12 Things to Know About Jared Kushner

Kushner, who was was sworn in as Senior Advisor to the President just days after the inauguration, will reportedly head up a new office called the "White House Office of American Innovation." He'll lead a team with a broad mandate to overhaul the federal bureaucracy, reportedly using private sector methods and models to fulfill the Trump administration's campaign promises, which include everything from fighting opioid addiction to improving care for veterans. “We should have excellence in government,” Kushner told the Washington Post on Sunday in an interview in his West Wing office. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.” The new office could even recommend that some government functions be subject to a bidding process and privatized.

The announcement of this office—which isn't official yet—comes after a disastrous week for the Trump administration, in which the Republican plan for health care reform was pulled from a Congressional vote due to lack of support. CNN reported that the president was upset with Kushner for going on a ski vacation in Aspen as the president and his senior staff scrambled to find support for the doomed legislation.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is looking into the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election, has informed the White House that it will question Kushner about meetings with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and other Russian officials, according to the New York Times. The Trump administration has characterized these meetings as routine and says Kushner will cooperate fully. “He isn’t trying to hide anything and wants to be transparent," said Hope Hicks, a White House spokesperson. The Senate panel’s decision to speak with Kushner would make him the closest person to the president to be called upon in any of the investigations, and the only person currently serving in the White House. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from Justice Department inquiries into Russian interference and the Trump campaign after he failed to disclose at his Senate confirmation hearing that he had met with Kislyak during the campaign.

Just a few weeks into Donald Trump's presidency, Jared Kushner carved out his niche in the West Wing. In addition to focusing on economic initiatives, he is also working with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis on issues of foreign policy and national security.

"[Mattis and Tillerson] seek [Kushner] out. If they're about to go talk to the president, they ask him if they can stop by his office to talk about things," a source told Vanity Fair. "They know Donald is going to ask him about what they come to him with anyway."

The Washington Post went so far as to call Kushner a "shadow diplomat."

"People are coming to them because they know at the end of the day, they've been they've been there for 20 years before and they'll be there for 20 years after. The world is not stupid," a source told Vanity Fair, regarding Kushner. "Foreign policy isn't about the books you've read. This is real life. It's about who speaks to the President."

Back in November, in an interview with the New York Times, the Trump said that his son-in-law could help bring peace to the Middle East, despite the fact that Kushner has no foreign policy experience. "I would love to be the one who made peace with Israel and the Palestinians, that would be such a great achievement," Trump said Tuesday, according to a tweet from Mike Grynbaum.

But even the potential to solve issues between Israel and Palestine doesn't make you immune to the President's criticism. "Trump yells at him in front of people all the time," a source close to the family told Vanity Fair. "He's in line, too."

Jared Kushner has long been a favorite of his father-in-law, in no small part because he is married to Ivanka, the president's beloved older daughter. Despite having no experience in government or politics, Trump came to rely increasingly on Kushner's advice during the campaign. "Honestly, Jared is a very successful real estate person, but I actually think he likes politics more than he likes real estate," Donald Trump said at a rally. "But he's very good at politics." Kushner was credited with masterminding the campaign's social media operation. Along with Trump's older children Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr., he persuaded Trump to fire former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and to pick Reince Preibus as chief of staff. He has reportedly been instrumental in smoothing Trump's relationships with Fox News (Kushner is friendly with Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox), the GOP establishment, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

And like Trump, Kushner works for the family business. His father, Charles Kushner, was head of a real-estate empire worth billions and one of the most powerful men in New Jersey. He groomed Jared early, sending him company financial documents to review while he was at Harvard.

Jared first made business headlines of his own in 2007 when he paid $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue, at the time a record price for a Manhattan office building; the Kushner Companies own properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. The younger Kushner also owns the New York Observer, a newspaper he bought in 2006. Many wondered why the soft-spoken and guarded Kushner would want to invest in newspaper at a notoriously difficult time for the industry. Perhaps the roots of his political ambitions can be found in his desire to become a media mogul. "Jared understands being a newspaper owner moves you into a different league," says Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University and an acquaintance of Kushner's told Bloomberg Businessweek. "Politicians have to cultivate you. The elite come to you for attention, as opposed to you going to them. It reverses the relationship."

Jared was raised in northern New Jersey, where he attended the Frisch School, a co-ed, modern orthodox yeshiva in Paramus. From an early age, he was involved in his father's real estate company, learning the ropes before he was even out of high school.

He went on to graduate from Harvard, where he was famously accepted after a $2.5 million donation from his father. He then went on to NYU for grad school, where he earned both his JD and MBA degrees.

In 2005, when Jared was 24 and in law school, Charles Kushner pled guilty to tax evasion, witness tampering, and offering illegal campaign donations. The charges stemmed from an investigation into donations made to then-New Jersey governor Jim McGreevy's campaign; Charles was a prominent Democratic fundraiser in the state. In a lurid twist, Charles had apparently hired a woman to seduce his brother-in-law and videotape the interaction because Kushner believed the man was cooperating with federal authorities. The federal prosecutor in charge of the case was none other than Chris Christie.

Charles Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison, and paroled after one. Jared remained close to his father after the conviction, flying to Alabama on weekends to visit him in prison. The New York Times reports that for years, Jared carried a wallet that his father had made for him in prison. "He was the best son to his father in jail, the best son to his mother, who suffered terribly, and he was a father to his siblings," Charles told New York magazine. "I speak with my father about everything in my life," Jared said.

When his father was convicted, Jared stepped in to run the Kushner Companies, and has been CEO since 2008; his father continues to be involved in the business. "He knows a ton about real estate," says Jared.

Hardly a story has been written about Kushner that doesn't reference his politeness, or the fact that he is soft-spoken and well-behaved—perhaps in contrast to his father-in-law's more combative style. "I’ve never seen any kind of erratic behavior from him," real estate lawyer Robert Ivanhoe told The Real Deal. The publicist Peggy Siegel gushed to Vanity Fair: "Besides being devastatingly handsome, he is well mannered, well bred, and so well turned out."

Kushner and Ivanka keep a Kosher home and observe Shabbat. Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism before they were married, and while she declined to comment on their religiosity to T&C;, she did say, "I will tell you that our Friday evenings are for just our family."

Many critics of the Trump campaign sited the anti-Semitism of some of its most extreme supporters as a reason to be fearful of the policies of a Trump presidency. They also questioned why Kushner did not openly denounce that aspect of Trump's campaign. After candidate Trump tweeted an image that contained a star of David over a pile of money, accusing Hillary Clinton as corrupt, Dana Schwartz, a writer for Kushner's own newspaper, The Observer, wrote: "I'm asking you, not as a "gotcha" journalist or as a liberal but as a human being: how do you allow this?

Kushner responded with an open letter of his own. "My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite," Kushner wrote, after he told the story of how his grandparents had survived the Holocaust. "The difference between me and the journalists and Twitter throngs who find it so convenient to dismiss my father-in-law is simple. I know him and they don't."

Kushner seemed to struggle with whether or not his father-in-law was truly responsible for the controversial tweet. "If my father in law's fast-moving team was careless in choosing an image to retweet, well part of the reason it's so shocking is that it's the actual candidate communicating with the American public rather than the armies of handlers who poll-test ordinary candidates' every move," he wrote.

More specifically, his relatives are upset with his invoking their grandparents' Holocaust survival story. "I have a different take­away from my Grandparents' experience in the war," wrote Marc Kushner, Jared's first cousin, in a Facebook post Thursday. "It is our responsibility as the next generation to speak up against hate. [Sic] Anti­semitism or otherwise."

Politico called attention to this message, also citing another cousin, Jacob Schulder, who wrote a comment on Marc's original post: "... For the sake of the family name, which may have no meaning to you but still has meaning to others, please don't invoke our grandparents in vain just so you can sleep better at night. It is self serving and disgusting."

Jared's brother Josh Kushner (above left) and his girlfriend, model Karlie Kloss, supported Hillary Clinton for President

The couple's youngest son was born in March, 2016.