The Bulwark Podcast - Michael Kranish: The Trump/Kushner/Saudi Vortex

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

In early 2021, both Kushner and Trump needed a game plan for making money. MBS — who both men had helped to consolidate power and literally get away with murder — came to the rescue with billions of dollars. Michael Kranish joins Charlie Sykes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is February 15th, 2023. And the other day, Ann Applebaum from The Atlantic tweeted out a story that appeared in the Washington Post. And she said, this may be the most blatant example of high-level corruption in recent American history. Cannot think of a precedent. And I have to admit, I sat around and I tried to think of anything that was a parallel to the Washington Post revelations about Jared Kushner, Trump, and the Saudi Arabians. And frankly, I couldn't. And so we're really lucky to be joined by the author of that story today, the Washington Post's Michael Kranich.

Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for having me. Well, let's talk about this. Michael is the national political investigative reporter for the Washington Post. His books include The World's Fastest Man, The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero, which looks very, very interesting. But let's just dive right into this, Michael, because I'm really trying to get my head around all of this, particularly as we live in the age of Hunter Biden's laptop and the absolute necessity of Congress doing a deep dive into whatever Hunter Biden was up to, Hunter Biden who has never had a job in the federal government at all, and the juxtaposition of the Jared Kushner story, which continues to play out. And I guess part of what strikes me about your story, Michael,

is that maybe we're in an era where we can't handle this kind of, because it's so big and it's in broad daylight. I mean, there's just two things about it that are just extraordinary. It's like, it's right there. We're looking right at it. We are talking about billions of dollars from somebody that was clearly deeply involved with a foreign leader who was filling his pockets during his time in the White House. And it's playing out right in front of us. And so it's testing our capacity to recognize a massive bit of corruption in plain sight. Do you follow what I'm getting at there? Well, it's up to others to say, you know, whether it's corruption, because that's a

legal term. So I don't make a conclusion in the story. But as to whether it's in broad daylight, I mean, yes and no. So let's say in two parts. Number one, clearly during the administration, there was quite a strong relationship between Trump, Jared Kushner, who was essentially running part of Middle East policy, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. At the time, Kushner came into office, as he later wrote, that he was

learning foreign policy on the fly. He basically was given the portfolio to deal with Middle East peace policy. And the way he sought to do that was to go sort of outside in, as he put it. And that meant working with the person who was then the deputy crown prince, bin Salman. And he convinced Trump to make Saudi Arabia the first visit of Trump's presidency. Very unusual, never been done that the president would go to Saudi Arabia first, might have gone to Israel first, other places first. And Kushner and bin Salman, both young, basically formed this relationship. And Kushner went to Trump and said, let's go to Saudi Arabia first. And Trump said, read my lips, you know, we're not going there first. I'm paraphrasing, but the quotes in the story. And as Kushner later told it, he didn't take no, you know, we're not going there first. I'm paraphrasing, but the quote's in the story. And as Kushner later told it, he didn't take no, you know, as a no, he didn't take it as a hard no. He knew that Trump often changed his mind. He went back, said, look, you know, they'll do these arms

deals with us. They'll do other things. And eventually Trump and Kushner did go to Saudi Arabia in March 2017. And long story short, they developed this very strong relationship and Trump and Kushner were very helpful to bin Salman, helped him in his rise to become crown prince and now heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia. And then along comes the concerns by Saudi Arabia about Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post contributing columnist. And the CIA determines that bin Salman had ordered the killing or capture of Khashoggi. And Trump does not allow that finding to be made public. It later became public through President Biden, although the Post reported essentially what it said at the time. And Trump

later told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post that he had, quote, saved, unquote, bin Salman by not embracing the finding of the CIA, by vetoing a congressional bipartisan effort to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia and so forth. So you have this, you know, admission by former President Trump that he saved bin Salman. And I quote a close associate of Khashoggi saying, if it weren't for Trump and Kushner, then bin Salman would not have become crown prince. We don't know if that's the case, but that's his opinion. And then right after the Trump administration's over, Kushner forms a company that eventually has a private equity fund that on the form with the SEC, it doesn't indicate that $2 billion from this fund came

