photo credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP
I've said many times here at Writing The World that Jared Kushner is the reason Chris Christie never got a job in the Trump White House; now apparently Christie's new book confirms it. The Guardian got hold of a pre-publication copy of Let Me Finish; the article about it was so interesting I cut-and-pasted it whole:
Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago.
In his soon to be published book, Let Me Finish, Christie unleashes both barrels on Trump’s son-in-law, who remains a senior White House adviser with responsibilities for Middle Eastern peace, sentencing reform and “American Innovation”.
Christie blames this key player in the president’s inner circle for his ignominious dismissal shortly after Trump’s election victory in November 2016. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, writes that Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief, in real time.
As Bannon was carrying out the firing, at Trump Tower in New York, Christie forced him to tell him who was really behind the dismissal by threatening to go to the media and point the finger at Bannon instead.
“Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago.”
The political assassination was carried out by Kushner as a personal vendetta, Christie writes, that had its roots in his prosecution, as a then federal attorney, of Charles Kushner in 2005. The real estate tycoon was charged with witness tampering and tax evasion and served more than a year in federal prison.
Even for a White House that has generated an extraordinary cornucopia of hypercritical kiss-and-tell books, Christie’s is exceptional for its excoriating description of events at which he was present. As he points out in Let Me Finish, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication on 29 January, none of the other authors “has known Trump for as long or as well as I have – or was right there in the room when much of this occurred”.
It is also exceptional as a chronicle of the score-settling and animosity that drove key decision-making in Trump’s nascent presidency. As political scientists look for the roots of the mayhem in the current White House, the book provides new clues.
At the heart of it is Christie’s desire to tell the American people that had his transition plan been adopted after Trump’s shock victory on election night in November 2016, the Trump White House would be a much more effective place today. Once he had been tossed overboard, the new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence had a “thrown-together approach” that led to appalling choices of senior personnel “over and over again”.
But the emotional heart of the book is Christie’s account of the actions of Jared Kushner. In this telling, Christie was ditched by a young man who made it his business to discredit and denounce him because of what he had done to his father.
“The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” Bannon confessed at Christie’s dismissal.
Christie was the US attorney in New Jersey when he spearheaded the prosecution of Charles Kushner for witness tampering. The case arose out of a bitter family feud.
The elder Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law Bill Schulder, then filmed them having sex in a motel and sent the tape to his own sister, Esther. The bizarre plot was an attempt to blackmail the Schulders into keeping their silence about Bill’s knowledge of Charles’s fraudulent activities.
Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 charges and served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama.
In one of the most visceral passages of the book, Christie recounts for the first time how Jared Kushner badmouthed him to Trump in April 2016, pleading with his father-in-law not to make Christie transition chairman. Remarkably, he did so while Christie was in the room.
“He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up,” Christie writes. “Just a lot of feelings – very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years.”
Kushner went on to tell Trump that it wasn’t fair his father spent so long in prison. He insisted the sex tape and blackmailing was a family matter that should have been kept away from federal authorities: “This was a family matter, a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis.”
Trump, in an effort to settle the dispute, proposed a dinner between him, Jared and Charles Kushner, and Christie. Much to Christie’s relief, Jared didn’t acquiesce.
In the end, Trump gave Christie the job. But according to Let Me Finish, Kushner had the final say.
Let Me Finish bears all the hallmarks of classic, brash Chris Christie. Its language is blunt, caustic and at times self-satisfied, much like his political reputation.
It has its lighter moments. At his first meeting with Trump in 2002, at a dinner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in New York, Trump ordered his food for him. He chose scallops, to which Christie is allergic, and lamb which he has always detested. Christie recalls wondering whether Trump took him to be “one of his chicks”.
At another dinner three years later Trump told the obese Christie he had to lose weight. Addressing him like one of the contestants in Miss Universe, the beauty contest organisation that he owned, Trump said “you gotta look better to be able to win” in politics.
Trump returned to the theme of girth during the 2016 presidential campaign, exhorting Christie to wear a longer tie as it would make him look thinner.
Meanwhile, Kushner is not the only subject of Christie’s wrath. The author is scathing about Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly national security adviser before resigning over his dealings with Russia, and who is now cooperating with the special counsel and awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI.
In one of the book’s more memorable put-downs, Flynn is dubbed “the Russian lackey and future federal felon”. Christie also calls the former general “a train wreck from beginning to end … a slow-motion car crash”.
However, one central character escapes relatively unscathed: Trump himself. The president is utterly fearless and a unique communicator Christie writes – and his main flaw is that he speaks on impulse and surrounds himself with people he should not trust.
