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Jared Kushner, Trump’s Son-in-Law, Explores Joining Administration Trump Is Said to Offer National Security Post to Michael Flynn, Retired General
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President-elect Donald J. Trump, has consulted with lawyers about the possibility of joining the new administration, a move that could run afoul of federal nepotism laws and would all but certainly invite legal challenges. WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered the post of national security adviser to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, potentially elevating a retired intelligence officer who believes Islamist militancy poses an existential threat on a global scale to one of the most powerful roles in shaping military and foreign policy, according to a top official on Mr. Trump’s transition team.
Mr. Kushner, 35, had been planning to return to his private businesses after Election Day. But on the morning after Mr. Trump won, he began discussing a role in the White House, according to two people briefed on his discussions, who requested anonymity to describe his thinking. It was not clear whether General Flynn, 57, a registered Democrat who was fired as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 by President Obama, had accepted the position. General Flynn advised Mr. Trump throughout his campaign, and as national security adviser, he would be a critical gatekeeper to the president, overseeing a staff of roughly 400 people.
Mr. Trump is urging him to join, according to one of the people briefed, a sentiment shared by Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist for the White House, and Reince Priebus, who was named chief of staff. In the role, he would often have the last word on how Mr. Trump should handle crises that could range from a showdown with China over the South China Sea to an international health crisis like the Ebola epidemic.
Given Mr. Trump’s lack of experience on national security matters, General Flynn could serve a role of even greater importance than his predecessors. At the same time, his appointment is a signal that the Trump administration is unlikely to be dominated by members of the Republican national security elite that shaped the policies of President George W. Bush, almost all of whom made clear that they believed Mr. Trump was unfit to lead the country.
Once counted among the most respected military officers of his generation, General Flynn was an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump, and he alienated many former colleagues with his denunciations of the wars in Iraq and elsewhere, efforts that he had helped lead during his time in the military.
General Flynn would bring to the White House a belief that the problem in the Middle East for the United States is ultimately with the Islamic faith itself. He has criticized the religion as being nothing more than a “political ideology,” has made a point of using the phrase “radical Islamist terrorism” as often as possible, and once posted a video on his Twitter account that included the phrase “Fear of Muslims is rational.” He has also claimed that Islamic law, known as Shariah, is spreading in the United States, without providing evidence.
“We’re in a world war, but very few Americans recognize it,” he wrote in “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies,” a book he wrote this year with Michael Ledeen, a national security expert. “Fewer still have any idea how to win it.”
In another potential addition to the administration, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President-elect Donald J. Trump, has spoken to a lawyer about the possibility of holding a formal role, a move that could run afoul of a federal anti-nepotism law and would risk legal challenges and a political backlash.
Mr. Kushner, 35, the husband of Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, and an influential adviser to his father-in-law during the presidential campaign, had been planning to return to his private businesses after Election Day. But on the morning after Mr. Trump won, Mr. Kushner began discussing taking a role in the White House, according to two people briefed on the conversations who requested anonymity to describe Mr. Kushner’s thinking.
Mr. Trump is urging his son-in-law to join him in the White House, according to one of the people briefed. The president-elect’s sentiment is shared by Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist for the White House, and Reince Priebus, who was named chief of staff. Mr. Kushner accompanied Mr. Trump to the White House on Thursday, when the president-elect held his first in-person meeting with President Obama.
Mr. Kushner has already figured prominently in the tumultuous start to the transition. He was involved in the effort to oust Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — who as a federal prosecutor jailed Mr. Kushner’s father more than a decade ago. Trump officials have systematically fired those Mr. Christie had selected for the effort. Transition officials have rejected claims that Mr. Kushner was involved in a payback effort, and pointed to Mr. Christie’s troubles after two aides were convicted in the “Bridgegate” scandal in New Jersey.
Mr. Trump’s desire to have his son-in-law at his side in the West Wing added another element of unpredictability to an unconventional handover of power, but there were signs on Thursday that Mr. Trump’s transition operation was edging toward normalcy after its chaotic first week.
Mr. Trump sat down with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, his first in-person session with a world leader since winning the White House. A clearer picture emerged of the figures who have Mr. Trump's ear, among them Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who is under consideration to be attorney general or secretary of state, and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a retired intelligence officer who could be Mr. Trump's national security adviser. On Capitol Hill, Vice President-elect Mike Pence told House Republicans to “buckle up” in anticipation of a packed legislative session.
Mr. Trump’s aides held their first scheduled daily conference call with reporters while transition officials whose work had been stalled by shake-ups in Trump Tower began work with their Obama administration counterparts on a handover.
But the prospect that Mr. Kushner might end up in the West Wing remained a concern to some people close to the president-elect, who said he would instantly become a target for media and legal attacks if he took the unorthodox step.
Mr. Kushner has consulted with at least one lawyer and believes that by forgoing a salary and putting his investment fund, his real estate holdings and his newspaper, The New York Observer, into a blind trust, he would not be bound by federal nepotism rules, according to one of the people briefed.Mr. Kushner has consulted with at least one lawyer and believes that by forgoing a salary and putting his investment fund, his real estate holdings and his newspaper, The New York Observer, into a blind trust, he would not be bound by federal nepotism rules, according to one of the people briefed.
Still, it is not clear that such an arrangement would be legal. Under federal statute, the president cannot accept voluntary services that are not permitted by law, and a separate statute bars public officials from employing family members in any capacity. Ethics lawyers in both parties said that such an arrangement would violate a federal statute designed to prevent family ties from influencing the functioning of the United States government. Under a 1967 law enacted after John F. Kennedy installed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, no public official can hire a family member — including one related by marriage — to an agency or office over which he has authority. A separate statute also makes it a crime, punishable by a fine and up to two years of prison time, for government employees to accept voluntary services that are not authorized by law, except in emergency situations.
