Tous les Toobz are all abuzz over the new book by veteran national security correspondent Matthew Cole that tees up Jared Kushner for approximately 390 congressional investigations if all goes according to the current polls next Tuesday. The book, Princes and Thieves , describes in apparently vivid detail how Kushner has turned American foreign policy into a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil sheikhs, with a whole lot left over for himself. In The New York Times, the great Fintan O’Toole provides an extended precis of the book's essential case.
If Cole’s claims are accurate, Kushner’s political and financial relationship with the UAE’s president, Mohammed bin Zayed (widely known as MBZ), constitutes what must surely be the worst case of U.S. foreign policy being conducted outside the law and democratic oversight since the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration in the 1980s.
Iran-Contra! Don't tease me, boyo.
In that affair, government officials secretly sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to fund—against the explicit orders of Congress—a violent right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua. What Cole alleges is, if anything, more consequential: that Kushner worked with the ...