Christie gives a detailed account of his effort to be named as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in the summer of 2016, after his own bid for the Republican nomination for president failed. He detects yet again the hand of Kushner – and that of his wife and Trump’s beloved daughter, Ivanka Trump – working against him. An anonymous “high-ranking Trump staffer” is depicted calling to warn that “the family is very upset that he says it will be you”. A mollifying call from son Eric Trump follows but that is as close as Christie gets. Trump chooses ultra-conservative Indiana politician, Mike Pence, after a mystifying wait. Christie repeatedly says he was not disappointed.
US attorney general, the other role Christie would have accepted, also eluded him. As with most appointments he is scathing about the man who got the job, Jeff Sessions, whom he calls “not-ready-for-prime-time” and whose recusal from the Russia investigation he blames for its ever-growing scale. Trump did apparently offer Christie “special assistant to the president in the White House”, which he turned down, prompting from the president-elect “an expression that said maybe he hadn’t heard me right”.
Christie would have taken chair of the Republican National Committee and seemed poised to get it. But according to Christie, once again Trump’s family worked against him. In a near-comic scene, Reince Priebus, the RNC chair who would become Trump’s first chief of staff, offers him role after role in a frantic attempt to fulfil the directive from Trump to “make Chris happy”. One by one, Christie turns down labor secretary, homeland security secretary and ambassadorships in Rome and the Vatican.
Christie is relatively forgiving of Kushner in the context of the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between the candidate’s son-in-law, his son Donald Jr, his campaign manager and a group of Russians, some with Kremlin ties, offering “dirt” on his Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Bannon memorably told the author Michael Wolff the meeting was “treasonous” but Christie writes that taking the meeting was merely “dumb” or, in the case of Kushner and Trump Jr, a “sign of profound inexperience”. He faults Trump’s response to Robert Mueller’s investigation into links with Russia, but does not go into detail about the work of the special counsel.
He does, however, contend that Kushner misjudged two Russia-related firings: that of Flynn in February 2017 and most famously that of the FBI director James Comey in May the same year. According to Christie, Kushner thought firing Flynn would end talk of links between the Trump campaign and Russia – it did not – and that firing Comey would not provoke “an enormous shit-storm” in Washington. It did.
“Again,” Christie writes, having detailed conversations with Kushner in which he was acting in an informal capacity, “the president was ill served by poor advice.”
The book officially comes out two weeks from today; this is only the tip of a very juicy iceberg of coverage to come. Ryan Lizza points out that staffing really isn't the problem...
Any book that argues, as this one apparently does, that Trump’s real problem is just a staffing issue isn’t worth reading https://t.co/deJrVXFgzY— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 15, 2019
...then acknowledges that yes, staffing is part of the problem:
Grab the popcorn and get comfy. This is going to be fun. Click here to read my previous posts about Chris Christie.
Tuesday afternoon update. Some history from Steve Kornacki:
A little Googling delivered the story below, which was published in the New York Post on July 15, 2004 under the headline "Sex Gal Now Helping Feds -- Hooker Turns On Kushner." I don't think it's the story referenced in Kornacki's tweet, which, if I squint really hard, appears to be dated July 14, but it does provide an overview of what happened and I have to ask. Could the Kushners be any classier? And how cool would it be if Sex Gal, if she's out there somewhere, would come forward and tell her side of the story?
The hooker hired by New Jersey real-estate tycoon Charles Kushner to carry out the steamy videotaped seduction of a key tax-fraud witness against him is cooperating with federal authorities, The Post has learned.
The blond bombshell agreed to testify against Kushner after she was given two options – cooperate or face arrest, according to sources familiar with the case.
Kushner, 50, was arrested Tuesday on charges he set up and taped the compromising motel-room sex romp in a bid to intimidate the witness – his brother-in-law William Schulder, who had worked for Kushner, according to a criminal complaint filed in Newark and prosecutors.
Schulder – who is married to Kushner’s sister, Esther – had been helping the feds investigate tax fraud and campaign-contribution violations allegedly committed by his brother-in-law, said Newark U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.
Kushner recruited the prostitute – described by sources as a slender high-priced call girl – to lure Schulder to a motel room for secretly videotaped sex after two co-conspirators Kushner had hired failed to find a hooker to do the job.
The seductress Kushner recruited was “a high-end call girl for an elite escort service in Manhattan,” a source familiar with the case told The Post.
She’s “very attractive – really, really pretty,” with “shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair,” said the source.
Kushner paid her from $7,000 to $10,000 to lure Schulder to a motel for sex early last December so a videotape of the torrid tryst could be sent to his wife, according to the complaint.
The call girl delivered – enticing Schulder to a room in the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater a day after he had “rescued” her outside a nearby diner when she asked for a ride, claiming her car had conked out, the complaint says.