from Saudi Arabia. In fact, there was a box that says, check this box if your client's a sovereign wealth fund. They didn't check that box. And the reason they say they didn't check that box is because they put all their funds in what they call a pooled investment vehicle, which is sort of typical. It's allowed. And some people say that's a shortfall of the law. So it was not known. The New York Times last year got minutes of a meeting in which members of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which bin Salman chairs, that the advisors have said, let's not do this investment. Kushner doesn't have the experience. It's a high risk for us. And bin Salman eventually, as chair of that fund, said same one is supporting this entity called Live Golf,

which in turn is paying millions of dollars to have tournaments at President Trump's, former President Trump's golf courses. So it wasn't in the open initially that Kushner was getting $2 billion for his private equity fund from the Saudis. Later, regarding Live Golf, it was public, but we don't know how much. It's still opaque to us how much money he's getting for having these tournaments on his property. So yes and no. Some people say there should be more accountability, that you should have to disclose after you leave office what you're getting so that people don't have suspicions that during your time in administration you were setting yourself up to get payments later. The extraordinary thing I think about your reporting is the timeline and the heart of this.

Let me just read a little bit of it, which you reported earlier this week. The day after leaving the White House, the day after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner's firm structured these funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source as you just mentioned it. And then you talked about how a year after the presidency, Trump's golf courses began hosting these tournaments. The substantial investments by the Saudis and enterprises that benefited both men came after they cultivated

close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office, as you just described. Well, let's go back to the beginning here, the beginning of your story, this whole Kushner-Trump MBS vortex. In your lead, you set the scene in early 2021 where Trump is about to leave office. Kushner is about to leave office. They're facing unprecedented business challenges. The revenue from Trump properties has plummeted. January 6th made his brand more polarizing. Jared Kushner, real man of genius, his last major business deal left the family needing a $1.2 billion bailout. And he was facing his own political fallout, right, from being tied to Trump. So that moment

is really quite dramatic. You know, what is Jared Kushner going to do? Who are his friends? What is his next move? Because you could certainly make the case that right then, January 2021, was a low point for both Donald Trump and for Jared Kushner. Yeah. Trump had issues with a lot of businesses. He had made his name basically selling the Trump brand. He had not been terribly successful as a business person, six corporate bankruptcies. We wrote a lot about this in the post biography. Trump revealed before Trump was elected, I'm the co-author of that. So I have a lot of knowledge, I think, about my colleagues, about what Trump had done in business. But he then became very successful selling himself as

a successful business person and did The Apprentice and so forth, and then branding his name, selling his name around the world in hotels and in this country and so forth. So that was a lot of what he said in campaigning for the presidency. And notwithstanding all the difficulties he actually had in running certain businesses, that was his image. Jared Kushner, as you mentioned, his family business, he took it over when his father went to prison. And his big deal was to buy the most expensive office building purchase that had ever been done in the United States history, $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue. And that did not turn out well. It came just as the financial crisis was around the corner. And he eventually needed a bailout of $1.2 billion from this Canadian company, Brookfield.

There's an investigation going on in Congress as to whether Brookfield got part of its financing for that from Qatar. There have been some questions about both of their business acumen, despite the fact that they've also both made a lot of money in business. So when they leave the administration, what's next? Typically, a former president, some of them do go on and make very well-paid speeches around the world and so forth. But it's not typical for someone to, after having worked so closely with an individual in a foreign government, to then benefit in their business from essentially that same individual or that person's sovereign equity fund, as we write about here.

So I quote Senator Ron Wyden saying, this is the cat's cradle of financial entanglements. And there are efforts to get all sorts of documentation on what's actually happened. We don't know whether, for example, Jared Kushner talked with Bahamian bin Salman while he was still in office about, hey, after I leave, will you support putting money from the sovereign wealth fund into my private equity fund? We do know that Kushner, in early January of 2021, just before the administration was over, went to Saudi Arabia for a final meeting with bin Salman. So that did occur. And he declined to talk to me for the story. So I would certainly want to ask him that question. And did Trump talk to the crown prince about live golf? That's

something, again, we don't know, but Trump has said that it's worth billions of dollars in publicity in good public relations for Saudi Arabia, which has gotten a lot of criticism, not just for the Khashoggi matter, but for human rights record in general, to have its tournament on Trump courses. This may seem like a naive question, but I'll ask it anyway. Why Saudi Arabia? What was the attraction for Trump and Kushner of Saudi Arabia? I mean, other than the fact that they have more money than God. I mean, given how fraught the politics of the Middle East was, given Donald Trump's comments about Muslims, it was not an obvious play at the beginning of his presidency. Do you have some insight into what was the attraction that led to this really deep

