host of kacie d.c. on msnbc. joining the conversation. new york times reporter jeremy peters. chief white house correspondent new york times peter baker and investigative reporter for the washington post msnbc contributor carol lenig who has new reporting on jared kushner that we ll get to in just a moment. i m disappointed that carol doesn t have the lightning bolts. i don t think it s fair. she has a big story today. i know. carol is huge. you need a scoop sound effect. i don t think carol cares and i don t think kacie ever wanted it, but she has a lightning bolt. i m embracing it. carol black flag and vincent went into hard core metal. i love kacie d.c. do you watch every sunday night? top story, jared kushner whose portfolio includes some of america s top diplomatic priorities no longer has
council or officially reporting. so carol, first, let s just talk about that last item first. obviously when h.r. mcmaster came in as national security adviser, he had known that, did he not, that kushner was the de facto secretary of state in just about everything else in the transition? absolutely. he knew that he was not only the president s son-in-law but very much the trusted hand, a person during the transition who had been given the portfolio of meeting with foreign officials. it wasn t a surprise that jared kushner would also want to continue doing that in the beginning days of the administration. what was unusual and quite surprising to the national security adviser was that jared kushner wasn t following the normal protocol. it s one thing to say he didn t coordinate with the national security council. that s correct. he also didn t he also had some solo, sort of freelance calls where he didn t get a briefing beforehand, which could have been useful to him in talking to
inside the white house about the way in which foreign officials were discussing jared kushner s ma nip lability. it s a mouthful. their view at least in their discussions prooivately they we viewing him as an easy mark. somebody they could take advantage of and potentially trick or move in the direction that they wanted to move him. and i guess the reason that we take it so seriously is that it raised concerns inside the white house and again as we published in our story yesterday, it also is one of the reasons that the security clearance has been held up for jared kushner. he s been operating on this interim clearance where he shouldn t have access to top secret information normally but he has for a year. he had an incredibly highly classified portfolio, access to secret code word programs. and in this instance, these