The forgetful Jared Kushner is speaking this week with Senate and House intelligence committees — part of their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and the possibility of collusion by those around President Donald Trump.
“I did not collude with Russia,” Kushner said Monday after his first round in a closed Senate session. The conclusions drawn by the congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller will take a while. But what we can tell from what Kushner has publicly released is how remarkably forgetful he is.
Kushner’s memory lapses include more than 100 contacts with foreign officials, which resulted in not-so-minor revisions of his original security clearance application, which he blamed on an assistant. The foggy Kushner even professed Monday to forgetting the name of the Russian ambassador who all this fuss was about in the first place.
On the financial side, things seem to have also gone just plumb overlooked. As a businessman with wide-ranging assets about to become a federal employee whose duties were all-encompassing, Kushner promised to divest himself substantially. And then — just a little mix-up — Kushner “inadvertently omitted” more than 70 assets worth more than $10 million, according to paperwork that he also has revised and released.
Suddenly he has refreshed his memory about the art collection worth between $5 million and $25 million. Also, more details about the similar-sized stake he has in the real estate investment platform Cadre which he co-founded with his brother. Maybe Kushner just remembered that a new up-and-coming real estate investment company might be regulated by the federal government in which he now wields immense power. So the asset graced the new list.
Must be nice to have so many millions floating around that you forget about a few of them, and so many meetings with famous people of whom you lose track. It’s all a lot to remember. Perhaps the investigators can help Kushner recollect.
