Yesterday the New York Times broke the news that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were subpoenaed by the grand jury investigating the events of January 6, 2021, under the aegis of Special Counsel Jack Smith. He’s making Vanky and the Slenderman an offer they can’t refuse to come in and spill the deets about daddy’s little coup plot. And hooboy, this sure as hell looks like an investigation that’s in high gear and racing toward the finish line. Particularly since Smith has already subpoenaed Mark Meadows and Mike Pence. You can’t get much closer to Donald Trump himself, right?
The piece is by Maggie Haberman and Mike Schmidt (of course), and hasn’t been widely confirmed elsewhere. None of the outlets that regularly report on the goings-on of the grand juries, including CNN and the Washington Post, have matched the reporting. And moreover the Times’ s own Justice Department reporters like Katie Benner and Alan Feuer aren’t bylined, so, you can make an educated guess as to where this story came from.
And while we’re speculating, let’s assume these two nepo babies aren’t about to subject themselves to a protracted fight about executive privilege. Mike Pence may be paying his lawyers to argue that actually he was doing senator stuff when he told Trump he wasn’t going to do a coup, and thus he can’t talk to the grand jury about it because of legislative immunity, a constitutional privilege he has a patriotic duty to protect. And honestly, mad props for creativity on that one. But Javanka already testified on camera for the January 6 Select Committee without much of a fuss about executive privilege.
Sure, they could make the argument that, as high-ranking government advisers, their conversations with Trump are covered by executive privilege. But that hasn’t gone well for anyone else who tried it. And honestly, those two seem to have hopped off the Trump train several stops ago, although they “have maintained family contact with the former president” (whatever that means in this dysfunctional clan). As Haberschmidt point out, Ivanka has already said she’s not participating in the 2024 campaign, and her husband is pretty busy right now rolling around in a giant pile of Saudi money. Maybe while the special counsel has him under oath, he can ask young Jared if he solicited that cash for his hedge fund on his trip to the Middle East that kept him out of DC on the day of the Capitol riot.
As for Princess Goya von Nepotism, she was reportedly in the Oval Office during that phone call Trump made to Pence on the morning of the assault on the Capitol. She also accompanied her father to the Ellipse for his pre-coup rally and then spent the rest of the day trying to get him to issue a statement calling off the mob.
According to the article and an appearance Haberman made with Jake Tapper, the special counsel is interested not just in the violence on January 6, but Trump’s “efforts to stay in power” generally. And since these two dead-eyed freaks were on hand for all of that, they’ll have quite a story to tell if they deign to show their faces before the commoners.
Look for the GOP to spend a news cycle or two howling about an unhinged prosecutor targeting the former president’s family — even as they devote millions of hours of congressional resources to targeting Hunter Biden, who never worked in the White House. That train is never late!
But sometimes even as we type there is LATE BREAKING: CBS reports that Trump has asserted executive privilege over Mike Pence’s testimony, and the special counsel has moved to compel. No word on whether this will also implicate Pence’s bruited Speech or Debate Clause defense.
[NYT]
Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty. And if you’re ordering from Amazon, use this link, because reasons.
