| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020001)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020001" |
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| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
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| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| target of a renewed and eager cultivation by, with quite some irony, both Blair and |
| Murdoch. Lacking a circle of influence in almost all of the many areas of government with |
| which he was now involved, Kushner was both susceptible to cultivation and more than a |
| little desperate for the advice his cultivators had to offer. Blair, now with philanthropic, |
| private diplomatic, and varied business interests in the Middle East, was particularly intent |
| on helping shepherd some of Jared's Middle East initiatives. |
| In February, Blair visited Kushner in the White House. |
| On this trip, the now freelance diplomat, perhaps seeking to prove his usefulness to this |
| new White House, mentioned a juicy rumor: the possibility that the British had had the |
| Trump campaign staff under surveillance, monitoring its telephone calls and other |
| communications and possibly even Trump himself. This was, as Kushner might |
| understand, the Sabbath goy theory of intelligence. On the Sabbath, observant Jews could |
| not turn on the lights, nor ask someone else to turn on the lights. But if they expressed the |
| view that it would be much easier to see with light, and if a non-Jew then happened to turn |
| them on, that would be fine. So although the Obama administration would not have asked |
| the British to spy on the Trump campaign, the Brits would have been led to understand |
| how helpful it might be if they did |
| It was unclear whether the information was rumor, informed conjecture, speculation, or |
| solid stuff. But, as it churned and festered in the president's mind, Kushner and Bannon |
| went out to CIA headquarters in Langley to meet with Mike Pompeo and his deputy |
| director Gina Haspel to check it out. A few days later, the CIA opaquely reported back that |
| the information was not correct; it was a "miscommunication." |
| * ** |
| Politics had seemed to become, even well before the age of Trump, a mortal affair. It was |
| now zero-sum: When one side profited, another lost. One side's victory was another's |
| death. The old notion that politics was a trader's game, an understanding that somebody |
| else had something you wanted—a vote, goodwill, old-fashioned patronage and that in |
| the end the only issue was cost, had gone out of fashion. Now it was a battle between good |
| and evil. |
| Curiously, for a man who seemed to have led a movement based in anger and |
| retribution, Trump was very much (or believed he was very much) a politician of the old |
| stripe a let's-work-it-out guy. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. He was, in his |
| mind, the ultimate tactician, always knowing what the other guy wanted. |
| Steve Bannon had pressed him to invoke Andrew Jackson as his populist model, and |
| he had loaded up on Jackson books (they remained unread). But his real beau ideal was |
| Lyndon Johnson. LBJ was a big man who could knock heads, do deals, and bend lesser |
| men to his will. Trade it out so in the end everyone got something, and the better |
| dealmaker got a little more. (Trump did not, however, appreciate the irony of where |
| HOUSE |
| _OVERSIGHT_020001 |
|
|
