TASK DEFINITION: Given a document, find the main entity about whom the author is writing. Write the full name if mentioned in the text. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
PROBLEM: It was supposed to be a triumphant year for  White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner . Part of the team that guided his father-in-law to victory in 2016   the young Kushner  was catapulted into the highest echelons of power.
 He  was handed a broad portfolio that included making peace in the Middle East and was reportedly a key part of Trumpâs inner circle and decision-making team. But as 2017 dragged on  the man known as Mr. Perfect had anything but a perfect year.
Here are  Kushner âs worst moments from 2017:
When  Kushner  visited Iraq in April  he obviously did not want to abandon his dedication to preppy style. But the image of the senior adviser sporting a flak jacket (with âKushnerâ scrawled on it)  along with a blazer and khakis  brought on a torrent of mockery.
This pic of  Jared Kushner  in Iraq with a military bullet-proof vest over  his  usual Thurston Howell III outfit really says it all pic.twitter.com/Qbt90NiqV4 â Amy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) April 6  2017
Although  Kushner  stepped down as head of Kushner Companies in January   his  real-estate firm gave  him  a number of headaches throughout 2017. Perhaps the biggest one was its use of the EB-5 visa program  which allows wealthy investors to gain visas in return for investing in the U.S.
Jared and Ivanka are reported to be scaling back their roles in the White House after officials have become annoyed by their presence. The move came shortly after Trumpâs decision to back Sen. Luther Strange in the Alabama Senate primary backfired spectacularly and Strange was crushed by conservative challenger Judge Roy Moore.  Kushner  was widely believed to have been a key voice in urging Trump to get involved in the race and back Strangeâa decision Trump himself admitted may have been a âmistake.â
 Kushner  was also widely reported to be a key official encouraging President Trump to fire FBI Director James Comeyâa move which has since turned out to be seen as a mistake as it directly led to the appointment of FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller  whose probe has dogged the Trump administration throughout 2017.
FBI Special Counsel Robert Muellerâs appointment was announced in the wake of the firing of FBI Director James Comeyâa decision reportedly backed by  Kushner . But as the probe has gone on   Kushner  has apparently become a key figure for Mueller.
 Kushner  was part of a 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer at Trump Towerâa meeting which Trump Jr. said he took as it promised information that would âincriminateâ Hillary Clinton.
 Kushner  was questioned by Muellerâs team in November  during which  he  reportedly answered questions about a meeting with the Russian ambassador during the transition. It later emerged that  Kushner  was the âsenior Trump officialâ who directed former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to contact the ambassador about a U.N. vote on Israeli settlements.
While it is not clear if the Mueller team believes  Kushner  did anything wrong  Muellerâs interest in him has no doubt led to a tough 2017 for  Kushner .
 Kushner  spent much of 2017 aggravating congressional lawmakers with  his  lack of disclosure about  his  foreign contacts and other information deemed importantâparticularly over various investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Two Senate committees have complained about  his  failure to hand over certain documents  and that they have learned certain details from the media. Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee were angered in September when they discovered from media reports that  Kushner  used a private email account occasionally for White House business.
Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to  Kushner âs lawyer in November  saying the document collection he provided to the committee was incomplete.
Newsweek reported in December that  Kushner  is still using an interim security clearance after  he  initially omitted dozens of foreign contracts from  his  original form submission for clearance.

SOLUTION: Jared Kushner

PROBLEM: CLOSE White House Spokesman  Sean Spicer  doubled down on  his  claim that President Trump's inauguration was the most watched in history.  He  also said  his  intention is to "always tell the truth " but said there may be disagreement over the facts. (Jan. 23) AP
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway claimed that âalternative factsâ were employed by  Press Secretary Sean Spicer  when he tried to make the case that âthis was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration  period  both in person and around the globe.â Actually   Spicer  got several facts wrong.
 Spicer  then read a prepared statement later that day  further criticizing the media for âdishonesty.â
 Spicer   Jan. 21: "Secondly  photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way  in one particular tweet  to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall. â¦ We know that from the platform where the president was sworn in  to 4th Street  it holds about 250 000 people. From 4th Street to the media tent is about another 220 000. And from the media tent to the Washington Monument  another 250 000 people. All of this space was full when the president took the oath of office. We know that 420 000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday  which actually compares to 317 000 that used it for President Obamaâs last inaugural. This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration â period â both in person and around the globe."
At a Jan. 23 press conference   Spicer  made an alternative argument  saying the number of people watching the inauguration on TV  online and in person had to be the largest ever.
âI have a right to say if you add up the network streaming numbers  Facebook  YouTube  all of the various live streaming that we have information on so far  I donât think thereâs any question it was the largest watched inauguration  ever â  Spicer  said.
On that point   Spicer  may be correct. While Nielsen TV ratings were higher in past years  some data suggests online viewership was up compared with 2009. But there is no comprehensive measurement available that would prove or disprove this claim.
On NBCâs Meet the Press  host Chuck Todd asked White House counselor Kellyanne Conway  â[W]hy the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood?â Conway responded: âDonât be so overly dramatic about it  Chuck. What â Youâre saying itâs a falsehood. And theyâre giving Sean Spicer  our press secretary  gave alternative facts to that.â
PBSâ âNewsHourâ also posted a timelapse video of the crowd throughout Inauguration Day  which shows it didnât quite stretch back to the Washington Monument  as Trump and  Spicer  said. And as our fact-checking colleagues at The Washington Postpointed out  other journalists had more photographic evidence on Twitter.
Metro ridership. At the press conference   Spicer  also gave inaccurate numbers for those taking the Washington  D.C.  Metro system for Trumpâs inauguration compared with Obamaâs.
But thatâs not what Metro said  and  Spicer  acknowledged that during  his  Jan. 23 press conference.
 Spicer âs 317 000 figure was the number Metro gave for riders as of 11 a.m. on Inauguration Day 2013. The comparable number  for 11 a.m.  for Trumpâs inauguration was 193 000.
Crowd-size experts.  Spicer  was right about one thing: It appears  as  he  said  that no one has scientifically calculated estimates of the crowd size for Trumpâs inauguration. Congress has prohibited the National Park Service from making official estimates after it produced an official estimate that 460 000 turned out for the so-called âMillion Man Marchâ in 1995  prompting organizers to threaten a lawsuit.
 Spicer  argued that floor coverings over the grass on the National Mall âhighlight[ed] where people were not standing  while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.â
âI donât know how  [Spicer]  kept a straight face when he said that â Doig said.
TV and online viewership. But at the Jan. 23 press conference   Spicer  emphasized the combined audience â in person  watching on TV and watching online â was the highest in history. Asked if he was now saying that it was the largest in-person crowd for an inauguration   Spicer  said  âI am not. I am saying that it was the total largest audience witnessed in person and around the globe.â

