Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Don’t Blame Jared — It’s All His Assistant’s Fault

Is President Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser trying to scapegoat an unnamed assistant?

In his written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee Friday, Kushner had a lengthy explanation about omitting his meeting with Russian officials from White House disclosure forms. Kushner’s defense line, in short, was: “It wasn’t me, it was my assistant.”

Kushner claims that the unnamed aide, based in Washington, misunderstood an email sent to by Kushner and therefore “prematurely” filed the disclosure form before all information regarding the Russian meetings was added.

This assistant could now hold the key for verifying Kushner’s account.

Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC said Monday that Kushner’s assistant “may become the Rose Mary Woods of this investigation.” Rose Mary Woods was Richard Nixon’s White House secretary who, during the Watergate investigation, took responsibility for erasing the crucial 18.5 minutes from his Oval Office tapes.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.