‘I can have Usha take a look at it’

Second Lady Usha Vance may have played an important role in a Ukrainian minerals deal being pursued by the Trump administration earlier this year.

The wife of Vice President JD Vance reportedly played a role in the negotiations over rare earths with Ukraine days before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House in the early days of the Trump administration. This is according to ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent, Jonathan Karl, who chronicled the scene from February in his new book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.”

“Retribution” coming October 28 pic.twitter.com/5YbhVzvRoJ

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) October 23, 2025

“As Trump weighed the deal, consulting his former adviser Steve Bannon by phone during a live broadcast of ‘War Room,’ he met with Vance and others who were curious about whether it had undergone a legal vetting,” according to Politico, which reported on an excerpt of the book due out October 28.

According to the outlet:

“I can have Usha take a look at it,” Vance said of his Yale Law School- and Cambridge-educated wife, a seasoned litigator who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

“And with that, the vice president asked the Second Lady of the United States — who, like Steve Bannon, had no role whatsoever on the National Security Council — to come over to the West Wing and review a bilateral agreement that was supposed to be signed the next day by Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” Karl writes.

Zelenskyy’s disastrous visit to the Oval Office at the time squashed the deal and earned a rebuke from the vice president, who accused Ukraine’s leader of not being thankful or respectful. Eventually, the US signed a deal with Kyiv at the end of April.

The excerpt from Karls’ book and the telling glimpse of the second lady’s abilities come days after an insulting take by Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who suggested Usha Vance may be afraid of her own husband.

JD Vance responds to Jen Psaki’s ‘disgraceful’ comments about his wife https://t.co/xTqd5MCt83 via @BIZPACReview

— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) October 23, 2025

“I think the little Manchurian candidate, JD Vance, wants to be president more than anything else,” Psaki said on the “I’ve Had It” podcast. “I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife. Like, are you OK? Please blink four times. We’ll come over here. We’ll save you.”

The vice president dismissed Psaki’s remarks as “disgraceful,” telling reporters, “Of course, the second lady can speak for herself.”

Senior Staff Writer
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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