Johnson Warns Kushner Not To ‘Bet Against’ House Republicans After President’s Son-in-Law Meets With Jeffries

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to not “bet against” House Republicans after Mr. Kushner reportedly sat down with the man most likely to succeed Mr. Johnson as speaker in a Democratic takeover— House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Mr. Kushner is an outside advisor to the White House on Middle Eastern affairs and is likely to come under investigation by a Democratic-led House of Representatives. According to the New York Times, Messrs. Kushner and Jeffries recently met to discuss how the Trump administration and a potential House Democratic majority might find common ground. Mr. Kushner was a senior advisor to President Trump when Democrats took the House in 2018 and remembers how nasty things got between the president and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Asked about the meeting during an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Johnson offered his warning to Mr. Kushner. “I heard about it for the first time this morning,” Mr. Johnson said of the Times’s report. “I know Jared, he’s a smart guy, he hedges his bets, but I’m telling you what — you better not bet against the House Republicans.” Mr. Johnson is currently in the middle of a 30-day swing through America’s most competitive congressional districts. He has so far traveled to Long Island, southeastern Virginia, and northeastern Pennsylvania, among other places. His travel schedule includes stops in 17 of America’s 50 states. “We’re gonna hold the House Republican majority,” Mr. Johnson said Sunday morning. When pressed about the fact that the Trump administration may be looking to build a bridge with Mr. Jeffries — whose party is ahead, according to generic polling of the November midterms — Mr. Johnson downplayed Mr. Kushner’s influence. “I don’t know what that’s about. I know Jared has interests in lots of other things going on,” the speaker said. “He’s not really directly involved in the (administration), at least in the day-to-day in the White House.”Mr. Kushner has no formal role with the Trump administration in the president’s second term, though he has served as a mediator between the American government and officials in the Middle East to bring about an end to the war in Gaza and with Iran. Given his personal business interests in the region, House and Senate Democrats have said Mr. Kushner will almost certainly be hauled before Congress next year to answer questions about what, if any, personal business he is doing while on government trips. “Jared Kushner raising billions from Middle Eastern governments for his private equity firm, pocketing tens of millions in fees each year, while serving as Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy raises serious concerns about his potential conflicts of interest,” the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Robert Garcia, said in a statement last year. “We need answers if Trump’s son-in-law is profiting by selling access to influence U.S. policy to foreign investors. If he’s getting influenced by cash from other countries, America’s national security is at risk.”The Democratic ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Ron Wyden, similarly pledged that Mr. Kushner would be the target of an investigation if Democrats retake Congress’s upper chamber. “The guy is literally on the payroll of the Saudi government and trying to take even more of their money while simultaneously hijacking U.S. foreign policy with his shadow State Department. The U.S. becomes less safe and more corrupt every day Jared Kushner remains involved in our political system,” Mr. Wyden said in March. Mr. Kushner has also been the subject of attacks from Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat whose name has been floated among the presidential contenders list for 2028. At a recent rally, Mr. Ossoff talked about Mr. Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump’s attempt to purchase an island off the coast of Albania in order to develop a hotel there, which has sparked protests across the country. Mr. Ossoff now refers to Mr. Kushner as “Prince Jared.”“Never before have we seen so little effort to hide so much corruption,” Mr. Ossoff said. “The Mar-a-Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights.”

Johnson Warns Kushner Not To ‘Bet Against’ House Republicans After President’s Son-in-Law Meets With Jeffries

Johnson Warns Kushner Not To ‘Bet Against’ House Republicans After President’s Son-in-Law Meets With Jeffries

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