Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone
twitter.comSo if I followed the story, it as GRU (Russian intel) that hacked his phone. Dutch intel then recruited a spy from GRU that handed over the data.
In any case, Kushner - and rightfully so - could not obtain a security clearance the first time around, due to massive debt. But it was overruled / waived by higher ups.
I've worked in intel, and Kushner seems like the textbook example - a cautionary tale - on the type of person you do not want to grant anything of importance.
Honestly it sort of blows my mind that the US has a system decisions by security professionals can simply be overruled.
"Dutch government hacked into Jared Kushner's phone" is accurate.
The GRU double-agent proved that the GRU had compromised Kushner's phone. Subsequently, Dutch intelligence themselves independently attempted to hack Kushner's phone.
"In The Hague, the MIVD hacking team tried to reverse engineer the Russian penetration of Kushner’s iPhone." [...]
"The Dutch team had been trying to pick the phone’s door lock, so to speak, when it occurred to them that the Russians may have found an unlocked window to gain entry instead. Their hypothesis was correct. By early 2018, the MIVD had found a vulnerability in the iPhone that gave them access." [...]
"when Kushner used the phone, they could see his screen. Almost as soon as they got inside, the intelligence service began capturing every image of Kushner’s screen as he used it, filing their own cache of surveillance on their internal computer servers."
Also (edit):
The part of the story I actually care about is two governments hoarding an iphone zero day, and using it to secretly hack iphones. I condemn it.
Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
So again, I condemn this extrajudicial activity, which undermines the digital security and privacy of everyone.
I'd love to correlate this comment of yours with the ones made around the time when it was found that the USA was spying wholesale on EU government officials, hacking telecommunications providers and so on.
Regarding the Dutch intelligence officials (in fact regardless of their country), targeted and legally authorised information collection is fine. That is what intelligence agencies are supposed to do. "Trust but verify", and all that.
It's blanket surveillance, unauthorised surveillance that crosses the line.
One of the biggest outcrys was when it was alleged the us hacked Merkel's phone. Surely that fits in your constraints. But it was the worst of the worst that the us could do when it emerged. Let's not equivocate
The outcry is understandable but as long as this was an authorised operation it fits the constraints. Who would let go of such an opportunity ?
Not conducive for trust though, which I assume had long vanished anyway.
To whoever said that other countries do this, so it's ok (bandwagon fallacy):
Have the moral courage to do the right thing for the right reasons, regardless of everyone else doing the wrong thing. Take responsibility for your own actions, instead of offloading it to the actions of others. Act according to what you think is right instead of failing to think altogether.
Deciding your own version of what is right instead of adopting the beliefs of others, and acting according to what you believe instead of blindly following, is an expression of free will and dignity.
To whoever said that Jared Kushner is a bad person, so it's ok (double standard fallacy):
If you stop applying the law equally, your country is lawless. If you do not grant human rights to those who you justifiably hate, you no longer have human rights. When you bring before a court evidence obtained by crime, you are the criminal.
If you believe that arbitrary surveillance is wrong, as I do, you can either defend Jared Kushner's right to to privacy, or endorse arbitrary and unequal justice.
Would you accept anonymous men and women, secretly recording sexually explicit photos of you? If no, you have a double standard or some mental gymnastics to prove that Kushner is guilty of a crime without a trial. Or, you can assert that 'the ends justify the means', which is the death of civility.
In 2014, Christopher Brannan among others, leaked sexual photos of female celebrities from icloud. He was charged with unauthorized access and imprisoned for 38 months. Should he have been allowed to do the same thing because he was paid to do it? No, and the Dutch intelligence officers are his equal; equally disgusting people. If you hack someone's phone, you are repulsive, because the ends do not justify the means.
So I will defend Kushner's privacy, as I would my own, and demand that if someone wants to search his iphone, they can go to the judge and get a warrant instead of taking screenshots like a little creep.
Moreover, I defend without exception, Kushner's immunity to anything on his phone, because whatever derives from hacking the phone is illegitimate.
Of course. So if you find on Jared's phone a video of him murdering your daughter, and there is no other evidence for it, I hope you will stick to your principles about him having immunity.
Yes, I would find him not guilty and it would require a lot of courage to do the right thing at a personal cost.
> I condemn this extrajudicial activity
The U.S. spent years explaining to the world that nothing is extrajudicial that happens to non-Americans outside of the United States. So please explain how this activity of the MIVD broke any Dutch laws.
I don't consider it extrajudicial. Kushner should be charged with crimes in the united states. It is not extrajudicial just because the US is corrupt and won't prosecute kushner. Had that prosecution happened, everything the dutch did would be evidence against kushner.
I don't see why the dutch have any obligation to avoid monitoring a compromised phone that the US lets happen. The dutch have every right to know what the russians are getting from that phone.
You are picking the wrong case for your cause.
Becoming a public servant means you should have fewer privacy rights compared to the average person because of the outsized power and influence a public servant has. All the info that Kushner hid should have been in the security clearance form that he was exempted from.
Kushner's behavior undermined the world far more than this phone hack.
