since they all left Washington in 2021. For one thing, there was that New York Times article, in which sources familiar with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s pillow talk claimed the couple knew as early as November 5, 2020, that the then president was a loser who had lost the election to Joe Biden, and that Ivanka had only accompanied her dad to the Ellipse on January 6 because she was concerned he would do something insane. That was followed by the former first daughter very publicly declaring that she would not work on her father’s reelection campaign, and the couple seemingly wanting nothing to do with the guy. Presumably, deep down, that’s got to hurt Trump—insurrection-inciting sociopaths who should not be allowed within 1,000 feet of the White House ever again have feelings too!—but it appears that ole Jared may have made it up to him.
The New York Times reports that, when testifying last month before a grand jury investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, Kushner “is said to have maintained that it was his impression that Mr. Trump truly believed the election was stolen, according to a person briefed on the matter.” That is significant because prosecutors appear to be trying to determine if Trump knew his efforts to stay in power were based on a lie, which “could substantially bolster any case they might decide to bring against him.” (A spokesperson for Kushner did not respond to the Times’ request for comment.)
As the Times notes:
In other words, it actually helps Trump if his allies essentially call him a raving conspiracy theorist who’d fully broken with reality circa late 2020/early 2021. Nikki Haley, Trump’s former United Nation’s ambassador who is now running for president and calls Trump a “friend,” also once said she understood “that genuinely, to his core,” Trump believed his election lies. Of course, none of this mean it’s actually true, and, in fact, others have suggested that the then president knew full well that he had lost. Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, for one, reportedly told prosecutors this spring that Trump, in the the days following the election, asked her, “Can you believe I lost to Joe Biden?” When recounting the same story to the January 6 committee, the Times noted, Griffin opined: “In that moment I think he knew he lost.” And in his own testimony before the panel, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, said that during a meeting in the Oval Office in late November or December 2020, Trump conceded that he had lost the election. “He says words to the effect of: Yeah, we lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy,” Milley said, adding: “Meaning President Biden.” As Milley told the committee: “The entire gist of the conversation was—and it lasted—that meeting lasted maybe an hour or something like that—very rational. He was calm. There wasn’t anything—the subject we were talking about was a very serious subject, but everything looked very normal to me. But I do remember him saying that.”
And that’s not the only seemingly incriminating evidence that Jack Smith’s team may have on Trump:
That is, of course, exactly what Trump did, despite the fact that, as the Times put it, “Giuliani was the sole adviser encouraging Mr. Trump to pursue that course, the committee found,” and “Among those telling Mr. Trump on election night that it was too early to know if he had won or lost were his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and [Jason] Miller, the communications adviser. In the weeks that followed, several other aides and advisers told Mr. Trump there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the results of the election, including William P. Barr, his former attorney general.”
If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.
Bess Levin
Source link
