A bombshell report from The Guardian found that Saudi Arabia crown prince Mohammed bin Salman hacked the cellphone of Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Ryan Grim, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for The Intercept , took to Twitter to discuss the implications of the hack on the White House and suggested Jared Kushner was likely also compromised, Raw Story reported.
“As we previously reported, Kushner chatted regularly with MBS on WhatsApp. It is near-certain that MBS pulled this same hack on Kushner and Saudi [Arabia] has therefore had secret access to his phone for years.”
Grim added that Donald Trump forced Kushner’s White House security clearance to go through. He linked to a 2018 report from The Intercept that alleged the crown prince bragged to Saudi figures that Kushner was “in his pocket,” per a source close to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati royal families.
Elsewhere in the report, the publication noted that U.S. government officials have warned of Kushner’s access to sensitive foreign policy issues, pointing to his lack of experience and cautioning that he could be a target for foreign officials. At the time of publication, former special counsel Robert Mueller was reportedly looking into the presidential son-in-law’s business ties.
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Kushner’s lawyer, commented on the alleged WhatsApp communications with the crown prince.
“Without commenting on who he talks with and how he does his work, Mr. Kushner is in conformity with the Presidential Records Act and other rules,” he said.
Kushner was reportedly later instructed by his attorneys to avoid using the popular Facebook-owned app for official business.
Remember this image? Jeff Bezos & Saudi crown prince MBS laughing together in 2018. Well, apparently, it was followed by a friendly Whatsapp exchange between the 2 men. Now it turns out, reports the Guardian, MBS used that Whatsapp exchange to hack Bezos’s phone! Wow. Just wow. pic.twitter.com/CAI45ifaPI
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) January 21, 2020
Along with Grim, Justin Sink, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News , also expressed concern about the possibility that the crown prince hacked phones linked to the White House.
“This invites the obvious question of if MBS has ever sent certain senior members of the White House video messages via WhatsApp,” he said of The Guardian ‘s report.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used an April House hearing to address reports of top White House officials conversing with other countries using WhatsApp. She suggested that the issue was a matter of life and death, noting that “every day” that goes by without addressing the topic is “putting hundreds if not potentially thousands of Americans at risk.”
Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell said at the time that his client followed all classified information protocols. However, he stopped short of confirming whether he used the app to contact foreign officials.