Kushner had a tape of the X-rated encounter mailed to his sister in May – after some of his associates were notified they were targets of the federal probe, the complaint says.
But instead of being intimidated, his sister and her husband were enraged and reported the dirty deed to authorities.
The feds located the call girl – through a phone number she had given Schulder, sources said. She agreed to cooperate, rather than face prosecution, they said.
A bid to use the same scam to videotape a second witness having sex failed when the man targeted by Kushner resisted another call girl’s erotic overtures, the criminal complaint said.
The witness was Kushner’s former chief bookkeeper, Robert Yontef.
Kushner was released on $5 million bond on Tuesday after pleading not guilty to witness tampering, obstruction of justice and promoting interstate prostitution.
A top fund-raiser for New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevy and other Democrats, he became the target of federal investigators after a number of lawsuits were filed against him accusing him of financial mismanagement – including illegally using money from his businesses for political contributions.
Some of the suits were filed by Kushner’s close relatives, including his brother Murray, in a bitter family feud over their financial empire.
The two brothers had inherited the business from their father, Joseph, a Holocaust survivor, and built it up over the years – until Charles told his brother in 1999 they could no longer work together.
Update #2 on Friday afternoon. Politico published an excerpt from the book, with more details about Christie's interactions with Jared:
And Jared began to detail his ancient grievances against me. “He tried to destroy my father,” Jared said.
“There was a dispute inside the family,” Jared reminded Donald, severely underplaying the sordid details of the felony indictment of Charles Kushner and subsequent guilty plea and imprisonment. In Jared’s version, his uncle’s lawyer brought the matter to me, and I collected damaging evidence from members of the family who already hated his father. He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up. Just a lot of feelings — very raw feelings that had been simmering for nearly a dozen years. Those feelings were now, finally, coming to a boil in front of the man who had brought all this heat on the Kushner family — me.
“My father made those people rich, and they did nothing,” Jared said. “They just benefited from my father’s hard work. And those are the people who turned him in.”
As Jared spoke, he never raised his voice. But some strong emotions are not dependent on volume. Jared delivered his in a soft quiver. As he continued, his voice began to crack.
“It wasn’t fair,” he said.
He said I had worked with a bookkeeper who’d stolen private information. He said that once I got involved in the case, I said false things about his father and, after the guilty plea, I made his father stay in prison longer than he was supposed to. He had it down to the exact number of additional days. Jared said I did all of that because I was vindictive and ambitious and untrustworthy.
“This was a family matter,” Jared said, “a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis” — not by a hard-charging federal prosecutor.
Jared glanced at me, then fixed his gaze on his father-in-law, Donald. “How can he be trusted to handle the transition?”
As Jared plowed through this litany, I didn’t dignify his decade-old rantings with a response of any kind. I just didn’t speak. Not to correct his version of the record. Not to add crucial details. I didn’t say a word. I looked right at him. I kept thinking to myself, What is this? — and shooting perplexed looks at Corey and across the desk at Donald. How long are we going to let this go on?
Ok, maybe there are some minor staffing issues pic.twitter.com/EjpGUoDqbS— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 15, 2019
Grab the popcorn and get comfy. This is going to be fun. Click here to read my previous posts about Chris Christie.
Tuesday afternoon update. Some history from Steve Kornacki:
I saved the NY Post cover from one of the most memorable stories I followed in my NJ days: U.S. Attorney Chris Christie’s 2004 takedown of the Democratic governor’s top donor, Charles Kushner pic.twitter.com/4bT28Ez2sP— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) January 15, 2019
A little Googling delivered the story below, which was published in the New York Post on July 15, 2004 under the headline "Sex Gal Now Helping Feds -- Hooker Turns On Kushner." I don't think it's the story referenced in Kornacki's tweet, which, if I squint really hard, appears to be dated July 14, but it does provide an overview of what happened and I have to ask. Could the Kushners be any classier? And how cool would it be if Sex Gal, if she's out there somewhere, would come forward and tell her side of the story?
The hooker hired by New Jersey real-estate tycoon Charles Kushner to carry out the steamy videotaped seduction of a key tax-fraud witness against him is cooperating with federal authorities, The Post has learned.
The blond bombshell agreed to testify against Kushner after she was given two options – cooperate or face arrest, according to sources familiar with the case.
Kushner, 50, was arrested Tuesday on charges he set up and taped the compromising motel-room sex romp in a bid to intimidate the witness – his brother-in-law William Schulder, who had worked for Kushner, according to a criminal complaint filed in Newark and prosecutors.
Schulder – who is married to Kushner’s sister, Esther – had been helping the feds investigate tax fraud and campaign-contribution violations allegedly committed by his brother-in-law, said Newark U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.