I agree with you but by this time we know that this has become business as usual. I mean the U.S lead the way: Spy anyone including friends and allies. Find what they talk with their mother as well, maybe it would serve the orange pumpkin well in a negotiation.
Spying on everyone including your friends and allies has been standard practice for hundreds of years. The US's major sin, from an international politics perspective, might only be that they've been so hamfisted about it.
Compare to courtly politics in post-Renaissance Europe. All sorts of intrigue and backstabbing, largely only governed by two cardinal rules. First, never conduct yourself in an unseemly manner. Second, don't get caught.
A spy agency with a way to spy is expected to instead reveal the vuln so that nobody can use it? Are you wearing pajamas because that's a nice little dream. Of course a spy agency is going to exploit for their gain any vuln they find.
Also, what the Dutch did by following what the Russians did is exactly why government approved backdoors will not work. As soon as someone else finds out that there is a way, they will use it form themselves.
Though I respect the sentiment of his concerns, it is indeed a pipe dream. What do we expect the five eyes are doing? Certainly not sacrificing intelligence to bolster iPhone security, any day of the week.
I honestly expect the spy agencies to be actively working to undermine any and every system up to and including having agents hired specifically to add/discover vulns from within the companies. It is there entire purpose to gather intelligence. To expect them to make it harder to do that is just not even near the realm of realistic.
This guy was whining a few days ago that Anthropic is the most evil company in the world because they won't let the American military have free reign to murder people with it. Then he goes on to say he is against "hacking". What does he think the military and surviellance do?
> Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
All the counter-arguments I've read to this comment so far have been along the lines of, "well they started it."
And well they did. But if your response to the U.S.'s brand of dehumanization is more dehumanization then you've actually helped them achieve their goal. The people who run the U.S. want a world where respect for privacy (among so many other things) is thrown away because they believe they have the guns and resources to gain the most from that kind of world.
It's part of why I'm getting out of the USA. Key norms of decency we had are broken now, and in our social system you can bet that the next powers who come in will do little more than make a show of repairing them. They now see what's possible and they'll use it for their own ends. It's a spiral.
The current USA leadership is hostile to the rest of the world and we need to know what the fuck they are going to do next.
Sort of how the police should keep tabs on violent criminals.
There is no "dehumanising".
That's not true. They are friend with russia.
You inspired a poem (with sincere apologies to Martin Niemöller):
First they came for the oligarchs, and I did not speak out -- because I was not an oligarch.
Then they came for the political cronies, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a political crony.
Then they came for the tech bros, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a tech bro.
Then they came for me -- and actually it was okay because now we live in a civil society, we were able to clear up the misunderstanding and everybody's doing fine.
:)
> Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
This isn't about the privacy of one individual human. This is about the security practices of a politically exposed person and the information they have access to.
Any high profile, high security clearance individual must have top-notch security. Any information gleaned or stolen from them can have enormous repercussions.
Submitting yourself for security clearances involves signing up for these investigations. Either he did so and regrets it, or he took a job that absolutely requires that he did, but he didn't.
Kushner should not have been near any job of any importance. Especially not after it became known that corruption and crime wasn't just an individual thing but something that runs in the family.
Neither. He just do not give a shit, because he is Trumps family and as such, he does not have to give a shit. Practically speaking, he is very much above any law and there is whole party dedicated to keeping that way for him.
It requires nothing like a party. Presidents can pardon anybody they want, and we set a precedent, which seems to be holding for now, from the last President that you can even preemptively pardon people for any possible crime that they may or may not have committed during some window of time. So anybody sufficiently close to a President is defacto immune to the law. This will only change if immunity, pardoning, and other related laws change. And they will not.
That is true, but he does not have just the president. He has whole party behind him. That party managed to take control of supreme court too.
I think that's also misdirected frustration. The only people that can genuinely determine the composition of the Supreme Court are the Supreme Court Justices themselves. Parties can only control such by chance alone. And so Justices staying in office to the point of their literal death is extremely selfish. It removes any sort of guaranteed 'balance' in succession, because your successor is going to be a random pick based on a balance between the Presidency and Senate.
It also creates a scenario where people remain on the bench long after their competence has likely faded. RBG, for instance, was 87 years old when she 'retired.' Her final wish is to not be replaced until a new President had been sworn in, which was predictably not granted. She had 30 years to choose that presidency herself, but simply refused to do so.
Kushner was denied a clearance, Trump overruled that decision and brought him into the inner circle of his administration anyway.
This just isn’t true. They _should_ have top notch security but that also requires responsible, security-aware action from the principal.
This assumption was destroyed during the first Trump administration and continued being eroded in his second. They do not practice good opsec. (See Signal app usage) Nobody is enforcing policies, and nobody tells the bosses that they can’t do something because [reason].
Why bother hacking his phone when the Russians can just trade it for a few barrels of oil.
Then why do you love the American military and intelligence having free reign to use AI to surveill on and attack people? Do you think the American military reveals its zero days?
The reason it seems completely inconsistent is because what you are ascribing to me is not what I actaully said about it.
You literally said Anthropic is the most evil in a comment discussion where the US military and Palantir were dicussed. Clearly you think somehow Anthropic are more evil than mass murderers. You haven't yet explained why one should think otherwise.
