White House senior adviser Jared Kushner listens as Assistant to the President Chris Liddell speaks at the opening session of the White House meeting with technology Chief Executive Officers to mark "technology... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Jared Kushner spoke in public on Monday. And that alone counted as news. 
 
 In a White House full of loud voices, the powerful senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump tends to keep his mouth shut. He shuns televised interviews, avoids public speeches and rarely addresses a meeting when cameras are rolling, preferring to work behind the scenes. 
 
 So Washington took notice Monday when Kushner presided over a White House meeting of technology executives and actually took the microphone. It took a few moments for Kushner to get the attention of the dozens of suited executives gathered in an ornate room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. But eventually the room quieted and he could finally be heard. 
 
 The slim, stylish former real estate executive addressed the crowd in a soft but confident tenor, revealing the New York influences around his vowels. He pledged that "by modernizing these systems we will meaningfully improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans." 
 
 News outlets pounced. "Jared Kushner Actually Has A Voice," read a headline on the Huffington Post. Time's online headline read: "Hear Jared Kushner Speak in a Rare Public Appearance." 
 
 Kushner sometimes speaks at sanctioned background briefings for reporters. He also briefly popped in to an interview that his wife, Ivanka Trump, did with CBS at the White House last month. He declined to join the interview, but when asked if he enjoyed their late-night walks on the Washington Mall, Kushner said: "Beautiful. Great company. Beautiful scenery." 
 
 While his public speaking has been limited at best, Kushner has been busy with an expansive policy portfolio, charged with modernizing government and leading an effort to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He will head to the Middle East this week to take part in talks toward that goal. 
 
 Kushner has also come under scrutiny for his contacts with Russians during the transition as part of the widening probes into whether Trump's team coordinated with Moscow during the election. Kushner has denied any improper contacts with Russia. ||||| Perhaps Jared Kushner really believed that his New York real estate skills set him up to bring peace to the Middle East, solve the opioid crisis, run a government Swat team of business experts and protect his father-in-law from disloyal White House advisers. And that he could do it all while observing the Sabbath and reserving enough time for family ski vacations with Ivanka and their three children. 
 
 Or maybe Kushner just calculated that all the hype surrounding his White House role was a not-to-be-missed family branding opportunity. After all, the Washington Post recently watched as his sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, hawked American visas in Beijing to would-be Chinese investors in a troubled Kushner New Jersey real estate development. 
 
 But in all his fantasies about conquering Washington at Donald Trump’s side, Kushner undoubtedly never imagined being ensnared in an FBI investigation. 
 
 
 
 All that changed, of course, when news broke late last week that Kushner had discussed opening up a secret back channel to Moscow last December in a Trump Tower meeting with the ubiquitous Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. 
 
 Let’s put the most charitable interpretation possible on the facts that have emerged about Kushner. 
 
 The bizarre suggestion to use the Russian communications system to secretly link the Trump transition team and the Kremlin could have come from Michael Flynn, the star-crossed former national security adviser who was also at the meeting. 
 
 
 
 Kushner, in his naivete about government, may also not have remembered that Barack Obama was still president and in charge of all negotiations with Russia. And it was an innocent oversight that Kushner failed to mention his talk with Kislyak on his government security clearance form. 
 
 
 
 Trump mulls shakeup as Kelly says 'back channel' talks are 'a good thing' Read more 
 
 Even under the benign theory that Kushner thought a secret back channel was like a small boy’s tin-can telephone, his life in the coming months and maybe years will be a study in misery. He will probably spend more time with his personal lawyer, Clinton justice department veteran Jamie Gorelick, than with Ivanka or his children. Whether it is an appearance under oath on Capitol Hill or the inevitable FBI interview, every sentence Kushner utters will bring with it possible legal jeopardy. 
 
 Kushner may have once thought that he established his tough-guy credentials when he stared down angry creditors and impatient bankers over his ill-timed 2007 purchase of a $1.8bn Fifth Avenue office building. But the worst thing that can happen to an over-leveraged real estate investor (as Trump himself knows well) is bankruptcy. When the FBI and special prosecutor Robert Mueller get involved, the penalties can theoretically involve steel bars locking behind you. 
 
