NYT: NKorea Reached First Out to Kushner Through American Financier

A top North Korean official aimed to lay the groundwork for a meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un by first reaching out to Jared Kushner through an American investor, The New York Times reported.

Financier Gabriel Schulze, who lives in Singapore and had a network of contacts in North Korea, quietly contacted the president’s son-in-law and helped set in motion the diplomacy that ultimately led to the historic summit between the two leaders, the Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

Kushner didn’t play a direct role in back-channel negotiations with North Korean officials, the Times reported. Instead, he notified then-CIA director Mike Pompeo about Schulze’s outreach and requested the agency be in charge of the discussions.

By targeting Kushner as a contact, the North Koreans followed the example of the Chinese, who early on saw the husband of Ivanka Trump as well-connected and a conduit to Trump that would allow them to bypass the bureaucracy of the State Department, the Times reported.

Besides Schulze’s previously unreported outreach to Kushner, the path to the June 12 summit in Singapore involved secret meetings among spies and discussions between profit-minded entrepreneurs, the Times reported.

The White House and the CIA declined to comment. In a statement, Schulze told the Times, “I do not discuss the nature of my business or personal relationships.”

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