Yes, Jared Kushner is a human. A human criminal.
The part of the story I actually care about is two governments hoarding an iphone zero day, and using it to secretly hack iphones. I condemn it.
Sorry, but the US threw this out of the window starting with the Patriot Act. Many tech companies were in the NSA PRISM program and the program probably still exists today. Common US E2E encrypted messengers can be read out by US services through weak defaults (e.g. iMessage in iCloud is encrypted at-rest unless ADP is enabled both sides of the chat, similarly, WhatsApp only encrypts backups at-rest by default).
The US can grab all that data from US companies, regardless whether the person regardless of whether the person is inside or outside the US thanks to the CLOUD Act.
> US threw this out of the window starting with the Patriot Act
there are branches of govt in the US system, not a single entity. Even the almighty secret police have been curtailed many times.
Believe me, not everyone is onboard with this approach to surveillance
> The US can grab all that data from US companies
It goes a lot deeper than that..
You're out to lunch. The Dutch government has an obligation to spy on the US. To not do so would be an abdication of their responsibilities as a government.
It blows my mind further that the presidental pardon exists, and he will face zero consequences for any of this.
It's strange to me, as it appears that in the US it apparently doesn't matter if any charges have already been filed. In my country a pardon can only be given to someone, who was already sentenced - there was even some controversy when a couple of years ago the president gave out a pardon before the legal process concluded. As a PhD in law he should have known this made no sense.
You could certainly argue US pardons are supposed to work the same way too, it's just no one has standing to challenge the blanket pardons, but I don't think anyone has tried recently. And the current regime is happy to keep such things around so they can use it on the way out the door.
Correct - it's even weirder, pardons can be given for a categories or even just a blanket pardon for any crimes that might have been committed. There aren't a lot of limits on it.
Andrzej Duda?
The same, yes.
Fortunately, the presidential pardon does not extend to the states who can still prosecute crimes. It only works for federal prosecution.
America will need a number of constitutional amendments to counter the last 40+ years, which I hope is peaking this administration.
Nor does it cover extradition.
USA won't extradite their war criminals. Look how desperately Trump tries to fight down The Hague criminal court. They have a LOT of dirt to cover up here. I mean, just take the bombing of a school with girls in Iran - is that not a war crime? And that's just one of many more examples one could give; Trump denying data to Ukrainians via Starlink means he supports Putin's genocide.
Disapointing to see your factually correct post downvoted.
Somebody must have a very thin skin!
Iran is actually fair game since it doesn't want to be part of the ICC. The same was true for Iraq and Afghanistan. There are no rights without obligations.
However, this isn't the case with Palestine, which is why Netanyahu has problems - and obviously Putin as well.
> Iran is actually fair game since it doesn't want to be part of the ICC.
The current American regime is hardly friendly to the ICC. Are they fair game too? (I'd likely say yes, they would strongly disagree!)
Israel and the US are also not part of the ICC. Yet they still call out "violations" of international law all the time. The ICC is just a colonialist tool used to beat down any trend towards sovereignty.
On paper, this "check" for this is that people this corrupt don't get voted in. But alas.
Kushner may not, but the excerpt indicates that Kushner’s lawyers only performed actions with approval of the president and in the interests of the United States.
So… the President is in pretty hot water if any senators decide to ask a few questions here.
Ah yes ... looks at calendar ... it's a Friday ... whooo boy, the President is in some pretty hot water today! Like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and all the tomorrows until he's not the president any more.
Seriously, there is absolutely nothing the current US president could do that could constitute a "hot water" situation for him give the willingness of the Republican party and the SCOTUS to support him unconditionally.
Clear, extrajudicial funding outside of the law seems like one of those things? Iran/Contra comes to mind as a point of comparison but at least that had some tacit bureaucratic process to it.
We could just ignore Trump's pardons as inherently corrupt.
> the US has a system decisions by security professionals can simply be overruled
Also a problem in the UK (Boris Johnson with Lord Lebedev).
Unfortunately I think it does have to sit somewhere on the elected side. A situation where the permanent state can overrule elected representatives unconditionally isn't great. But what really ought to happen is an open court case; you cannot have public policy decisions made on the basis of secret intel in a democracy. That gives you the Iraq war.
Lebedev isn't a clean example: appointment to the Lords really isn't the same as getting Top Secret clearance. In fact, one of MI5s reported reasons for revising their assessment was that peers don't routinely see classified information iirc. Mandelson getting DV clearance via an FCO override so he could be ambassador is a better example, although they're still claiming Starmer didn't put his finger on the scales there, where Trump clearly did.
> you cannot have public policy decisions made on the basis of secret intel in a democracy.
That is the direct consequence of what you said right before. You don't want decisions made by unelected officials non-overridable in a democracy, but for that democratic process to work effectively, the information needs to be in the open. Anything not in the open can just as well stay beyond the reach of elected folks.
> Kushner could not obtain a security clearance the first time around, due to massive debt
Well, problem solved. He certainly used his new position to get rid of his debt.