 That ominous sound is familiar to Kushner from his weekly visits more than a decade ago to his real estate mogul father, Charles, in federal prison in Alabama. The then US attorney Chris Christie (the ironies of Trump World abound) successfully prosecuted Charles Kushner in 2005 for tax evasion, witness tampering and unlawful campaign contributions. The Jared Kushner coming-of-age story pivots around a loyal son taking over the New Jersey-based real estate firm when his father was a guest of the government. 
 
 Now the presidential son-in-law may be worrying in his late-night moments that family history may be repeating itself. He may put on a brave front in public and encourage the current rumors that he and Ivanka are tiring of Washington, but for Kushner the high adventure of a senior White House post ended abruptly during last week’s European grand tour. 
 
 If Jared and Ivanka do return to New York – either voluntarily or as part of a White House legal strategy – their departure will accentuate Trump’s fate as the loneliest man in Washington. Trapped in the trappings of a White House that he can’t demolish to build something grander, Trump is surrounded by aides like Reince Priebus and HR McMaster whom he neither fully trusts nor feels comfortable with. 
 
 All White Houses go through a phase when the familiar faces from the campaign and the Inauguration have disappeared from burnout and a desire to cash in. That is when a president looks around at his senior staff and asks himself: “Who are these guys? Why am I surrounded by strangers?” 
 
 Usually that moment comes sometime in a president’s second term. For Trump, the exodus may occur before his first summer in the Oval Office is over. 
 
 The Kushner news reminds me of the saddest person I ever saw coming out of the White House. It was a Clinton administration official, shuffling along with his downcast eyes focused on the sidewalk, who had been caught up in the exaggerated first-term scandal known as Whitewater. 
 
 There in his familial loyalty to Donald Trump goes Jared Kushner, who is learning a hard lesson about Washington, back channels to the Russians and the FBI. 
 
 Walter Shapiro is a Roll Call columnist, a lecturer in political science at Yale and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. ||||| Behold! Jared Kushner finally speaks! 
 
 In April, John Oliver made this point about President Donald Trump’s Senior White House adviser and son-in-law: “For someone with the amount of power that [Kushner] has, have you ever heard him speak? Seriously, what does his voice sound like? You don’t know, do you?” 
 
 Oliver proceeded to show footage of Kushner with Gilbert Gottfried’s voice dubbed on top, because honestly, unless you’re a diehard Gossip Girl fan, who was to know what this incredibly influential man sounds like? 
 
 That is, until today. 
 
 Kushner, who was recently implicated in alleged dealings with the Russian government, spoke at the White House in honor of Technology Week. 
 
 “Before I came to Washington, many warned me that the bureaucracy would resist any change that we tried to implement,” he says in his public speech. “So far, I have found exactly the opposite.” 
 
 You can listen to him speak below. 
 
 And here’s how Twitter reacted to the sound of his voice. ||||| White House senior adviser Jared Kushner speaking to leaders of technology companies. Thomson Reuters Jared Kushner on Monday spoke publicly for the first time in his role as senior adviser to President Donald Trump. 
 
 Kushner, who is also Trump's son-in-law, has been tasked with overseeing several Trump administration initiatives, including brokering peace in the Middle East, revamping the federal government, tackling the opioid epidemic, and heading the Office of American Innovation. 
 
 During his remarks on Monday, Kushner spoke about actions the administration was taking to improve government efficiency. 
 
 "To date, we've been working with hundreds of talented civil servants, men and women who want to serve their country and see their government do better," he told a group of tech leaders. "We have challenged ourselves to pursue change that will provide utility to Americans far beyond our tenure here. 
 
 "Together, we have set ambitious goals and empowered interagency teams to tackle our objectives," he continued. "It's working, and it's very exciting." 
 
