U.S. President Donald Trump at the Chateau de Versailles with President of France Emmanuel Macron on June 17, 2026. Anna Moneymaker/Pool via REUTERS
President Donald Trump's administration is refusing to allow an ambassador swap with France, Puck News reported on Friday, calling the matter a "very French" scandal.
French Ambassador Laurent Bili hosted a kind of open house after the Washington Embassy underwent a large renovation. After a tour for D.C. journalists, Bili dropped the surprise announcement that he would imminently leave the French foreign service. His term wasn't set to end until next year.
French President Emmanuel Macron had decided to replace him early with Aurélien Lechevallier, who currently serves as the chief of staff to the French foreign minister. Puck described him as a member of Macron's inner circle of men who followed him into power.
Lechevallier was set to begin on September 20, but now it appears there's a problem that connects back to Jared Kushner's father, pardoned felon Charles, who is currently the U.S. ambassador to France. Lechevallier’s close relationship to Macron made him "an easy mark," a French source told Puck reporter Julia Ioffe.
Lechevallier has been reportedly telling people in Paris that Trump is "flummoxed by the war in Iran" and calls Macron desperately searching for advice.
“Flattery always works in the end,” the source said. “And he’s very, very good at flattery.”
But the elder Kushner has been good at using his power to carry out Trump's revenge on Macron.
“The U.S. embassy here in Paris has been pretty good at Trump administration sociology,” said one source in Paris when speaking toIoffe.
Kushner, the source said, “has been doing a pretty good job at targeting someone who’s pretty close to Macron,” this person added. “That’s where they’re reading our system properly. They’ve practiced nepotism so much that they know what it looks like when they see it.”
Twice, Kushner was called to be reprimanded for using his diplomatic post to interfere with local French politics. At one point, Kushner publicly bashed Macron and offered French Jews asylum in the U.S. Kushner never showed up to the meetings. So, French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot threatened to ban him from meetings with French officials. Lechevallier was Barrot’s chief of staff at the time.
Now, Kushner is getting his revenge, and the private fight then moved to social media. The U.S. State Department wouldn't grant Lechevallier's agreement unless the "French mission to the U.N. in Geneva" deleted a tweet the Americans found offensive, two French sources said. The post in question had already gone viral, so the French resisted the request and instead proposed that they'd send out a new tweet that praised the U.S. for sharing values over human rights.
Two months later, however, no tweet went out, and the diplomatic sources told Iofee that the French don't seem that interested in fighting for Lechevallier. The diplomatic sources think that the appointment is a little late, given that Macron is a lame-duck president with little time left in his administration. But Macron won't back down.
Those in Paris are curious if Lechevallier is waiting for Macron to bring it up with Trump personally.
Meanwhile, those in the diplomatic corps don't like the way Bili is being treated after so many years of service.