entanglement? Well, for many years, the Saudis and the U.S. government have been allies, but there's also been oil embargoes. So it's been a relationship where Saudi Arabia has been very important to the United States. And also, you know, there's been tension there over what they've done in the region, what they've done with oil. We saw recently, you know, there's been tension there over what they've done in the region, what they've done with oil. We saw recently, you know, Joe Biden had his own difficulties. He asked Saudi Arabia not to increase production. They did it anyway. So, you know, there's been this long-running relationship with Saudi Arabia that's important to both countries, but also has had its share of tensions, to be sure.

Jared Kushner, the way he's told it, and he wrote about this in detail in his memoir, he wanted to come in and find a way for a Middle East peace plan to work in a way that hadn't been done. He saw this, as he put it, this outside-in approach. So rather than try to get the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down, as other administrations in the United States have done. He had hoped to work out a deal where other countries would make their peace with Israel, recognize each other and so forth in a way that then put pressure on the Palestinians to come to some kind of agreement with Israel. That was sort of down the road and that was not followed through on. And clearly the relationship between Israel and Palestinians is not good today. I talked to a diplomat for this story who said it's the worst that he's seen in decades.

So, you know, where it is today is a little different. Kushner certainly touts what they call the Abraham Accords with certain countries. But Saudi Arabia itself, you know, has not essentially, you know, made its relations with Israel as I think Kushner, you know, might have hoped. So that was the big prize some other countries have. And he certainly touched that. And, you know, probably if he were on this podcast, he'd say, well, if we were still in power that they left office and there's a lot that's, you know, not done and what's going on today. And, you know, the region, obviously, it's not, you know, the peace that they were hoping for. So I think they saw a lot of potential there and they got some of what they were hoping for. And then, you know, after the administration, you know, why do they look at Saudi Arabia? Well, you know, if you are in the investment field, you know that some of these Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, you know, it's where the money is, to use that phrase. That's why I said it was a naive question. I mean, you go where the money is. So you talked to some national security experts who have

expressed concern looking ahead with Trump running for president again. They know that he and Kushner set themselves up to profit from their relationship with the Saudis after the administration ended. And of course, this is going to be the subject of investigations, right? Democrats have launched investigations into Trump and Kushner's ties to Saudi Arabia. And they're saying, look, there's no precedent for how they relied so significantly on Saudi investments after helping MBS get into office. So what is the status of those investigations? What kinds of questions are Democrats going to try to answer with their own investigations into Jared Kushner's business? Yeah, there are investigations ongoing into whether Cutter helped finance the bailout of the Kushner property that I mentioned a few minutes ago.

There's a House Oversight Committee investigation that launched in June of last year, seeking all sorts of documentation from Jared Kushner about was there some kind of setup during the administration that led to the $2 billion investment in the private equity fund. Just as I went to start recording this podcast with you, I got a letter from that same committee, which was taken over by Republicans. So that investigation sort of went into abeyance. But just this morning, the Democrats in that committee released a letter that they're sending to Jared Kushner, in which they say, essentially, we asked you for documentation. You didn't send us what we're looking for. We still are seeking these records, and please send us this information. So we'll have to see if Kushner responds to that. At this point,

Democrats aren't the majority on the House side. They don't have the subpoena power that they might have been able to use had they done that last year. However, there's a Senate committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and I've talked to their folks, and I quoted Senator Wyden in the story, and their plan, you know, they do have Democrats in power, obviously, on the Senate side. So they can pick up some of that, work with the Democrats on the minority side of the House Committee to try to, you know, further these investigations. So from their perspective, they still want to get a lot of information, particularly from Kushner, because there's so much, you know, money involved, but also various questions about Trump, about all this. So, you know, we'll have to see where that goes. It's the same committee on the House side that, on the the Republicans is looking into the Hunter Biden matter that you mentioned.

