- According to the new book "Kushner, Inc." by journalist Vicky Ward, White House senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump attempted to exert influence over trips funded by the State Department.
- Ward also reported that when then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would reject requests to use Air Force planes for flights, Trump would invite Cabinet-level officials on the flights as a workaround.
- A spokesperson for Kushner's attorney has denied the claims in the book.
- In a new INSIDER poll, 68% of people surveyed thought it would be inappropriate for a government official to use Ivanka's reported workaround to get access to an Air Force plane.
- 34% of respondents said using such a workaround would be "possibly a fireable offense."
A significant majority of Americans do not approve of the workaround White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump reportedly used to gain access to the use of Air Force planes, according to a new INSIDER poll.
According to journalist Vicky Ward's new book "Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump," Ivanka, President Donald Trump's daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner wanted influence over who traveled on some State Department trips.
Ward reported that Ivanka would request to use Air Force plans for travel when it was not necessary, leading then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to reject the requests.
To get around the rejections, the book said, Trump would invite Cabinet-level officials to join the trips in order to receive approval for the Air Force planes.
According to a new INSIDER poll, 68% of respondents believe that a government official using the workaround described by Ward should be punished.
In order to determine people's opinions of the situation, we asked: "According to a new report, a US government official who was initially rejected from traveling on a US Air Force plane found a workaround by inviting Cabinet-level officials on to those trips to get access to Air Force travel. What best represents your view on this?"
In response:
- 34% of respondents said such an action is inappropriate and is "a possibly fireable offense"
- 34% of respondents said such an action is wrong and it should be reprimanded
- 11% of respondents said they such an action isn't inappropriate, but it should stop going forward
- 8% of respondents said they had some questions, but didn't think such an action was a problem
- 3% of respondents didn't see a problem with such an action
- 10% of respondents didn't have an opinion
Interestingly, the idea polled even worse with people who identified as conservative: 40% of respondents who identified as "very" or "somewhat" conservative thought the workaround should "a possibly fireable offense."
In a statement to the New York Times, which first reported the book's description of the workaround, a spokesperson for Abbe Lowell, Kushner's attorney denied the claims in "Kushner, Inc."
"Every point that Ms. Ward mentioned in what she called her 'fact checking' stage was entirely false," Peter Mirijanian, the spokesperson, told the Times. "It seems she has written a book of fiction rather than any serious attempt to get the facts. Correcting everything wrong would take too long and be pointless."
SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income. Total 1,178 respondents collected March 16-17, 2019, a margin of error plus or minus 3.07 percentage points with a 95% confidence level.