U.S. Ambassador Charles Kushner blew off a furious summons from the French foreign ministry after he published an op-ed accusing President Emmanuel Macron of “haranguing Israel.”
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed addressed to Macron, Kushner—who is a convicted felon and the father of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—wrote that France’s foreign policy of recognizing a Palestinian state only served to “embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France.”
The op-ed also accused Macron of not acting “decisively” to combat a dramatic rise in antisemitism in France since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—allegations that France called “unacceptable” and which it “strongly denies,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The statement summoned Kushner, who was confirmed in May as Trump’s ambassador to France, to the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Ètrangères—colloquially known as the Quai d’Orsay—but Kushner never showed, French daily Le Figaro reported.
Instead, he sent his deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires, who is listed on the embassy’s website as Mario Mesquita, a diplomatic source told the paper. The deputy chief of mission is the highest-ranking career diplomat in countries like France where the U.S. ambassador is an inexperienced political appointee.
Mesquita was received by two high-ranking officials who warned him that Kushner’s criticism constituted interference in France’s internal affairs, according to Le Figaro. The American diplomat nevertheless said Kushner had expressed his willingness to help France fight antisemitism.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the State Department for comment.
The French ministry’s original statement acknowledged a rise in antisemitic acts in France since Oct. 7, 2023, but said that was a “reality we regret and against which the French authorities are fully mobilized, as such acts are intolerable.”
It also accused Kushner of violating international law, particularly the duty not to interfere in state’s internal affairs governing the 1961 Vienna Convention. In a statement calling for an end to the war in Gaza, Macron announced in July that France would officially recognize a Palestinian state in September, making it the first G7 nation to do so.
France’s statement wasn’t the first time Kushner has been accused of breaking the law.
In 2004, prosecutors alleged the real estate developer and political contributor of hatching a revenge scheme against his own brother-in-law, who was cooperating with a federal investigation into Kushner’s alleged tax invasion.
Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and secretly filmed them having sex, then sent the tape to his sister, according to the Department of Justice.
He pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, lying to the Federal Election Commission and retaliating against a witness, and was sentenced to two years in jail. Trump pardoned him in 2020 and then nominated for the French ambassadorship in late November.