He already made hundred of millions under Trump 1 thanks to corruption
I think billions would be more accurate
It does? You're talking about a country that tells its civil servants to say "Super Intelligence" in stead of "Artificial Intelligence" [0], because... It's just so Super.
Came across it here [1]: "Per Executive Order 14434, federal agencies are now using "Super Intelligence" (SI) in place of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI). You may see both terms across NIH content during this transition."
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inau...
I’m only surprised that it doesn’t specify that super has to be in all caps.
All so Trump can say to his feeble followers "I invented that term".
It's like trying to make "fetch" happen by executive order.
It's to pump up .si domains.
> recruited a spy from GRU that handed over the data.
Isn't that kinda bad for their health? Polonium intake is unhealthy.
I'm not an American so don't take this the wrong way, but Jared's response to the tweet, that the story is fabricated because of how complicated it is and VanityFair disclosed no evidences, should be considered as well.
> Jared's response to the tweet, that the story is fabricated because of how complicated it is and VanityFair disclosed no evidences, should be considered as well.
You are right that it has nonzero value, but appropriate bayesian priors should take into account Vanity Fair being a reliable source, and Jared being a historically unreliable, untransparent source.
tl;dr: VF > JK absent further evidence in either direction
People can mask their lies using their prior honest reputation. If anything this kind of lie can be more damaging.
I'm not saying VF is lying in this case, it could all be true, but extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence.
> People can mask their lies using their prior honest reputation. If anything this kind of lie can be more damaging.
Yeah, but it's more likely they will continue their reputation as a reliable source, and that someone with a track record of dishonesty and non-transparency will continue being dishonest and non-transparent. So those two things combined result in no net effect on the bayesian priors, and we are again left with `VF > JK`, absent further evidence.
> I'm not saying VF is lying in this case, it could all be true, but extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence.
Given the bayesian priors, VF's claim doesn't seem all that extraordinary, whereas JK's claim of innocence in comparison seems rather extraordinary. From there I apply the same heuristic of extraordinary claims.
Honestly I doubt Jared has even read the book, so I don't see how he could even be an informed source on the matter of his denials.
Oh okay, good for you.
Personally the article reads to me like a international spy thriller short story, so until they disclose some evidence I'll just file this under "Americans flinging shit at each other" directory lol.
Thank you for sharing your opinions.
> Isn't that kinda bad for their health? Polonium intake is unhealthy.
I believe the current modus operandi is to offer a window.
On a serious note: plenty of people were surprised that Navalny returned to Russia. I suspect that after his poisoning it became clear Putin and his cronies wanted him dead, so he chose to give them the judicial spectacle they wanted so that they would at least spare his family.
Navalny was very clear why he went back. Here's a reading of one of his final letters, which I highly recommend everyone watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25qEVGqPwLk
His last book was an excellent, yet heartbreaking read.
I'm sorry, but my Eastern European senses are tingling when I hear this.
Why return only after being poisoned and not earlier?
I feel like your comment is a perfect example of what he was talking about.
> Russian politics over the last decades has so inculcated society with cynicism and conspiracy theory that people fundamentally do not believe in simple motives.
He was poisoned inside Russia in late 2020, and was extracted (by his family, he was in a coma) to Germany for treatment. He returned immediately after recovering in early 2021.
> Dutch intel then recruited a spy from GRU that handed over the data.
Dutch intel can think that happened, or not. It is independent from if that is true. The whole thing equally sounds like a setup using the Dutch to launder the story.
Which is also entirely independent from any stories of this sort in the media being true one way or another.
The person that overruled Kushner's clearance is the same person that stores secret documents in a bathroom and golf club resort. He has stated that he can declassify any document on whim as he feels. Of course that's now how the security community thinks it should be handled, and that he has made that comment after the fact of showing classified documents to people not cleared for it. Secrecy/security isn't really a thing for him.
If you’ve got some sort of stain on your résumé so bad that you can’t get even get a job flipping burgers you can always fall back on a career in politics.
> Honestly it sort of blows my mind that the US has a system decisions by security professionals can simply be overruled.
Without commenting on the merits of Kushner, I don’t understand your comment about “professionals.” Security professionals, like lawyers or accountants or any other professional, are advisors, not final decision makers. Obviously the civilian government retains the final say.
I can’t imagine it’s any different in any European country. I’m fully willing to believe that in say the Netherlands, the civilian government is smart enough to listen to the advice of professionals. But surely there is no special legal status that makes professional judgments final decisions over that of elected or appointed officials?
Yes, Europe has also corrupt places and officials. OP might be from less corrupt place, the one where you dont get to overrule security professionals just because you want to.
Authoritarianism and corruption are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of professionals are corrupt and bribeable.
It’s not about corruption. It’s about the allocation of power. At the end of the day, the power to make the final decision should obviously rest with the elected government.
> I've worked in intel, and Kushner seems like the textbook example.
