Jared Kushner is no stranger to queries about his form-filling – a request for White House security clearance had to be resubmitted to include all his foreign contacts – but his latest controversy has perhaps come as more of a surprise. He has been registered to vote as a woman for the last eight years.
Records filed with the New York state board of elections show Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser registered as a female voter in 2009.
The news comes as Kushner’s lawyer acknowledged Kushner used a private email account for official business – despite Trump having regularly excoriated Hillary Clinton for doing the same – and it emerged that the property firm run by his family was being sued for allegedly adding illegal fees to its tenants’ rent.
In January it was reported that Kushner was registered to vote in two different US states.
Trump has repeatedly insisted, without evidence, that he would have got a greater share of the popular vote in last year’s election but for millions of people voting “illegally”.
There is no evidence that Kushner has committed voter fraud, which would require him to have deliberately misled the authorities.
It is not the first time he has made administrative errors. In July it emerged that he had missed out details of a meeting he attended with Donald Trump Jr and a Russian lawyer when he applied for White House security clearance.
He was required to disclose all meetings with foreign government officials over the past seven years and had to include the information on a supplemental form.
The errors have led some to question his suitability for such a high-ranking position. “Kushner can’t even fill out the most basic paperwork without screwing it up, so it’s a mystery why anyone thinks he’s somehow going to bring peace to the Middle East,” Brad Bainum, a spokesman for the group that first identified Kushner’s voter slip-up, told Wired.
Bainum, a representative of the American Bridge liberal opposition research group, added: “Would anyone but the president’s son-in-law still have a West Wing job after repeated disclosure errors and a botched security clearance form?”
Neither Kushner nor the White House have commented publicly on the voter registration reports.