Kushner recruited the prostitute – described by sources as a slender high-priced call girl – to lure Schulder to a motel room for secretly videotaped sex after two co-conspirators Kushner had hired failed to find a hooker to do the job.
The seductress Kushner recruited was “a high-end call girl for an elite escort service in Manhattan,” a source familiar with the case told The Post.
She’s “very attractive – really, really pretty,” with “shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair,” said the source.
Kushner paid her from $7,000 to $10,000 to lure Schulder to a motel for sex early last December so a videotape of the torrid tryst could be sent to his wife, according to the complaint.
The call girl delivered – enticing Schulder to a room in the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater a day after he had “rescued” her outside a nearby diner when she asked for a ride, claiming her car had conked out, the complaint says.
Kushner had a tape of the X-rated encounter mailed to his sister in May – after some of his associates were notified they were targets of the federal probe, the complaint says.
But instead of being intimidated, his sister and her husband were enraged and reported the dirty deed to authorities.
The feds located the call girl – through a phone number she had given Schulder, sources said. She agreed to cooperate, rather than face prosecution, they said.
A bid to use the same scam to videotape a second witness having sex failed when the man targeted by Kushner resisted another call girl’s erotic overtures, the criminal complaint said.
The witness was Kushner’s former chief bookkeeper, Robert Yontef.
Kushner was released on $5 million bond on Tuesday after pleading not guilty to witness tampering, obstruction of justice and promoting interstate prostitution.
A top fund-raiser for New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevy and other Democrats, he became the target of federal investigators after a number of lawsuits were filed against him accusing him of financial mismanagement – including illegally using money from his businesses for political contributions.
Some of the suits were filed by Kushner’s close relatives, including his brother Murray, in a bitter family feud over their financial empire.
The two brothers had inherited the business from their father, Joseph, a Holocaust survivor, and built it up over the years – until Charles told his brother in 1999 they could no longer work together.
Update #2 on Friday afternoon. Politico published an excerpt from the book, with more details about Christie's interactions with Jared:
And Jared began to detail his ancient grievances against me. “He tried to destroy my father,” Jared said.
“There was a dispute inside the family,” Jared reminded Donald, severely underplaying the sordid details of the felony indictment of Charles Kushner and subsequent guilty plea and imprisonment. In Jared’s version, his uncle’s lawyer brought the matter to me, and I collected damaging evidence from members of the family who already hated his father. He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up. Just a lot of feelings — very raw feelings that had been simmering for nearly a dozen years. Those feelings were now, finally, coming to a boil in front of the man who had brought all this heat on the Kushner family — me.
“My father made those people rich, and they did nothing,” Jared said. “They just benefited from my father’s hard work. And those are the people who turned him in.”
As Jared spoke, he never raised his voice. But some strong emotions are not dependent on volume. Jared delivered his in a soft quiver. As he continued, his voice began to crack.
“It wasn’t fair,” he said.
He said I had worked with a bookkeeper who’d stolen private information. He said that once I got involved in the case, I said false things about his father and, after the guilty plea, I made his father stay in prison longer than he was supposed to. He had it down to the exact number of additional days. Jared said I did all of that because I was vindictive and ambitious and untrustworthy.
“This was a family matter,” Jared said, “a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis” — not by a hard-charging federal prosecutor.
Jared glanced at me, then fixed his gaze on his father-in-law, Donald. “How can he be trusted to handle the transition?”
As Jared plowed through this litany, I didn’t dignify his decade-old rantings with a response of any kind. I just didn’t speak. Not to correct his version of the record. Not to add crucial details. I didn’t say a word. I looked right at him. I kept thinking to myself, What is this? — and shooting perplexed looks at Corey and across the desk at Donald. How long are we going to let this go on?
Finally, Donald spoke up.
“Jared, if you were in Chris’ position, you would have done exactly the same thing. It was a big case against a famous person who had done something wrong, and he did what he had to do. You’re a lawyer. You would have done exactly what Chris did if you would have had that job.”
Trump stopped there for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then he said one more thing that I didn’t expect to hear: “And your other problem was you didn’t know me at the time. Maybe if you would have known me, maybe I could have helped.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what Donald meant by that. But as I sat there and soaked it all in, the thoughts in my head had more to do with Donald than with Jared. (Read the article here.)
“Jared, if you were in Chris’ position, you would have done exactly the same thing. It was a big case against a famous person who had done something wrong, and he did what he had to do. You’re a lawyer. You would have done exactly what Chris did if you would have had that job.”
Trump stopped there for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then he said one more thing that I didn’t expect to hear: “And your other problem was you didn’t know me at the time. Maybe if you would have known me, maybe I could have helped.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what Donald meant by that. But as I sat there and soaked it all in, the thoughts in my head had more to do with Donald than with Jared. (Read the article here.)
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