Did you see the one* about Lindsay Graham today? Virulently anti-LGBT 5-time republican senator having sex with multiple male escorts. Some of it on tape (allegedly). Some of it involving minors. He had to be compromised by foreign and domestic intelligence agencies (It sounds quite odd for a South-Carolina Senator to make biweekly trips to Israel). He was the biggest war hawk in Washington serving at the highest levels and with the highest clearance - At his funeral, his buddy Trump said that Lindsay "never saw a war he didn't like". Yet he served more than 20 years as a senator - Never impeached, never indicted, never investigated. Not by his democrats, the media, journalists, the agencies, nobody. Everyone already heard the rumours already, it had become an internet meme. Hunter Biden casually mentioned alluded to him and the 'closetocracy' that secretly ruled washington. Why didn't anyone speak out before he died? He was staunch supporter of NATO so i guess Europeans weren't too interested to look to deeply.
> I've worked in intel, and Kushner seems like the textbook example - a cautionary tale - on the type of person you do not want to grant anything of importance.
And copy paste of the above for Trump.
And Musk, and Hegseth, and so many others…
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence…
"I've worked in intel" - you know what your tell is?
While there's a lot of mysticism around the field, it is not a small one. In US alone tens and tens of thousands are employed at the various agencies. Only a tiny part are HUMINT working with assets, most have the most A4 office jobs imaginable.
But my point is: The one experience EVERYONE share (those that work there, or have worked), from the sanitary workers to the directors, is that they've gone through the security clearance process. A hefty enough credit card debt could jeopardize the clearance to any one of those.
anyone associated with Trump, esp. guys like Kushner, are people you don't want to give clearances to.
we crossed that line like a decade ago. the entire administration is 100% compromised, and has been since the jump.
that Americans are not rioting in the streets a la the French is a sign that American democracy is over. all those guns and all that self-righteousness and for what?
As an outsider, ever since I learned some things about the trump family and kushner ten years ago, he always stood out for me as the most interesting and dangerous character of the lot. Always in the background, never front and center, always making high stakes decisions, wielding power of large amounts of money, sitting in more important meetings than trump (in my opinion). Literally whenever anything happens regarding trump's/usa/global issues, I always ask myself, where is kushner, where is he involved? He gives me the same feeling as observing a young putin from 30 years ago, same power dynamics at play. Interesting person nonetheless.
And let's not forget, he was stupid enough to end up with massive amounts of debt despite his network, his education and his starting capital. Once the USA was stupid enough to elect Trump, every foreign agency must have had him in their crosshairs.
Imagine being born into the deep state transnatioal criminal class that runs the world, and still fucking up so bad that you end up with negative coins. Then get your phone hacked by mere spooks and have your dirty laundry aired out before the public. What an incompetent embarrassment, even for that whole lot who call themselves the elite.
Of course there will be no justice served, they're above that. But a sliver of hope for the public is that the richest biggest criminals are visibly falling apart from generations of coddled degeneracy, all the power in the world cannot save them from their own idiocy. How do you become such losers that badly when you run a rigged game.
How much debt? From what?
At one point, it was north of a billion dollars. 660 (nee 666) Fifth Avenue.
“Kushner’s counsel, however, said Kushner did not make any agreements or arrangements with leaders or officials in foreign countries that were not agreed to by the President of the United States and in the best interests of the United States.”
The Dutch hacking Russian hackers sounds like a regular day for them, like last time when they even got access to the security cams in the hackers office: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
The Dutch intelligence services are world class.
And usually pretty quiet about it. I think this is a bowshot for someone other than Kushner to start wondering about who has what.
at this point I'd assume that most of NATO knows, and knows bigly
is one of the reasons the president hasn't been able to push harder to fracture the alliance.
it's A-#-1 priority for Putin, and the Canada/Greenland pushes were to, in part, make that happen.
Warning you - - - This is a Juicy One ...
https://wallhop.io/https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-ku...
The 2 "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" books (mostly the second one) by Perkins do a good job of describing the relation between the US and the Saudis.
Why should we be warned. It's pretty much widely known that the entire Trump administration is compromised. That details may be salacious goes without saying.
But are they really compromised? If everybody owns them nobody owns them?
everyone may own them, but that doesn't mean that one group can't make something happen.
every president since regean has been pushed to bomb iran. but only this one did.
they ain't invaded cuba
Everybody owns them except the US voters.
Honest politician is one that once bought stays bought. Thankfully for the world Trump is dishonest.
Might as well post the actual article: https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-...
Why wouldn't they? Only a deeply stupid world leader would carry their phone with them all the time, or conduct any sort of business on it.
My understanding is that the current crop of politicians is terrified of FOIA requests, and so pushes as much to their phones as possible. You can't FOIA many of the apps on there.
This is a cowardly practice. These officials are either overtly cowards, or they are too stupid to understand that their phones are targets for foreign intelligence agencies.
GRU hacked Jared Kushner's phone and Dutch intelligence infiltrated them.
Like some kind of spy movie where they catch a spy and give the spy the option to work for them.
It's probably the first time I'm glad to hear about a government hacking into someone's phone.
I feel like the headline here should be different.
Why does HN want to bury this conversation? It says now it's dupe, but then where is the other one? I looked 7 pages deep. This has 278 point.
HN, SV, it's so gross now.
There's a comment[0] below (quite hidden, don't know why comments weren't moved) which points to the source[1].
The reason you can't find it is that it has been flagged...
