• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 6, 2016

It’s daunting enough for reporters who take on the rich and powerful, but this normally doesn’t involve dishing it out to your own boss. That’s where Dana Schwartz of The New York Observer found herself this week, as she publicly demanded an explanation from the newspaper’s owner, Jared Kushner, over an allegedly anti-Semitic image included in a tweet by his father-in-law, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

As was widely reported over the weekend, Trump re-tweeted an ad that had appeared on some white supremacist Web sites, accusing Hillary Clinton of corruption with what many argued was a Jewish Star of David appearing against a background of cash. While the Trump campaign changed the image to a circle and responded that the first symbol was intended to resemble a sheriff’s badge, critics claimed it was an intentional coded anti-Semitic message.

Schwartz, a culture reporter for the NYO, saw it that way. She confronted Kushner about the tweet, as well as the anti-Semitism of Trump supporters who sent her hate mail online when she wrote about it.

The challenge came in an open letter that appeared in the newspaper, apparently with the knowledge of editor-in-chief Ken Kurson, who is also Jewish. In the most pointed passage, Schwartz demanded: “I’m asking you, not as a ‘gotcha’ journalist or as a liberal, but as a human being: How do you allow this? Because, Mr. Kushner, you are allowing this.”

Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka (who herself converted to Judaism before their marriage), has no official role in the Trump campaign. But he is said to have considerable sway over key strategic matters, along with Trump’s own adult children.

Kushner and Kurson both issued public responses to Schwartz’s open letter, stating their belief that Trump is not anti-Semitic or racist, and that the tweet was, in essence, a mistake made by underlings. Kushner described Trump as “an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife. I know that Donald does not subscribe at all to any racist or anti-Semitic thinking.”

Kurson wrote, in part: “All presidential candidates attract people whose support makes them uncomfortable… In my opinion, Donald Trump is not a Jew hater.”