Smooth son-in-law has Trump’s ear and his love of getting even

With his cool demeanour, Jared Kushner appears to be the ice to the president-elect’s fire, but can be as ruthless.

Mike Pence, left, with Jared Kushner outside Trump Tower in New York.

When Donald Trump sweeps into the White House this week, a suave, young man in a tailored suit will be at his side. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and most trusted confidant, was last week appointed senior White House ­adviser to the president, a role that will see him consulted on key decisions and foreign policy choices.

Insiders view the husband of Trump’s favoured daughter Ivanka as the president-elect’s most important consigliere.

“Every president I’ve ever known has one or two people he intuitively and structurally trusts,” Henry Kissinger, who advises Mr Trump on foreign policy, told ­Forbes magazine. “Jared might be that person.”

GRAPHIC: Trump connections

Mr Kushner, 36, may be the ice to Mr Trump’s fire but both are ­aggressive businessmen who seem to relish settling a grudge. Together they will run a White House ­unlike any other. Mr Kushner ­became a key figure in Mr Trump’s world during the presidential ­campaign, when he won credit for his organisational skills and ruthless decision-making.

“It’s hard to overstate and hard to summarise Jared’s role in the campaign,” said the Trump-­supporting Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.

As Mr Trump’s phone began to ring after his triumph on election night, it was Mr Kushner who fielded the calls. The influence he and his wife wield has continued to grow since the election. For while Mr Trump can be abrasive and his wife, Melania, seems uninterested in Washington, Jared and Ivanka are an attractive and sociable duo. With the president-elect and his wife spending much of their time in New York, the pair will become the capital’s de facto first couple.

Mr Kushner has played a ­moderating role in assembling the incoming administration, offering a free market, pro-business counterweight to Mr Trump’s ­protectionist inclinations. He is thought to have been a supporter of appointing Mitt Romney and then Rex Tillerson to the position of secretary of state.

Mr Trump’s son-in-law is also a link for him to unfamiliar business and political circles. Mr Kushner was the driving force behind a meeting with tech giants such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook.

The scion of a prominent East Coast Jewish family, Mr Kushner also provides a conduit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Trump has even suggested that his son-in-law might help broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Mr Kushner’s cool demeanour means he will provide an element of calm in what is likely to be a ­turbulent White House. Yet Mr Trump and his son-in-law have much in common. They both come from families that embody the American dream, descendants of European immigrants who made a fortune investing in building and property. Imbued with the arriviste ambition that drove their fathers, they have taken big risks in trying to turn their sizeable inheritances into great fortunes.

Mr Kushner’s meteoric rise is rooted in a traumatic family schism that brought his comfortable youth to an abrupt end. His ­father, Charles, was jailed for campaign finance violations and trying to blackmail his sister’s husband by setting him up in a honeytrap with a prostitute, and videotaping their encounter. The religiously observant and philanthropic Kushners were torn apart by the feud. Jared, a fresh graduate of Harvard University, saw his world collapse as he was forced to take over the family business.

“There was a sense that there was a trajectory to him when he was at Harvard,” said a contemporary from his university days. “That he was looking past graduation in a way that most students don’t, already investing in property. But I think it was all accelerated by what happened with his father. When his father went to prison it was very clear that he had to step up. And he did.”

Perhaps the other seminal event in Mr Kushner’s life was marrying Ivanka. The pair, who met and started dating in 2007, make a photogenic and apparently happy couple. Crucially, the marriage also brought Mr Kushner into Mr Trump’s close orbit.

While Mr Kushner is quieter than the limelight-seeking Mr Trump, he operates by the same brutal rules. A telling insight into how Mr Trump and Mr Kushner operate has been the sidelining of Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor, an early Trump supporter, was put in charge of transition planning in the closing stages of the campaign. Yet as soon as Mr Trump won, Mr Christie was chucked out. It was no coincidence he had been the prosecutor who brought the charges that put Charles Kushner in jail.

Mr Trump and his son-in-law’s similarities extend to the potential conflicts of interests each presents to the government’s ethics experts. The president-elect last week eschewed calls to place his assets in a blind trust as he turned the reins of his empire over to sons Eric and Donald Jr.

Mr Kushner is also taking steps to distance himself from his investments and partnerships. He is ­expected to resign as chief executive of Kushner Companies and sell assets from his real estate group, which is comparable in scale to the Trump Organisation. It has participated in about $US7 billion ($9.3bn) worth of ­acquisitions in the past decade, often backed by foreign tycoons.

Just days after the election, Mr Kushner reportedly joined talks with Wu Xiaohui, chairman of the vast Chinese investment company Anbang, on the redevelopment of the Kushner family’s prize asset, 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. To the Obama administration, Mr Wu was a suspect player and ­officials worked to limit Anbang investment in America because of security concerns.

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, believes Mr Kushner’s property business may present problems.

“The financial conflict of interest statute may not apply to the president, as Trump has pointed out several times, but it does apply to Kushner and his family,” Mr Painter said. “As I understand it he’s going to hold on to some real estate. If this real estate has significant bank loans on it, then he’s going to have to recuse himself from issues relating to banking and financial services.”

Mr Painter believes it would be a criminal offence for Mr Kushner to participate in White House talks about easing financial ­regulation if he has commercial real estate subject to bank loans.

A role in any international trade discussions would also be complicated by Ivanka’s clothing business. “Kushner has a more open-market approach to trade than Trump, which is a good thing,” Mr Painter added. “But Ivanka is in the clothing business. And anyone who is making any money in the clothing business is not buying stock in the good ol’ US of A.”

The Sunday Times