Trump was furious at Jared Kushner for 'stupid' Russia scandals and using private email servers: new book

Maggie Haberman's new book "Confidence Man" was released Tuesday and it paints a startling picture of Donald Trump's relationship with his top adviser, son-in-law Jared Kushner.

After special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to look into the many ties Trump had with Russia, it was revealed that Kushner was part of several pieces of the scandal.

That summer, Haberman recalled, the Times report at the time revealed Don Jr. met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

"The meeting had been arranged by a man named Rob Goldstone on behalf of the son of the oligarch who had cohosted the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Don Jr. later said it was a 'bait-and-switch' that turned out to be about a Russian retaliatory effort against a U.S. measure in response to a human-rights abuse," Haberman wrote.

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Trump's team didn't believe that Don. Jr. had any nefarious intent, he simply didn't stop to think about whether there was something else happening.

"Most of Trump’s advisers believed that Don Jr. did not pause to consider what he might be walking into and simply rushed ahead," wrote Haberman. "But Don Jr.’s impulses to respond to the Times’s reporting in his own way, and more candidly, were overtaken by his father, who cut his own lawyers out of the process and directed how to respond as he flew home from a foreign trip aboard Air Force One."

That was also the same time that the FBI executed a search warrant at the homes of Paul Manafort. All of it was causing problems for Trump.

For weeks, stories stacked up about Trump drew him more deeply into the Russia intrigue scandal and amature mistakes.

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"First was a report about a private meeting [Kushner] had had during the transition with an official from a Russian state bank. Then there was one about his proposal to the Russian ambassador, made through Flynn, that Trump’s team use the embassy’s secure communications equipment to relay messages to the Kremlin, which would have likely shielded any exchanges from American intelligence services," Haberman wrote.

She explained that the covert channel appears never to have been used. Kushner swears he only suggested it "solely as a mechanism for closer cooperation between the U.S. and Russian militaries in efforts to end the civil war in Syria."

Then there was the report that Kushner and Ivanka Trump used a private email server to do government work, "something White House lawyers cautioned against and which Trump ran an entire campaign attacking Hillary Clinton for doing."

It was then that Trump went after Kushner demanding to know how he could be so “stupid.”

By the time Gen. John Kelly took over as the White House chief of staff, Trump was looking for a back door to shove Kushner into. Trump nearly tweeted that Kushner and Ivanka were going to leave the White House, without ever telling them they'd be doing so. It was Kelly who stopped the tweet from going out, urging Trump instead to speak to the couple personally. Trump can't handle confrontation, so the couple stayed on running the West Wing for the rest of Trump's four years in office.

Haberman's book, "Confidence Man" is available on sale Tuesday and Raw Story has full coverage here.