WASHINGTON — An American financier approached the Trump administration last summer with an unusual proposition: The North Korean government wanted to talk to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
The financier, Gabriel Schulze, explained that a top North Korean official was seeking a back channel to explore a meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, who for months had traded threats of military confrontation.
Schulze, who lives in Singapore, had built a network of contacts in North Korea on trips he had taken to develop business opportunities in the isolated state.
For some in North Korea, which has been ruled since its founding by a family dynasty, Kushner appeared to be a promising contact. As a member of the president’s family, officials in Pyongyang judged, Kushner would have the ear of his father-in-law and be immune from the personnel changes that had convulsed the early months of the administration.
Schulze’s outreach was but one step in a path that led to last week’s handshake between Trump and Kim in Singapore — a path that involved secret meetings among spies, discussions between profit-minded entrepreneurs, and a previously unreported role for Kushner, according to interviews with current and former American officials and others familiar with the negotiations.
In reaching out to Kushner, the North Koreans were following the example of the Chinese, who had early on identified the 37-year-old husband of Ivanka Trump as a well-connected “princeling,” someone who could be a conduit to Donald Trump and allow them to bypass the bureaucracy of the State Department.
Schulze was taking advantage of an unusual opening in an administration where matters of policy and business often seem to blur.
Other figures besides Schulze played important roles in bringing about Trump’s summit with Kim. But people familiar with the negotiations said Schulze’s early contacts were useful in setting in motion the diplomacy that led to Singapore.
Kushner did not play a direct role in back-channel negotiations with North Korean officials, according to people familiar with the matter. He instead notified Mike Pompeo, the CIA director at the time, about Schulze’s outreach and requested that the agency be in charge of the discussions.
The White House and the CIA declined to comment on Kushner’s contact with Schulze.
In a statement, Schulze said, “I do not discuss the nature of my business or personal relationships.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.