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50208921 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50201259
One dupe, one flagged. Someone is exercising some damage control.
Funny the stuff that gets flagged on HN. Tongue and boots.
MAGA crowd never sees truth
The typical supporter and typical MAGA politician, well, they’re just not serious people. Too bad they have done so much damage.
It's over for the US they will never wake up no matter how bad things get. It's so comically bad you'd imagine the so called well-regulated militia would have intervened by now
The people calling themselves "militia" are overwhelmingly in favor of this lot.
That was Trump's 'magic', somehow appearing that he related with those types. Probably mostly accidentally because of his limited vocabulary, resulting in a very basic style of communication, in combination with only seeing the way the world works at a first-order effects level.
And yet having enough reach to be on their radar.
I think it’s just because he’s a hateful bigot. That resonates with other hateful bigots. “Trumps” basically anything else. They don’t care how much they have to pay for gas if they think brown people are suffering more than they are. Doesn’t matter if Trump shits on a golden throne. He hates the same people they hate so they love him for it.
Scott Adams (crazy I know) had a good point about calling Trump a mass hypnotist. He seems to have a way of speaking that lets people hear whatever they want to, it's mystifying.
> mass hypnotist
Hmm, where have I heard that before, the last time the fascists took over and we had a world war about it.
I wonder if the militia types like Trump because people like you, talk about them, like you do. Regardless how much Trump is on their side, he is your enemy, they are obviously your enemy with the disdain you feel for them, so its at worst an alliance of convenience.
I never said they were my enemy, and it's very telling that you put it like that.
They're easily convinced by simplistic causality arguments that, on the surface, satisfy what they feel is an injustice.
They're not even necessarily wrong about the injustices they feel, but they're too easily convinced about what may be the causes, and how those causes may be solved.
The fact we're talking about militia types indicates a simplicity of thought: enough guns can solve it. So we're starting with a pretty self selected group.
It is some kind of magic that Trump, son of a billionaire, success by nepotism, can have any chance of reaching them.
The "so called well-regulated militia" hasn't been a real thing in the USA since shortly after the "founding" of the nation (if it even existed then). The closest thing (maybe) might be the National Guard, but these day they're clearly mostly just puppets for the rich and powerful.
Well-regulated militia is the National Guard. Note the term well-regulated. They’re military personnel that belong to the states, but still operate alongside the regular force. What do you mean by puppets?
In practice as well as in law they are controlled by the federal government.
Only a couple of states actually have their own militia that is independent of federal government.
> Well-regulated militia is the National Guard. Note the term well-regulated. They’re military personnel that belong to the states, but still operate alongside the regular force.
That is wrong, see DC v. Heller, """ the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.” """
To be fair, that's a 5 member majority of the 2008 court grasping at guns.
Yea, those self-styled militia types obsessed with hoarding guns and cosplaying as soldiers were always going to be on the side of the authoritarians.
They may style themselves as militias, but they act like paramilitary forces.
As far as I can tell, that's what "militia" means in modern parlance? If you're not an organ of the state - military or police - and you're an armed organized group, that's paramilitaries.
They act like 8 year old boys.
> they will never wake up
I'm on the ground and the conversations are changing. There is significant damage that will take decades to repair, but I do not think it impossible.
We broke the trust with allies on so many levels and you should continue to hedge, because America might not be peaking on absurdity yet...
I'm interested in seeing the chaos of a republican party with all the ideas of power that Trump has given them, but without any of them having the godhead position that Trump has in order to keep the rest of them in line. There will be a bunch of wannabe Trump's, and all the puffery that goes with it, but without the large supportive entourage. It will be infighting like never before seen.
And if the Democrats don't do an absolutely stellar job of trying to fix things, and making life at least seem better for most of the US voting public, then an entirely chaotic Republican party could still get back in.
... and that's saying nothing of the possibilities for repeats of Jan 6th come midterm results or the 2028 election.
> And if the Democrats don't do an absolutely stellar job of trying to fix things, and making life at least seem better for most of the US voting public, then an entirely chaotic Republican party could still get back in.
Pessimistically, this is my expectation. The Oligarchy has become so out of hand, i.e. corporate-government-media collusion. The Dems are doing the same "Win at all Costs" so we can "Dominate those who think differently" thing. We The People have to take the reins back.
That's my reading too. If they don't sew it up this time around they're going to be in jail for life, the lot of them. So they must be getting a bit desperate to cling to what they've made because any step back is going to embody the risk of losing it all.
I don't think anybody has ever been able to corral the Democrats the way Trump has the Republicans. If they were that controlled, you wouldn't have The Squad and Fetterman in the party.
Eh, there are a lot of anti-Trump and "liberal" gun owners, but I think nearly all of them know that if they go all violent and rogue against this admin it's only going to be used to justify much worse.
I'm kind of curious if New Yorkers will try and do a tea party impression with the Russian diesel ship though.
“What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account—hundreds of millions of dollars—had come from a bank in Azerbaijan. Most importantly, Kushner appeared to have transferred significant amounts of money from the Dubai account to other individuals, including a warlord, a mercenary, and a one-time hit man,” Cole wrote.
