Businessman Attempted Back Channel Communication Between North Korea and U.S.

Seriously. Can we stop with Nepotism Theater and get Jared Kushner out of the White House? I’m pretty sure, at this point, a lot of the sketchy activity we see around the Trump administration would start to dry up.

The White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law has been implicated in so many shady dealings and bad decisions that you really have to wonder if it is he, not Michael Cohen, who “knows where the bodies are buried” in Trumplandia.

The latest is a report that suggests Kushner was contacted in 2017 about setting up back channel communications between the Trump White House and North Korea.

This follows earlier reports about back channel contacts with Russia and also China, all looking to work through Kushner, as the contact.

In a report from the New York Times on Sunday, it was an American businessman acting as the go-between.

Financier Gabriel Schulze reportedly contacted the Trump administration last summer, saying that a top North Korean official wanted to speak with Kushner about a possible meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Kushner referred the talks to then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, according to the Times, which noted that Kushner may not have contacted then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson because of their tense relationship.

News like this can set you off on a lot of different tributaries. For instance, all the talk in 2017 of Rex Tillerson’s prickly relationship with Trump and talk of his potentially leaving his post may have been true, after all.

Also, it appears that the notion of replacing Tillerson with Pompeo has been on the table for a bit, as well.

So what did they want to talk about? Was this in the heat of the “little rocket man” fervor?

“I do not discuss the nature of my business or personal relationships,” Schulze told the newspaper in a statement.

That’s a curious statement, there. He’s not denying anything, and you have to wonder why he thought there could be business between two governments that appeared to be at dire odds.

Kushner also reportedly created a back channel between Chinese officials and the Trump administration last year.

Kushner and the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. then organized a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the Times.

And Trump has praised Xi Jinping’s eternal presidency, ever since.

Kushner held a series of meetings with the ambassador during the transition without Chinese experts present, a move that concerned former and current U.S. officials, the Times added.

Because he’s shady, but as the bossman’s son-in-law, he gets a lot of leeway.

That may be acceptable in the business world, but this is not a business. It’s a government, so maybe we should pull back, a bit?

Whether it was back channel communications that brought it about, or Trump’s eagerness to be seen as a “historical” president, doing what has never been done, last week’s meeting between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un may go down as the biggest stain of the Trump presidency.

North Korea got everything they wanted: Legitimacy.

They were also given certain security guarantees, while the U.S. came away with nothing sure. We also saw a sitting U.S. president marvel over how a starving, terrorized people “love” the one who is having them raped, tortured, and murdered.

Stand by for more on this story. I’m sure it’s only the start.