Pre-election transition planning is famously so tight-lipped that you’d barely know it is happening when you read the news of the day. The dreaded headline claims the candidate is “measuring the drapes of the White House” long before any votes are counted. Opposing campaigns are all too eager to pounce on the arrogance of that presumption.
This is why the recent trickle of news about the Trump transition planning is so intriguing — particularly the revelation that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is serving as a transition whisperer.
Earlier this month when journalist Michael Tracey asked Trump transition co-chair (and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO) Howard Lutnick who was advising the transition on personnel issues, he wouldn’t name anyone, except Kushner.
Lutnick revealed that when it comes to staffing a second Trump government,: “Jared Kushner is a big help to me … he’s absolutely helping me.
This is big news, since Kushner has regularly denied any interest in returning to the Trump inner circle, indicating that he’d prefer to continue operating his private equity firm, Affinity Partners. Nevertheless, last winter Axios suggested there was still a slimmer of a chance he’d be back. Congressional Democrats are also paying attention, concerned Kushner’s is already peddling influence.
The question right now seems to be: Will Kushner’s role in the Trump transition be anything more than just what Lutnick described?
There are a couple of reasons to think so.
For one, it was Kushner — along with Mike Pence and Steve Bannon — who was in charge of the transition in 2016, the last time Trump won. Shockingly at the time, he was the one who ordered the firing of Governor Chris Christie, whom Trump chose during the campaign to direct the transition (Steven Bannon was the one who broke the news to Christie). Court documents later revealed that it was likely Kushner who directed Michael Flynn during the 2016 transition to contact members of the UN Security Council about an upcoming vote on Israeli settlements, a move that ended with Flynn out of a job as national security adviser after pleading guilty that he lied to the FBI.
Four years later, Kushner allegedly helped obstruct the Biden-Harris transition after Trump lost the 2020 election. Former Trump Press Secretary Alyssa Farah Griffin told the House Jan. 6 committee in 2022 that Kushner did not want to share information about White House Covid efforts and vaccine development with the Biden-Harris transition team. According to Griffin, he told Dr. Deborah Birx, who was coordinating the White House’s response to the pandemic, “absolutely not” when she asked about information sharing at a White House meeting after the election.
Kushner may be trying to stay out of politics publicly, but he is one of the few remaining Trump loyalists with first-hand experience on a transition.
Additionally, close Kushner allies are already central to Trump’s 2024 transition team. In August, when former Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon was named to co-chair the transition, she brought with her key figures at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the think tank overflowing with former Trump officials as a government-in-waiting. One of them was Brooke Rollins, the president and CEO of AFPI who worked under Kushner at the White House Office of American Innovation. He later maneuvered her into the top job at the Domestic Policy Council.
Today, Rollins seems to be running much of the day-to-day operations of the Trump transition team, and she’s even been rumored to be in contention to be the next White House chief of staff.
The last reason a Kushner return makes sense is Trump’s demand for total loyalty. Lutnick told the Financial Times recently that fealty “to the man” would be required.
Who better than his son-in-law to enact this vision of total devotion to Trump for the next administration? For four years, Kushner weathered unprecedented staff turnover in the White House. Even after Jan. 6, it was Kushner still in his office working away.
Trump’s 2024 transition has been worrisome, outside of Kushner’s alleged involvement.
Already, the Trump transition team has stalled on signing a memorandum of understanding with the General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of making sure the transition of power is seamless and secure. If this persists, Trump’s transition team won’t be permitted to receive the ample resources and assistance provided by the GSA. Based on what I learned for my book on the 2020 transition, refusing this help is an incredibly risky decision for the country.
Worse still would be the near total lack of accountability on transition planning. Without an MOU, the transition team wouldn’t be required to disclose the names of its donors nor cap the amount of donations, usually set at $5,000.
In this environment, conflicts of interest would be rampant and self-dealing all-but encouraged. There are already reports that Lutnik, the current transition co-chair, may be mingling his work on the transition with lobbying for his firm’s crypto interests.
Even if these ethical issues are resolved in some fashion, Kushner has been central to two of the most chaotic transitions in U.S. history. The 2016 transition was a master-class of disregard for rules and inattention to detail. In 2020, on the way out, dragged its feet to render the incoming Biden-Harris administration much less prepared to govern than it should’ve been.
A bumpy final stretch of this campaign is surely ahead. These signs point to an even bumpier transition period that may soon follow, and possibly a return to the fold for Trump’s son-in-law.
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