SOLUTION: Sean Spicer

PROBLEM: Now an independent consultant  Blankenship was previously a vice president at Tesla Motors from 2010 to 2013  and a vice president of real estate at Apple  working closely alongside  Steve Jobs  to launch the first 165 Apple Stores worldwide before that.
Blankenship recently sat down with Business Insider deputy executive editor Matt Turner to discuss  the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk   and how  they  set  their  companies up for success from the beginning.
At Apple  we looked around at what was going on in the world at the time  and the technologies that were available that weren't in phones of the time. If you went back 10 years ago and you looked at a Motorola flip phone â one of the hottest phones â or the Palm  Nokia  et cetera  they worked  but there was so much more potential.  Steve  just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.
 Steve  just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.
They had a phone  which then enabled the real disruptive part of that technology  which was the app store. Think about it  for two  three  four years  Apple never advertised the phone; it was "there's an app for that." If you step back  what would Uber be today without a smartphone? What would Facebook be? What  Steve  saw were opportunities with existing things that other people just didn't see.
With Elon  it's very  very interesting talking to  him  because everything really does have a bigger picture to it. You think about Tesla. Well  when I first met with  him  six or seven years ago   he  had this vision  and the vision was to move the planet away from fossil fuels and into renewable resources. Tesla is a part of that  but it's not the whole picture. It's moving people to electric vehicles  but what else could you do? Well  if you're building an electric car you have to have a lot of batteries  so you go to a battery factory. Well  if you've got these batteries what else could you do with them? You could do a battery wall  a battery pack that hangs on the wall â you charge it up and run your house and car off of it. And then what's missing is solar  so a year ago they merged with Solar City.
Now you can take this energy from this great big fusion reactor in the sky  put it in batteries and run your car and your house. It's a bigger picture than what other people are doing. You might ask  well  why don't other car dealers do this? Or why don't other manufacturers do this? It's because they just don't see things the way a  Steve Jobs  and an Elon Musk do â and they have the conviction to make it happen.
Turner: How alike are those two people   Steve Jobs  and Elon Musk?  They 're almost iconic now. What similarities do  they  share  and what was it like to work with  them ?
Blankenship:  They  share a lot of the same qualities.  They  have a conviction and a belief that the direction  they 're going is right. Regardless of what anybody else says  the direction is right.
Turner: How much of those companies are tied up in the individual? Clearly  Apple exists after  Steve Jobs   but how much of the culture that's there was really  the Steve Jobs culture ? How does  it  survive on after  he 's no longer there? What would you make of Apple today?
Blankenship: When you put together the group of people I just described  those people have a can-do mind-set  that nothing's impossible: "We're doing something bigger than making an electronic device; there's a bigger purpose here." Look at what the results have been of Apple. Yes   Steve  passed away in 2011  but look at the way the company has continued to evolve as a service company: How many millions of iPhone X's do you think they're going to take on order for over the next couple of weeks? It's going to be massive. The company today isn't going through the product innovations on an every three-year basis that it was in the 10 years between 2000 and 2010  but I think it's finding ways that the device has become more personal and more embedded in what you do and how you do it  which aligns you to the platform in an incredible way. Tim [Cook] has done a really good job of doing that.
Turner: What you've described at both Apple and Tesla with  Steve Jobs and Elon Musk  is a mission at the heart of the company and its strategy. Are there any other companies or people you see out there that when you look at them you say  that's the same thing?
Blankenship: I think there are different types of missions. Yes  Elon and  Steve  had their missions. If you look at Amazon  Amazon's mission  without a doubt  is the customer: What can we do for the customer? What can we do to make the experience better for the customer? How do we have the best customer experience on the planet? That's a mission.

SOLUTION:
Steve Jobs