WASHINGTON (JTA) – The New York Observer said its editor would no longer consult with the campaign of Donald Trump, whose son-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns the weekly.
The statement Tuesday, reported Monday by the Huffington Post, came a day after a New York magazine profile of the front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nod said that Observer editor Ken Kurson had assisted Kushner in writing Trump’s speech last month to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“A recent report about Observer Editor Ken Kurson’s input on a speech delivered by Donald Trump before AIPAC has resulted in new scrutiny of our newspaper’s relationship with Mr. Trump, who is the father-in-law of our publisher, Jared Kushner,” the newspaper’s political editor, Jill Jorgensen, said in the statement. “Going forward, there will be no input whatsoever on the campaign from Mr. Kurson or anyone on the editorial side of the Observer.”
The statement said the Observer would start covering Trump as it would any other candidate. The paper had held back from some reporting about the candidate because of his family tie to Kushner.
Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, underwent an Orthodox Jewish conversion before marrying Kushner, who was raised in the tradition. Kushner has been the subject in recent days of multiple profiles because he is in the small circle of advisers to his father-in-law’s campaign, albeit in an informal capacity.
The scion of a real estate family that has given heavily to Jewish and pro-Israel causes, Kushner has advised his father-in-law to pivot to a more traditional campaign, Reuters reported this week, and to reach out to establishment Republican donors. Kushner and his father, Charles, are prominent givers to AIPAC, and Kushner arranged for Trump to travel to Israel last December to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders.
Trump canceled the trip after Netanyahu criticized the candidate’s call to keep Muslims from entering the United States. His campaign denied a report Trump reprimanded Kushner for suggesting the visit.
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