The Best People: Kushner Pal Pardoned by Trump Hit With Felony Cyberstalking Charges

One thing you‘ve probably noticed about the Trump-Kushner clan is that despite claiming otherwise, they almost exclusively surround themselves with total sleazebags, many of whom are criminals to boot. Because Trump himself is one of history’s biggest slimeballs, on his way out of the White House, he pardoned a whole bunch of friends and allies, including Jared Kushner’s dad, Charles, disgraced national security adviser Mike Flynn, and commuted the sentence of longtime adviser Roger Stone. One of the other people who got a nod from Trump was Kushner pal Ken Kurson, which allowed him to escape federal charges for cyberstalking and harassment. But unfortunately for Kurson, whose behavior had been described by accusers in the federal complaint as “diabolical,” a pardon from the president does not preclude one from being hit with state charges, as he learned on Wednesday.

Yes, seven months after Trump let him get off scot-free for some allegedly deeply creepy shit, Kurson, an editor at the New York Observer under Kushner’s ownership, has been criminally indicted for unlawfully spying on his ex-wife by secretly accessing her computer, among other things.

Per The New York Times:

Kurson, a close friend of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was charged in state criminal court in Manhattan on Wednesday with eavesdropping and computer trespass, both felonies. Prosecutors accuse Mr. Kurson of using spyware to breach his wife’s computer in 2015 as the couple’s marriage fell apart. Each crime is punishable by up to four years in prison. “We will not accept presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected in New York,” the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement announcing the charges.

Mr. Kurson used a software program called WebWatcher to monitor his wife’s computer keystrokes from The Observer’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, which allowed him to get the passwords to her Gmail and Facebook accounts, according to the complaint. He used the illicit access to spy on her from September 2015 to March 2016, prosecutors said. The couple divorced in January 2016…. The charges are the latest twist in a case that first began in spring 2018 when the Trump administration nominated Mr. Kurson for a seat on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

After the FBI began a standard background check into Kurson, likely not expecting to find anything of note, investigators learned about allegations he’d harassed a number of people who he apparently blamed for the breakdown of his marriage, including a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital who he allegedly targeted with negative Yelp reviews, threatening emails, and calls to her office in which he insinuated she was having an affair. At the time, a lawyer for Kurson insisted “the conduct alleged is hardly worthy of a federal criminal prosecution,” though one can probably see why his accusers described it as “diabolical.”

A footnote in the federal complaint mentioned that in addition to the behavior for which he was being charged, Mr. Kurson had engaged in a pattern of harassment that included “installing software on one individual’s computer to monitor that individual’s keystrokes and website usage without his/her knowledge or authorization.”

Court documents filed in November 2020 indicated that Mr. Kurson was in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors. But in his final hours in office, Mr. Trump rendered those talks moot by pardoning Mr. Kurson, along with a number of the president’s other associates, including his former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.

An attorney for Kurson did not immediately respond to the Times’ request for comment.

In addition to his Kushner ties, Kurson also previously served as a speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani, so perhaps the two of them can consult on legal strategies re: staying out of prison. (Each of the crimes Kurson has been charged with is punishable by up to four years behind bars.) Kurson also faced criticism in 2016 for advising Trump on a speech while serving as the editor of a supposedly neutral newspaper; in response, he saltily told my colleague Michael Calderone, then at HuffPost, “I don’t intend to let the eleven people who have appointed themselves the journalist police tell me, at age 47, how to behave or to whom I’m allowed to speak.”

In other Trumpworld legal news, last month we learned that Vance’s office reportedly has evidence that Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg’s son also allegedly dodged taxes with the help of the company, raising the prospect that the elder Weisselberg will feel compelled to cooperate against Trump to save his kid. (Weisselberg the elder and the Trump Organization, which were hit with more than a dozen charges in July, have pleaded not guilty.)

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