So, you know, there have been some people who've said, okay, if you're going to look into Hunter Biden, you know, they may say fair enough, but what about, you know, looking into what we've already started here on the Kushner side? I don't get into the Hunter Biden matter in my story. I just look strictly at this, but I have written in the past about Hunter Biden and the work he did for Ukrainian gas company and so forth. So I've written about, you know, frankly, about both matters. Let's go back to this personal relationship between Jared Kushner and Muhammad. You know, you write about how, you know, they connected shortly after the 2016 election. I mean, they were both young, they're both ascendant, Kushner's 35, Muhammad's then 31. They develop a very, very close relationship. Muhammad gets arm sales,

you know, presumed green light to blockade Qatar, a lot of other things. I mean, I'm trying to break it down. How much of this is a diplomatic relationship, a personal relationship, a financial relationship, or is it impossible to disentangle them all? Because these two men bonded on a lot of different levels, didn't they? They did. They're both young. They're both, you know, basically in the family business, so to speak. So they really had, in that sense, quite a bit in common. I thought there was a very telling anecdote that Kushner tells himself in his memoir that, you know, you write a memoir, people take it, and when it comes out, there's a few tidbits that come out.

But I thought there was a lot in there about his relationship with bin Salman that didn't get noticed when it came out. And for this story, I went back and looked at a bunch of memoirs that have been released over the last year to try to see, in various bits and pieces, as well as interviewing former senior White House officials, to get a better sense of the timeline here. And there's a wonderful anecdote where he basically says senior White House officials came to him and said that he was a fool for trusting bin Salman. And then he then goes and calls up bin Salman and said, and I'm paraphrasing him because that quotes in the story, people say that I'm a fool for trusting you. And he says, bin him out of the loop, that he didn't think it was a good idea for President Trump to meet directly with then-Deputy Crown Prince bin Salman in March of 2017 when the Deputy Crown Prince happened to be in D.C. He didn't think it was a good idea for Trump to make Saudi Arabia the first stop. He didn't think it was a good idea for what essence was interpreted as Trump's endorsement of the Saudi Arabian blockade of Qatar, and on and on. Kushner was overseeing a lot of this,

and Tillerson and others felt that they were out of the loop. And I quote another senior White House official as saying, you know, he didn't know what was going on with Kushner and Saudi Arabia. So there's a lot of concern within the White House at the time, not just in retrospect, about what was going on, as Kushner acknowledges by the fact that he says they say, you know, that they viewed him as a fool for dealing with bin Salman in this way. But that relationship strengthened. Kushner thought essentially, hey, you know, we've been working on Middle East peace for a long time. It hasn't worked. You know, these people just want to do it the same old way. And, you know, I'm going to try something different. So he saw himself, in fairness, as someone breaking the

mold. That's basically the way he portrays it throughout his memoir and saying that he was learning foreign policy on the fly. Pretty extraordinary for someone to make that statement and then be so heavily involved in foreign policy development. But that's the way he portrays it. Okay, so one of the biggest tests, obviously, of this relationship was over the murder of Khashoggi. And you write about all of this. He becomes a columnist for the Washington Post. Then this assassination team flown to Istanbul on planes. Here's a dazzling detail. Flown to Istanbul on planes owned by the same investment fund that gave Kushner's private equity firm $2 billion, murdered Khashoggi in October 2018. And then, you know, after Turkey rules that Saudi Arabia

was directly responsible, Kushner gets on the phone and he talks with MBS about how to respond. So how did Jared Kushner handle that? How did he help cover up, save MBS after what was, you know, worldwide outrage about his alleged direct involvement in the murder of this journalist. So, my understanding is Kushner told him basically, you know, you should say what happened and, you know, explain yourself and explain what happened and so forth. So, that's what we know. There are communications that occurred between Kushner and bin Salman, Mohammed bin Salman, that have not been publicly released. So there's things we don't know. And those have been requested by the

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, among others. So those have not been made public. I did interview former senior writers officials, including one that was on the phone with Kushner and bin Salman, right after the murder took place, who said that, you know, they had this conversation, you should, you know, say what happened and so forth. At that time of that conversation, you know, there were unknowns, and bin Salman has always denied that he ordered the killing or capture, but he also, I think, said in 60 Minutes, it was saying that given his position, he takes some responsibility, but he hasn't been held accountable in a way that, you know, perhaps you might think. There was a recent court case here in D.C. The Biden administration essentially said because bin Salman has simultaneously been named prime minister, although he's not king, but that essentially made him like a head of state, and that therefore he had immunity. So given immunity in a U.S. court, it's very unlikely

