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NYC's de Blasio and His Administration Had a Warm Relationship With Kushner, Emails Show

Long before Mayor Bill de Blasio started to define New York City as the nexus of anti-Donald Trump sentiment, the mayor and other senior officials in his administration maintained friendly relations with the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request show.

Long before Mayor Bill de Blasio started to define New York City as the nexus of anti-Donald Trump sentiment, the mayor and other senior officials in his administration maintained friendly relations with the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request show.

The emails, spanning from de Blasio’s first year in office in 2014 through the spring of 2017, show de Blasio’s occasionally fawning overtures to Kushner and others in the Trump Organization in the weeks after the 2016 election. They also show Kushner’s intense involvement in local and state politics, before his father-in-law’s surprise election catapulted him to becoming one of the most powerful political figures in the United States.

De Blasio had been a fervent critic of Trump during the 2016 campaign, calling him “dangerous” and comparing him to a “third-world dictator,” but he harbored no such sentiment for his son-in-law. After the election, and after a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower, where de Blasio said he told the president-elect about how New Yorkers were “fearful” of his policies, de Blasio reached out to Kushner in a personal email.

“Jared, I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and a little break from the swirl of activity these last few weeks have brought,” the mayor wrote on Nov. 26, 2016.

While de Blasio had spoken with Trump about New Yorkers’ fears, he reached out to Kushner with a different, and very specific, request.

“As we discussed, I encourage the President‐elect to meet with a bi‐partisan leadership group from the US Conference of Mayors sometime in December,” de Blasio wrote.

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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