Sometime over the August 8-9 weekend, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner meets with potential presidential candidate Kanye West. Although Ivanka Trump is with Kushner at the meeting’s location, there are no reports that she met with West.
The news breaks a few days later, and West offers an interview to the New York Times via Twitter but then refuses to talk about the secret meeting when the paper reaches out.
At a White House news briefing, Kushner confirms he met with Kanye but refuses to go into specifics about their conversation.
“We had a great discussion about a lot of things,” he added. “He has some great ideas for what he’d like to see happen in the country, and that’s why he has the candidacy that he’s been doing. But again, there’s a lot of issues that the president’s championed that he admires, and it was just great to have a friendly discussion.”
Pressed on whether they specifically discussed West’s campaign, Kushner said: “We had a general discussion more about policy.”
Politico
George Conway of The Lincoln Project (and husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway) is quick to point out on Twitter that a meeting between the two candidates is easy territory for lawbreaking.
Given the timing, and given Jared’s role with the re-election campaign, this is strongly suggestive of illegality, assuming that Jared was interested in something other than Kanye’s next album.
Coordination between candidates and campaigns may be ineffectual—but it’s still illegal, and possibly criminal, under the Federal Election Campaign Act.
Also, even apart from Kanye’s mental state, if this meeting was for political purposes—specifically, influencing the election—it was blatantly illegal.
George Conway, Twitter
West’s aspirations for entering the 2020 race have been controversial amongst Democrats; many think his candidacy would pull votes from Joe Biden. When Forbes asked if that was his intention, West refused to confirm or deny.
Sources
https://nypost.com/2020/08/12/kanye-west-had-meeting-with-jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-report/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/13/is-jared-kushner-illegally-coordinating-with-kanye-west/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/13/kanye-west-jared-kushner-meeting-394895
https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/08/06/exclusive-kanye-west-indicates-that-his-spoiler-campaign-is-indeed-designed-to-hurt-biden/#1701015d6397
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1293644727364063235
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1293639829251645440
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1293654265290846209
Photo: Rodrigo Ferrari