that he would be brought to some kind of trial or other kind of legal standing in other countries, though it's possible there'd be some other venue. But it hasn't happened. There was a trial of certain individuals in Saudi Arabia. A lot of those proceedings really are not made public. So to the Khashoggi family and allies, you know, they feel like accountability has not been made. And they're concerned because of the screening of immunity that it's not going to happen. And the reality is the Biden administration, you know, Biden says he's going to treat Saudi Arabia like the quote pariah, unquote, that it is. But then he went to fist bump with the crown prince, asked the crown prince to not increase oil production, you know, which happened anyway. So the Biden administration now has sort of picked up this real politic and there's not any indication that they're going to

go further. You know, they need this relationship. And so they've, that's the gear that they're going to go further. You know, they need this relationship. And so that's the gear that they're in right now. As you report, though, the Trump-Kushner-MBS relationship around this murder is fascinating. You know, Trump tells Bob Woodward in a recorded interview, I saved his ass, referring to MBS. He refused to endorse the CIA's conclusion that he was complicit. He equivocated about MBS's involvement. He opposed the release of the report. He vetoed a bill to block arms sales to the Saudis. Mike Pompeo, who eventually had replaced Tillerson, wrote in his memoir that Trump told him to meet with MBS and to remind him that he owed him. My Mike, go and have a good time.

Tell him he owes us, certainly implying a quid pro quo. You have the Democracy Group founded by Khashoggi telling the Washington Post that MBS, that they believe that he would have fallen from power had it not been the fact that they were protected by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump. This seems to be a pretty significant, you know, I'm going to protect you, I'm going to cover up your involvement in a murder, and in return for which, you owe me. Is that overstating it? Because that record seems to be pretty clear. The quote from Mike Pompeo, who replaced Tillerson as Secretary of State, right after, you know, it comes out as to what happened with Saudi Arabia's responsibility in the consulate in Turkey

for the murder, Trump sends Pompeo over. This is a memoir that just came out a couple of weeks ago. Over time, you get a little more bits and pieces of the chronology and the narrative as to what happened here. And he said, as you just recounted, that Pompeo should tell Bensalman to tell him he owes us. Now, and it begs the question, is that a figure of speech? I, you know, of course, contacted Pompeo's spokesperson and said, can you please explain and have Pompeo tell us, you know, what exactly he meant by this? Because it's kind of an explosive thing to say. And they just basically didn't respond. They let those words stand as they are. So it's basically for subject to interpretation. We know that Trump is a transactional person. I

mean, that's been very well documented for decades. So what does that mean? Does that mean like diplomatically? Did that mean after the presidency, there should be some financial payback? We don't know. The best that we can do is say, here's what happened. Here's what Pompeo says Trump's told him to say to the crown prince. So, you know, I certainly thought that was striking. And that's why I put it in the story. It's just so much we don't know because certain things are obviously said in private and particularly not just difficult to find some of those things out here in this country,

but even a much more secretive country like in Saudi Arabia, where very few people have access to what's being said in private conversations. So again, I think if we had access to the communications that were made, particularly between Kushner and the Crown Prince and WhatsApp, as has been reported, or, you know, also conversations that occurred between Trump and Midsommar. There are certainly a lot of risks there for more investigation, perhaps a congressional hearing. While there has been an ongoing investigation, there's not a hearing. And it's not clear that there'll be a hearing, but there could be.

I am amazed by some of the things that we did learn about what happened. So, again, that's going back to the end of the Trump administration. Kushner has his final meeting with the prince in early January. You know, he was trying to finalize an end to this cutter blockade. He flies home the morning of January 6th. And as we discussed before, he really needed a bailout. You know, things were not going well for Jared Kushner and for Trump. He needed a bailout from that office building in New York, which,

I don't know, is it silly to focus on the fact that it was 666, the address? It's since changed the address, by the way, with the new acquisition. Did they really? Yes. Did they? Yes, because it got so much noticed. I mean, everyone knows that has a very negative connotation. It does. The new owners changed the, I can't remember the numeric.

Something that doesn't make you immediately think of the Antichrist and the end of the world. Okay, so Saudi Arabia, as you point out, you know, had jumped in to help them both at the end. And this is the thing that I wanted to ask you about. So Kushner, who's sort of, you know, desperate for help, first creates this company called Fin Management and then used it to create this private equity fund. And he was looking for, obviously, some money from the Saudis. And yet the panel overseeing the Saudi public investment fund looked at it and they said, no, we don't think you should invest in Jared Kushner's firm because he has no experience. MBS basically overrides this to give him the thing. I guess the question is, how do we know that for a very secretive country?

