Trump campaign digital director: 'Not one person made a decision' without Kushner and Eric Trump's 'approval'

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Jared Kushner.

• The digital director for the Trump campaign on Friday painted Jared Kushner and Eric Trump as "joint deputy campaign managers."
• Parscale's statement came amid a bombshell book release that features former chief strategist Steve Bannon trashing Trump's family members.
• But it could raise new questions about Kushner and Eric Trump for the Russia investigation.

The digital director for President Donald Trump's campaign said Friday that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Eric Trump "were joint deputy campaign managers" whose "approval" was required for every decision made by the campaign during the 2016 election.

"Truth: Jared Kushner and @EricTrump were joint deputy campaign managers to @realDonaldTrump," Brad Parscale, the campaign's digital director, tweeted Friday morning. "Nobody else. Not one person made a decision without their approval. Others just took credit for this family's amazing ability. I'm done with all these lies. They will be embarrassed!"

Kushner was Parscale's "patron," according to a person familiar with the campaign's inner workings, which could explain their closeness.

"Jared got [Parscale] hired, despite the fact that a number of people in the campaign wondered whether he had any idea what he was doing," the person said. "He's Jared's boy. I had [campaign] deputies telling me they couldn't question anything the guy did or said, and they were unhappy about that."

The tweet comes as an explosive new book about the Trump campaign and the president's first year in the White House has rocked the administration. Michael Wolff's book, "Fire and Fury," features former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon lambasting Trump and members of his family.

But Parcale's tweet attributing virtually every campaign decision to Kushner and Eric Trump also raises new questions about how involved they were in episodes that have drawn the most scrutiny from investigators probing the campaign's ties to Russia.

Those include agreeing to meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and other Russian nationals at Trump Tower in June 2016; green-lighting early Trump campaign aide Carter Page's trip to Moscow in July 2016; and alterations to an amendment to the GOP's Ukraine platform during the Republican National Convention.

Page told the House Intelligence Committee last year that then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski gave him permission to travel to Russia days before the convention.

Parscale's statement also raises questions about what Kushner and Eric Trump knew about George Papadopoulos, the former campaign aide who was charged late last year with making false statements to the FBI. The campaign has characterized him as a "coffee boy," but evidence has emerged that he attempted for months to set up a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russia, helped craft Trump's first major foreign policy speech, and brokered campaign talks between Trump and Egypt's president.

Papadopoulos also gave an interview as a Trump campaign official to Russia's Interfax News Agency six weeks before Election Day, and he met with Israeli leaders during Trump's transition period as a foreign policy adviser.

Eric Trump, the co-head of the Trump Organization, has so far evaded the spotlight in the Trump-Russia probe. That could change now that the Trump Organization has turned over documents to special counsel Robert Mueller, according to CNN.

The data operation Kushner supervised, meanwhile, is reportedly being scrutinized by federal and congressional investigators for potential collusion with Russian bots and trolls who targeted voters with disinformation and propaganda during the election.

Congressional investigators are also probing whether voter information stolen by Russian hackers from election databases in several states made its way to the Trump campaign.

Parscale didn't respond to a request for comment.