Jared Kushner is helping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he has a close relationship, coordinate a response to the suspected murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, reports Yahoo News.
Kushner has a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, having reportedly devised his entire Middle East strategy around the prince being "an agent of change."
The report, sourced to several "senior officials," says that President Trump's son-in-law was "taken in" with the prince's public relations campaign, which cast him as a "reformer" who is "bent on modernizing Saudi Arabia."
Kushner is unwilling to give up on him now, the report suggests, and is talking on the phone with him about how to move forward. Kushner is calling for the promised "full investigation," by the Saudis.
“He’s deeply, deeply involved in what’s going on,” the source said of Kushner.
Another senior White House official went further, saying Kushner sees himself in Mohammed bin Salman.
"He did have a naive understanding of this and, I think, he did buy into immediately this ‘MBS’ aura. You know, a ‘he’s another young guy like me’ type of thing,” the former official said. “But I think over time, Jared’s come to see that he’s still going to be an autocrat.”