You made this same comment already https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50207356
Hey, according to the Snowden leaks, what’s a little spying among friends?
The actually didn't. The Russians (GRU) hacked Kushner and an agent within the GRU handed over the data.
Looking at it myself that is inaccurate. It seems like GRU hacked the phone first and then Dutch intelligence did the same thing. See my comment above.
Countries don't have friends, they have interests. Spying on allies has always been a thing.
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50201259
Allegedly. What happened to accurate titles on this website?
Every government spies on every other government with every available tool. Even allied ones. (Especially Israel, because it has a really good spy agency)
Hopefully Ukraine got a copy to help dealing with those dildos. Dutch could name the file MH17.zip. Money transfers thru Azerbaijan are from russia.
MH17 will never be forgotten and there is a large chunk of anger about that still powering the attitude people have here with respect to Trump cozying up to the Russians.
also see from yesterday:
Required watching for more on the extreme Kushner family corruption, I see other comments going on about his father-in-law, why not learn how fucked up his father is as well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xT3ilk51c
Precisely. This was not an accident.
The Dutch Intelligence services seem to be really good.
I recall they helped the UK during the Falklands War with SIGINT/cryptanalytic stuff
Various sources also claim that Dutch intelligence deployed or was involved with deploying Stuxnet in Iran.
In 2019, it was reported that an Iranian mole working for Dutch intelligence at the behest of Israel and the CIA inserted the Stuxnet virus with a USB flash drive or convinced another person working at the Natanz facility to do so.
As a Flemish person I can attest that the Dutch have outstanding engineers. So if their intelligence agency has a proper budget, they definitely have a nice pool to select from.
Any reason you call yourselves Flemish and not Dutch? I always thought Flemish is the language and Dutch the nationality?
Flanders has not been a part of the Netherlands for almost 200 years and was only ever really part of it for 15 years (It's the Dutch speaking part of Belgium).
Thank you! Learning something new every day :)
Why is this article 'flagged'?
I am a bit surpriced so many people are accepting everything to be true on face value. It is from a chapter of a book that an author hoped to make a lot of money from. How reliable is he or his sources. The MIVD is not know to share any information and leaking can land you in jail for up to 8 years.
Put Kushner in prison
Excellent story, the bigger picture IMO is that Jared is being thrown out to the wolves. Not sure by who. Preparation for when/if house/senate flips? Also why would the Dutch intelligence expose Kushner and thus Trump? Trump will be on their case very soon.
> Also why would the Dutch intelligence expose Kushner and thus Trump?
This is so out of character for them that I think there is another level to this: it's a way to let Trump know that they may have more about Trump than they've let on so far. That's very obviously not something that can be proved so take it with a large helping of salt but there has to be a reason why they put their own name out there, it is totally against their normal MO.
Non-Twitter/X version here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206177
The scarier thought is that the russian government did not even have to do that - agent Krasnov works for them as-is.
Europeans should not trust any of that team: it is a compromised government.
The irony is that Yuri explained this already in the 1980s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0
It was a literal prediction of the KGB seizing power. Putin is from the KGB clique. Gorbachev really should have neutered the KGB totally.
The scarier thought is that the russian government did not even have to do that - agent Krasnov works for them as-is.
But they need kompromat to make them Krasnovs.
I guess the fact that Russia also has this info explains why Trump seems so fond of Putin.
Dual loyalty.
Unsubstantiated story from Vanity Fair.
Correct, 100% speculative. It could be true, seeing the history of secret services. But this story is too good to be true! Real questions are: who benefits of this story? And why?
> who benefits of this story?
In my (probably naive) humble opinion, the entire population of the USA should benefit from knowing their leadership are corrupt and only interested in enriching themselves and their peers.
But having seen the huge amount of American citizens that spend their days justifying the actions of these corrupt politicians and bi/trillionaires where they apparently can do no wrong, I'm thinking that nobody will really benefit from this and it will be filed under "business as usual".
I'm surprised we haven't seen the 'If you got nothing to hide, then what's the problem with surveillance' crowd descend on this thread. I love it when the plutocrats in power get a taste(however fleeting) of what they routinely subject us plebs to.
The hack is interesting. But I think no one is surprised that it revealed utterly naked corruption. That has been his reputation for decades. It's more telling that these people aren't in prison already.
And the first shown comment is Jared Kushner calling the claims categorically false. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The real question is: is he going to sue Vanity Fair? If not, he can say all he wants on X, but the message is clear; Vanity Fair's evidence apparently holds up.
Not quite. USA first amendment makes winning a libel case almost impossible, especially against established media. UK is on the other end of the spectrum - there probably would be slam dunk.
So usually in the USA the smarter move is just to wait for the thing to fall off from the news cycle instead of creating news fodder every day with a trial.
Guilty until proven otherwise?
> Guilty until proven otherwise?
Hasn't that already been the case for a while now though? Seems like you get in trouble with the law, you gotta prove your innocence, and you're treated as guilty until you do (and suffer some consequences still even after proving your innocence, just for having been "in the system" in that way).