That was, as I said in the story, that was reported by the New York Times last year in their scoop, obtaining the minutes, which have not been made public. I haven't seen the minutes, and certainly the Times, you know, it was quite a story. It's a hell of a dazzling detail. And the first indication, you know, that this had happened, it was known that Kushner was seeking money for a private equity fund or some kind of investment fund from foreign sources, probably Saudis. And I've written in the past about Kushner seeking perhaps financing for the bailout of 666, in fact, from various sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. So there is quite a history there prior to this. I'm trying to remember if it was even before they came into office. It might have been just before they took

office, as I recall. But yes, this is where the money is. And this is where a number of funds, you know, do look for, you know, financing. So, you know, there is that longstanding interest. So his firm will get $25 million in management fees. And in his pitch to investors, Kushner very directly plays off of his government experience. You know, talks about his experience managing Middle East peace efforts ending the cutter blockade that's from reporting from the intercept and again this is something that Democrats like Senator Ron Wyden are pushing to investigate this lack of transparency in private equity firms like Kushner's. I guess the question is,

you know, with all of this, and, you know, we started off by saying, you know, you didn't want to describe this as corruption. I guess the question is, how do we describe this? And will the investigations by the Senate Democrats lead to the question of whether there are any violations of law? Because it certainly seems that if there are not laws governing high-level government officials, then trading upon their relationships, or maybe that's just the way things work, that that's a flaw. So, I mean, is there any suggestion that laws were actually violated, or did Jared Kushner and Donald Trump just game the system here? Do we know that? Yeah, I don't say the story that a law was violated. I say that there are,

you know, why didn't others have these questions about, well, should laws be changed so this kind of thing can't happen for there's more transparency? And if there was a law broken, that's something that is a legal conclusion, for example, for the Department of Justice to allege, not, you know, myself as a reporter. So, you know, I try to write it in a fair way. Kushner, Trump declined to speak to me. Kushner folks didn't give me an on-the-record statement. The Trump person did, it's in the story. So, you know, all that's laid out. But corruption, like I said earlier, that's sort of a legal finding. There would have to be some kind of criminal charge. And that, you know, in a story like this, you want to lay out, well, here's what we know.

It's raised these questions. You know, there has been an ongoing investigation. You know, maybe there'd be a hearing. There's still more to know. So, you know, while this has been written about, talked about, a lot of people have a lot of interest in this topic, to be sure, given the response that I've had to this story. There's still plenty we don't know. And that's often the case when you do investigative stories. Sometimes there's more and more things to know and you, you know, write stories. I'm going to, as soon as I finish talking to you, I'm going to write another story about this. So, you know, there's always a little more to know. And sometimes this is for interest. Maybe someone

will have more information. So that's a process. And I want to do it in a way that tells readers what we do know, what we don't know. And maybe there's questions here that should be addressed by a committee. I don't know if there's an investigation going on within, for example, Department of Justice. But certainly, there are a lot of people who've been involved who said there should be more of a look at it. And given all that happened here and what happened with the murder of Khashoggi, that the story shouldn't be forgotten, that there should be more, you know, inquiry into what's happened here. So one more question, though. Do you have a sense of what role Jared Kushner might prospectively play in a second Trump administration? He and Ivanka have gone through the two-step of distancing themselves from the Trump administration when it became inconvenient. She notably did not show up at his announcement. I

believe Jared was there. So does Jared go back to being the czar of the Middle East in Trump 2.0, or has he moved on? Do we know? I think what he said is that he's not going to be involved with the campaign the way he was before. So, you know, if Trump's reelected, I think that would remain to be seen. I mean, Ivanka is always going to be Trump's daughter. And unless something happens, Jared Kushner is always going to be his son-in-law. So it's very close part of the family. And, you know, there's been a lot of attention on family members of politicians and so forth. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, they both had, you know, positions in government. Jared Kushner was a senior White House advisor. So he played a very direct role in developing policy, was very deeply involved.

Would he be next time? I mean, we just don't know. Michael Kranish is national political investigative reporter for The Washington Post and the author of the extraordinary piece that was published earlier this week about the financial relationship between Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, and the Saudi Arabians. Michael, thank you so much for taking time from a very busy day to talk with us. I appreciate it. Really appreciate the time to talk at some length about this story. Thank you. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.