Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said the 2021 Capitol riot was unexpected and that the president would’ve tried to prevent violence from happening if he had knowledge of it.
Mr. Kushner, who served as a White House senior adviser under Mr. Trump, disclosed his shock of the events of the day in his new memoir, titled “Breaking History.”
“What is clear to me is that no one at the White House expected violence that day. I’m confident that if my colleagues or the president had anticipated violence, they would have prevented it from happening,” Mr. Kushner wrote.
Mr. Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, blamed the rioters for making a mockery of the Trump movement and allowing the public to promote a narrative that labeled his supporters as “crazed and violent thugs.”
“After more than six hundred peaceful Trump rallies, these rioters gave Trump’s critics the fodder they had wanted for more than five years,” Mr. Kushner said. “The claim was as false as the narrative that the violent Antifa rioters who desecrated American cities that summer were representative of the millions of peaceful demonstrators who had marched for equality under the law.”
Mr. Kushner is the latest of a string of Trump White House officials to write a tell-all memoir about their experience.
In his book, Mr. Kushner also accused former strategist Steve Bannon of constantly leaking stories to the press, touching on his sour relationship with his one-time colleague.
His frustration became such that he requested staff to seal the connecting door between him and Mr. Bannon’s office, he reveals.
“Bannon single-handedly caused more problems for me than anyone else in my time in Washington,” Mr. Kushner wrote. “He probably leaked and lied about me more than everyone else combined. He played dirty and dragged me into the mud of the Russia investigation.”
Mr. Kushner said he later supported a pardon for Mr. Bannon.
In a separate passage, Mr. Kushner also accused Mr. Trump’s second chief-of-staff John F. Kelly of having a hot temper and once shoved Ivanka in the hallway. Mr. Kelly denied the accusation.
Mr. Kushner’s book will be released on Aug. 23. It is published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of Harper Collins Publishers.
• Mica Soellner can be reached at msoellner@washingtontimes.com.
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