- Jared Kushner refused to say whether he thought the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
- He called the election "very sloppy" because of changes to voting procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner repeatedly dodged questions about whether he agreed with his father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, over baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Kushner, speaking in an interview with United Kingdom-based Sky News that aired Friday, instead blamed changes to state voting procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic for why some voters have lost confidence in US elections.
"President Biden is the president right now," Kushner said. "There was a transfer of power. I think it was a very sloppy election. I think it has caused a lot of people in our country to look at how our elections are conducted. During COVID they changed a lot of the rules, which gave a lot of people a lot of concerns with how our elections are conducted."
Amid the pandemic, several states changed the rules around voting access, including on absentee voting and voting by mail. But the Trump campaign hasn't delivered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the results of the presidential election.
Kushner's interview was intended to promote his new book, "Breaking History," about his time working in the White House. Kushner is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and he and his family moved to Miami following their time in the White House.
Kushner has similarly avoided answering the question about the 2020 election in other interviews, including during a Sirius XM radio podcast with Megyn Kelly.
Pressed on Sky News to deliver his take on whether Democrats stole the 2020 election, Kushner said, "I'm not going to play the game that the media is trying to play."
"I think they changed a lot of rules at the last minute, used COVID as a pretense to fight the election," he added.
During the interview, Kushner also pointed to the 2016 election that Trump won, suggesting Democrats have similarly tried to declare a presidential election "illegitimate."
He highlighted Democratic investigations and news stories "hyperventilating" that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. A 2019 investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion.
Trump continues to repeat false claims that there was widespread fraud during the 2020 election. Thursday night, from Philadelphia, President Joe Biden accused Trump and his supporters of being a threat to democracy through these claims and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
"Democracy cannot survive," Biden said, "when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win, or they were cheated."