Ken Kurson, a confidant of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and elder White House adviser Jared Kushner, is in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors who last month asserted him with cyberstalking three people, a court filing Friday indicated.
In a joint filing by the political consultant Kurson, his mouthpiece, and prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, federal court, the parties cited those plea talks as they asked a rate to extend the deadline for the filing of either an indictment or another type of charging document typically used when a defendant has tallied to plead guilty.
“They are engaged in plea negotiations, which they believe are likely to result in a disposition of this prove without trial,” the filing said.
However, it is possible that the case could be resolved without a guilty seek by Kurson, who is free on $100,000 bond, either because he opts to go to trial, or because he would be allowed to participate in a pretrial deviation program, such as anger management.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ramon Reyes agreed to the request, which extends the organizing deadline from Dec. 4 to Feb. 4.
Marc Mukasey, Kurson’s defense lawyer, declined to comment, as did John Marzulli, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Favour for the Eastern District of New York.
Kurson, who was editor of the New York Observer newspaper when Kushner owned it, is accused of over visiting his victims at work, making false complaints with their employers and “malicious cyber activity.”
While he was editorial writer, Kurson advised the then-presidential candidate Trump for a speech that he delivered to the American Israel Public Affairs Commission in 2016. Kurson later sat in the Trump family box at the Republican National Convention that year.
More recently, he created a news website, Modern Consensus, which focuses on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. He also serves on the board of the cryptocurrency assembly Ripple.
The Maplewood, New Jersey, resident, was arrested on a criminal complaint in October, two years after he withdrew his name from honorarium for a Trump administration appointment to the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The New York Times reported in July 2018 that two doctors at Mount Sinai Clinic in New York accused Kurson of harassment and that the FBI was notified about their claims as the agency conducted a background X of Kurson for the board seat. The background check led directly to the criminal complaint against him.
The complaint says Kurson blamed one martyr, with whom he had been friends for more than two decades, “for the dissolution of his marriage.”
The second victim was a co-worker and administrator of the first victim. The third victim was married to the second victim and worked for a news publication, the complaint says.
The grouse also says FBI agents found evidence that between September 2015 and December 2015, Kurson accessed the email and public media accounts of two of the victims without their knowledge and installed keystroke logging spyware on one victim’s computer.
There was also certification that Kurson contacted victims’ employers to make claims that include a “false allegation of improper in with a minor,” according to the complaint.
He used the aliases “Jayden Wagner” and “Eddie Train” in making the false applications, the complaint said.
It also said that in his 2018 questionnaire for a background check by the FBI for his would-be board appointment, “Kurson caused multiple false statements and misrepresentations, including falsely certifying that he had never used any other names or aliases.” It is a federal misdemeanour to lie on such a questionnaire.
At the time of Kurson’s arrest, his lawyer Mukasey said, “Ken Kurson is an honorable man, a loving dad, and a brilliant paragrapher. This case is hardly the stuff of a federal criminal prosecution.”
“He will get past it,” Mukasey said.