Those discussions were disclosed as Mr. Trump’s transition pivoted on Thursday, trying to leave behind the disarray of its first week for an accelerated schedule of official meetings, including Mr. Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with a world leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The anti-nepotism law “would seem to block out Kushner flatly,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as Mr. Obama’s ethics counsel during his transition and at the White House. If Mr. Trump were to attempt to skirt it by having Mr. Kushner advise him in a volunteer capacity, he added, he “would be treading upon very serious statutory and constitutional grounds.”
Later on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump’s team planned to announce the officials who will coordinate the handoff at the crucial national security agencies, as well as at the Justice Department. These so-called landing teams will make contact with the Pentagon and the State Department and begin the transfer of control to the new administration. For people in the vast government bureaucracy, it will be the first time since Mr. Trump’s victory last week that they have heard from a representative of the incoming administration. “When push comes to shove, on the very hardest calls that confront a president, you want the president’s adviser to remember that their oath or affirmation to the Constitution comes first, before family ties,” Mr. Eisen said. “You need to be able to say no. You need to be able to hold the line. You need to be able to threaten to resign, and you need to be able to actually resign. You can’t resign from being somebody’s son-in-law.”
These emissaries will also provide an insight into the new administration’s priorities for running the government’s national security apparatus, since they will populate the agencies with hundreds of political appointees, from deputy secretaries to midlevel officials. Richard W. Painter, an ethics counsel to George W. Bush, said he remembered having to inform a senior official serving Mr. Bush that he was legally barred from granting a White House internship to his son. Mr. Painter based his decision on a reading of the anti-nepotism law by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during Jimmy Carter’s administration, which barred the president from doing so for his own child.
Mr. Trump’s aides have dismissed reports that the transition was in flux. They said that the news media and disgruntled people were stoking negative accounts, and that the wholesale shake-up of the transition leadership ranks – including the ouster of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey – reflected a drive by Vice President-elect Mike Pence to rid the operation of lobbyists. “I told him: ‘Jimmy Carter couldn’t do it. If the president of the United States couldn’t do it, I can’t do it for your kid,’” Mr. Painter recalled. “I got cussed out.”
Mr. Trump, who has continued to work out of his office in Trump Tower, was scheduled to receive a stream of visitors on Thursday, including Henry A. Kissinger, a former secretary of state; Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, who has emerged as a candidate for secretary of state; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and the top officer at the military’s Cyber Command; and Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army who has been a longtime informal adviser to Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump could attempt to circumvent the law, the lawyers said, by arguing that he has broad executive authority as president to choose his advisers. But that move would probably invite a legal challenge, forcing a court to decide whether the president’s executive authority to choose his advisers takes precedent over a law passed by Congress that bans nepotism in the government.
Some of these visitors, like Ms. Haley, are candidates for cabinet posts. Others, like Mr. Kissinger, were invited to give the president-elect counsel. General Keane, who has advised Republicans as well as Democrats, was an early proponent of President George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq. He has called for more aggressive American military action to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Mr. Trump could also try to invoke the example of Hillary Clinton. A 1993 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that Mrs. Clinton, whom President Bill Clinton had appointed to lead his health care task force, was acting as a full-time government employee and therefore the panel could shield its meetings and records from the public. The decision hinted that the anti-nepotism statute might not have been meant to apply to the White House or to unpaid positions.
The frenzy of speculation about marquee cabinet posts continued, with Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, seen as a leading contender to take over the Department of Homeland Security. But Mr. Trump’s staff appeared to be working on a more methodical schedule of interviewing candidates. But the ruling also said the first lady had a unique and widely recognized role in helping the president to carry out his duties — she had an office in the White House and a staff — a distinction that would not apply to Mr. Kushner. The Clintons paid a steep political price for insisting that Mrs. Clinton had a right to serve on the task force, ultimately losing both the Senate and the House in 1994 as Republicans assailed what they portrayed as a White House run amok.
Still, the confusion of the first few days has left a mark. The State Department, for example, has had no role in planning for Mr. Trump’s meeting with Prime Minister Abe, who leads America’s linchpin ally in the Pacific. During the campaign, Mr. Trump made several provocative remarks about Japan, declaring that it needed to pay more to provide for its own defense and suggesting that it consider acquiring nuclear weapons. “You can try to wiggle your way around the law, but you’ve got to realize the political reality that this is prohibited under the statute,” Mr. Painter said. It’s a power grab. It’s an overreach.”
Mr. Trump also vowed to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama’s ambitious Asian trade deal, on which Mr. Abe expended significant political capital at home to join. The question of Mr. Kushner’s role also underscores a broader challenge facing Mr. Trump and his children as he assumes the presidency — how to separate his role as leader of the country from his vast real estate and business empire and avoid conflicts of interest.
“We stand ready to support him and his team with any information that they might require,” John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said on Wednesday. “We are ready and able to provide context if it is desired.” Even if Mr. Kushner placed his own holdings in a blind trust, his marriage to Ms. Trump poses an inherent conflict, according to ethics experts, because he would have access through his wife to information about Mr. Trump’s businesses that the president-elect should be barred from knowing.
“There has been no outreach to date,” he added.
Some of the people said to be in the running for top positions in a Trump administration have come under scrutiny.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is on a shortlist for secretary of state, is grappling with questions about his web of business ties, including to foreign states like Qatar, and the millions of dollars he was paid for speeches.
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who is being considered for attorney general or defense secretary, has been criticized for racially tinged comments he made as a federal prosecutor in Alabama decades ago. Those comments helped capsize his nomination by President Ronald Reagan to be a federal district judge.