The author of a bombshell book on Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's alleged Gulf dealings just revealed something about a hacked phone his book left out.
Investigative journalist Matthew Cole, whose new book "Princes and Thieves" alleges Kushner had access to secret Gulf-funded bank accounts while serving in the White House, told host Molly Jong-Fast on Saturday's episode of "Fast Politics" that his reporting points to other U.S. allies knowing about Dutch intelligence services hacking Kushner's phone.
"There are some indications in my reporting, which are not in the book because it gets complicated, that there are other European, other NATO allies that have seen or are aware that the Dutch were in there and that they had access to Kushner's phone," Cole told Jong-Fast.
As Gizmodo reported, Cole's book alleges that Dutch military intelligence found screenshots from Kushner's iPhone on a Russian military intelligence server and later exploited the same weakness to watch his screen, catching him logging into a Dubai-based account that had taken in hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cole described that access as limited.
"It wasn't malware where they could manipulate the phone, but they had the ability to see the phone when the phone was on," he noted.
Cole also took on a question that "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart pressed him on earlier this week, namely why the Dutch never alerted Washington.
"The U.S. is a NATO ally. Intelligence agencies keep secrets. That is literally what they do for a living," Cole told Jong-Fast. "If they can get into something, they will. And if they can gather something, they will."
He added that he had "no indication at all" that the Dutch shared what they found with the U.S. government, though he allowed it was possible.
Cole framed the episode as a sign of how little the public knows about what happens behind closed doors.
"At least in foreign policy, our government has shrunk to like three people, essentially a family and a few friends," he said.
Asked whether his reporting captured only a sliver of a larger story, Cole said his work was extensive but much of what lies beneath it remains hidden.
"What my reporting shows is this is the tip of the iceberg," Cole explained. "I don't know how big the iceberg is, and I don't pretend to."
Cole noted that Kushner and his lawyer "unequivocally and emphatically deny every allegation in the book." Kushner has publicly dismissed the claims.