‘We Can Bury It?’: Prankster Tricks Kushner Atty Into Chat On Private Emails

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, center, accompanied by his attorney Abbe Lowell, right, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington., Monday, July 24, 2017, to meet behind closed doors before the Senate Intellige... White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, center, accompanied by his attorney Abbe Lowell, right, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington., Monday, July 24, 2017, to meet behind closed doors before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the investigation into possible collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Jared Kushner’s private attorney fell victim to a prankster posing as his client on Monday, exchanging several messages about Kushner’s use of a private email account to conduct government business and fielding questions about supposed “adult content” forwarded to that account.

In the email back-and-forth, which was first shared with Business Insider, attorney Abbe Lowell tells the individual he believed to be Kushner that he needed “to see all emails” sent and received from a personal email address that the top White House adviser and son-in-law of the President set up in December.

Kushner’s use of that account was first reported by Politico on Sunday. The New York Times and CBS have since reported that at least six senior White House officials, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, used private email accounts to carry out official business.

The prankster, who goes by the handle @SINON_REBORN on Twitter and used the address kushner.jared@mail.com to contact Lowell, has since made their full Monday exchange public. He opened the conversation by asking Lowell what to do with “some exchanges with a website featuring adult content.”

Lowell asked if the messages were “forwarded or received from WH officials.”

After Kushner replied that one “unsolicited” message was forwarded to him by a White House official and that he’d also received “a handful more, but not from officials,” Lowell asked for evidence.

“I need to see I think all emails between you and WH (just for me and us),” he wrote. “We need to send any officials emails to your WH account. Not stuff like you asked about. None of those are going anywhere.”

“But we can bury it?” the prankster responded. “I’m so embarrassed. It’s fairly specialist stuff, half naked women on a trampoline, standing on legoscenes, the tag for the movie was #standingOnTheLittlePeople :(”

“Don’t delete. Don’t send to anyone. Let’s chat in a bit,” Lowell responded.

The high-powered D.C. attorney is representing Kushner in ongoing federal and congressional investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. He declined Business Insider’s response for comment, but previously released a statement saying that all of the “non-personal emails” sent or received on his private account were forwarded to his official address.

Lowell also said in that statement that most of the messages regarded event planning or news articles.

The Trump administration has had a rough streak of being lured into embarrassing exchanges by pranksters. Earlier in September, White House special counsel Ty Cobb asked @SINON_REBORN, using the email address dan.scavinojr@emailprankster.co.uk to impersonate White House social media director Dan Scavino, if there “was any drone time left” while discussing the work of a Business Insider reporter.

Energy secretary Rick Perry and several other administration officials have also been fooled by various pranksters.

Latest Muckraker
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: