Washington – Senior White House adviser and son-in-law to US President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, was reportedly warned by security officials that a close family friend may try to him influence on behalf of the Chinese government, according to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
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Shortly after stepping into his administration position, US officials approached Kushner about Wendi Deng Murdoch, the former wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and advised him to exercise caution when speaking with her.
Murdoch, a powerful Chinese-American business woman, is reportedly close friends with Ivanka Trump, the US President’s daughter.
Security officials were reportedly concerned that Deng would use her contacts in the administration to further a construction project in Washington funded by the Chinese government, an anonymous source told The Journal.
The high-profile project is a proposed plan to build a Chinese garden less than five miles from both the Capitol and the White House.
The garden, estimated to cost $100 million, was reportedly designated a national security risk because the design included plans for a tall tower that could be used for surveillance.
A spokesman for Deng told The Guardian newspaper that she “has no knowledge of any FBI concerns or other intelligence agency concerns relating to her or her associations.”
He added: “[Deng] has absolutely no knowledge of any garden projects funded by the Chinese government.”
A Kushner representative described the early 2017 with US officials as a “routine senior staff security briefing.”
He said Kushner “has complied with all ethics and disclosure recommendations and has played a helpful role in strengthening the US-China relationship so as to help bring about a better resolution to the many issues the countries have.”
A Chinese embassy official in Washington later dismissed the Wall Street Journal report as “full of groundless speculations.”
The Wall Street Journal is published by a division of News Corp., owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Michael Wolff, who recently authored “Fire and Fury” – a tome detailing the first year of the Trump presidency – wrote on Twitter after The Journal article’s publication that Murdoch had been claiming his ex-wife was a Chinese spy to “anybody who would listen” since their divorce in June 2013.
The former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, however, defended Deng on social media, expressing doubts about the report.
“Count me deeply skeptical,” Marcus Brauchli posted on Twitter. “US counter-intelligence has slurred people before with flimsy suspicions, especially those people with ties to China (eg ethnic Chinese). I’d warrant Trump does more for Russia than Wendi ever did for China.”
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