Worse yet, the "media" these days gets away with bloody murder compared to the way things used to be before the Internet. It's all about maximum outrage and division these days, because that "engagement" is what sells advertising space. Convicted by the media is almost as bad as convicted by the "Justice" system. Either one can totally ruin lives.
We live in a country founded by colonial aristocrats who viciously sniped at each other in the local paper. The constraints on speech control and proclamations about guilt are for the government, not the governed.
These are the people that gave us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarring_and_feathering after all.
It is strange though that you are lamenting this state of affairs for Jared Kushner, of all people. He will be pardoned, and will not lack for invites to New York soirees just because he took bribes from blood-soaked US allies.
I mean this sincerely, what prompted you to comment on this case?
> It is strange though that you are lamenting this state of affairs for Jared Kushner, of all people.
100% not the case at all. Honestly, my comment is more an expression that I've lost all faith in the "Justice" system entirely. I have zero hopes that any truth or justice will come out of this situation, as I firmly believe that at this point that humans are far more anti-social than social creatures, and we've allowed the system of "civilized" society to break down to a dangerous degree. We're basically "cooked" as a species. Just haven't admitted it to ourselves because we're too busy playin' the game our overlords have set by the rules they made up. They want us divided and at each other's throats so that we aren't laser focused on them and the problems they created for us all.
> He will be pardoned, and will not lack for invites to New York soirees just because he took bribes from blood-soaked US allies.
Sadly, I'm just about 100% sure you're right about that.
> I mean this sincerely, what prompted you to comment on this case?
Honestly, what prompts me to comment on anything anymore. It's not as if my one voice has ever held any power. I've seen this mess coming for years and been ridiculed every time I try to say anything about any of it. It's wasted energy to even bother trying to talk about anything to anyone these days, yet for some stupid reason I keep opening my mouth. Guess I'm just an idiot. Bought into the whole "humans are social creatures" BS and now I'm pretty much broken, having discovered the hard way that "the law of the jungle" is the only law humans actually believe in.
> humans are far more anti-social than social creatures
We are social!
Violent Individualism, Solipsism, Alienation are (primarily) socially constructed and we can choose to live another way.
You can build solidarity and community in the US, despite the odds. But if your social skills and belief in others have atrophied; You'll have to be the change you want to see.
Strike up conversations with your neighbors, pick up new hobbies, volunteer, say yes to things, go outside your home every day, host events, even when it's weird and awkward. Set good boundaries, there will be setbacks, but decent people will stick around.
This kind of thing is harder around wealthy, workaholic adults, but it's still possible, and people are desperate for genuine connection, but their social habituation is atrophied too (COVID made everything worse).
> I keep opening my mouth.
You also might need to practice communicating differently if everyone misunderstands/rejects? you when you try to reach out. This might be something to work out in a safe environment. Also, if you are expecting another rejection, it can be easy to assume other people hate you when they don't think that (or don't think about you at all).
As to the justice system... well, it can be repaired or reformed, but that will take a sociopolitical movement. I recommend joining something.
We're not in court. And there's plenty of other indicators that Kushner is taking bribes.
https://reason.com/2026/08/06/courts-say-the-justice-departm...
This administration does not merit any presumption of regularity.
The only court remaining to hold oligarchs to account is the court of public opinion.
A [free, or discounted] pardon awaits every member of the trump family.
I understand he is a billionaire and transfer of money from different banks around the world is axiomatic for him, but why would he be involved in payments involving assassins I think more tangible evidence is needed.
If you wait for more tangible evidence for the presidents daughters husband who has no business in government but is operating at an extremely high level doing foreign negotiations between waring countries... You will never get it in a timely fashion. For obvious reasons.
Our now former allies aren't making this public to smear some guy they met at a party they don't like. They are warning the world that the us is an oligarchy and rule of law is dead.
Anyone directly connected to trump has lost the presumption of innocence until proven guilty standard of common law. That group has been proven guilty, with no retribution, so many times it's statistically more likely they actually did something far worse than whatever is being alleged.
Seriously, how, with a straight face, can you even attempt to excuse these stains on history?
What did you expect him to say? "Yep, you got me, you guys. I did an oopsie. Sorry! I'm turning myself in to, uh, my father-in-law now."
Yes.
In the civilised world, those caught abusing public office resigned.
"Deny, deny, deny" in the face of all evidence is a curioulsy Trumpian move.
That’s what the URL links to.
And the second reply to him calls his father-in-law an orange turd. Gotta love how social media has erased class divides; even the onepercenters can't escape what peasants think of them.
He would be stupid not to. His wife's father is the president. Shit they probably split the money. Why else is he in the role he has lol.
I mean why wouldn't he?
If he's telling the truth, then I would do the same.
If he's lying, then it might work, I would also probably do the same.
The interesting thing here is that two publications allowed the journalist to call Kushner "corrupt". This means that the lawyers would have seen compelling evidence that would mean one of two things:
1) Kushner wouldn't take them to court, because he would have to settle out of court in an expensive way
2) Kushner, if he were to take court action, would not win civil case.
This leads me to think that there is more than a shred of evidence, but an awful lot of evidence that he didn't declare what he was supposed to (at best) and at worse laundered foreign cash for his own purposes