 Here's a clip of Kushner's remarks: 
 
 Recent reports have said Kushner is considering shaking up his legal team and stacking it with experienced criminal attorneys as multiple investigations into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia have widened in scope. 
 
 Kushner is well-known for refraining from speaking in public or when the cameras are rolling. While he sometimes spoke publicly as a businessman, and once made a quick cameo in a May interview his wife, Ivanka Trump, gave with CBS This Morning, this was the first on-camera speech Kushner gave as a member of the Trump administration. 
 
 We put together a playlist of all the videos we could find of Kushner speaking in public, and comedic bits parodying his silence: ||||| Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analyses from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. 
 
 WASHINGTON — A real estate company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law turned senior adviser tasked with leading his Middle East peace initiative, has reportedly entered into new business relationships with Israeli financial institutions during his short time in government. 
 
 
 
 The New York Times reported on Sunday that Kushner’s firm received an investment nearing $30 million from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel’s largest insurers, in the spring of 2017, shortly before Kushner visited Jerusalem with the president on an official visit. 
 
 
 
 Menora’s injection of cash went to development projects in Maryland in which Kushner still has personal stakes, according to the report, which notes that the specific transaction does not appear to violate the letter of US ethics law. 
 
 Nevertheless, Kushner’s role as leader of the US peace process brings his business ties to Israel under exceptional scrutiny. And Kushner’s business partnerships in Israel are already known to be extensive. He has taken out at least four loans from Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank currently under criminal investigation in the United States, and has had major dealings with some of the nation’s wealthiest investors, some of whom are also the subject of bribery investigations.Kushner’s family has also donated to pro-settlement groups.“We have tremendous confidence in the job Jared is doing leading our peace efforts and he takes the ethics rules very seriously and would never compromise himself or the administration,” a White House spokesman told The Jerusalem Post. “In consultation with the Office of the White House Counsel, he is fully complying with federal ethics rules.”A lawyer for Kushner, Abbe Lowell, told the Times: “ “Jared Kushner has not been involved in, nor spoken about any Kushner Companies’ activities or project, since shortly before the inauguration. He has an ethics agreement, reviewed by lawyers, with which he is in full compliance. Connecting any of his well-publicized trips to the Middle East to anything to do with Kushner Companies or its businesses is nonsensical and is a stretch to write a story where none actually exists.“Kushner’s ties to Israel are also reportedly a subject of inquiry by Robert Mueller, the US special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, after he discovered that Kushner directed a campaign to combat the Obama administration’s eleventh hour effort in December 2016 to pass an anti-settlement resolution through the UN Security Council.Kushner at that time was a private citizen. 
 
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– Jared Kushner spoke in public on Monday. And that alone counted as news. In a White House full of loud voices, the powerful senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump tends to keep his mouth shut, the AP reports. He shuns televised interviews, avoids public speeches and rarely addresses a meeting when cameras are rolling, preferring to work behind the scenes. So Washington took notice Monday when Kushner presided over a White House meeting of technology executives and actually took the microphone. It took a few moments for Kushner to get the attention of the dozens of suited executives gathered in an ornate room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. But eventually the room quieted and he could finally be heard. The slim, stylish former real estate executive addressed the crowd in a soft but confident tenor, revealing the New York influences around his vowels. News outlets pounced. "Jared Kushner Actually Has A Voice," read a headline on the Huffington Post. Time's online headline read: "Hear Jared Kushner Speak in a Rare Public Appearance." And the Daily Beast's: "This Is What Jared Kushner’s Voice Sounds Like." Kushner sometimes speaks at sanctioned background briefings for reporters. He also briefly popped in to an interview that his wife, Ivanka Trump, did with CBS at the White House last month. He declined to join the interview, but when asked if he enjoyed their late-night walks on the Washington Mall, Kushner said: "Beautiful. Great company. Beautiful scenery." Business Insider, though, notes that this is Kushner's first time giving an on-camera speech in his White House role. While his public speaking has been limited at best, Kushner has been busy with an expansive policy portfolio, charged with modernizing government and leading an effort to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.