The Golden Couple (Ivanka and Jared)

[sawasdee]

So now we know why tRump was so anxious to cover for Flynn - he probably knows a LOT about Jared, as they were at many of the same meetings with Russians.

Can't have Ivanka's baby daddy in trouble, now can we?

[GreyhoundFan]

"The investigation of Jared Kushner fits a very troubling pattern"

Spoiler

Jared Kushner has just been revealed as the senior White House adviser who is under investigation in the Russia probe — which is news that comes as little surprise. Indeed, when The Washington Post reported last week that a then-unnamed top Trump adviser was a focus, many quickly assumed it was Kushner.

But while those assumptions were based on his known contacts with Russians and his status as one of few senior White House aides, there's another reason his naming fits the puzzle: He's related to Trump.

Kushner's ability to even work in the White House has been the subject of plenty of debate because he is Trump's son-in-law. (Kushner has made concessions to try and avoid violating a federal anti-nepotism law, including forgoing a paycheck.) And a big reason anti-nepotism laws exist is to avoid the corruption that all too often comes with installing your relatives in positions of power. As any expert on corrupt authoritarian regimes throughout history will tell you, those regimes' wrongdoing will often run through family members with official titles.

It isn't clear what possible crimes might be under investigation, and it's important to emphasize that Kushner hasn't been charged with anything. We don't know where this will lead, if anywhere.

But here's a key part of The Post's story:

In addition to possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election, investigators are also looking broadly into possible financial crimes — but the people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly, did not specify who or what was being examined.

In other words, this isn't just about whether Kushner or anyone else facilitated collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign; indeed, the two meetings he had with Russians that have been spotlighted actually came in December, after Trump was elected. Federal investigators appear to be cluing on some other potential crimes that may or may not be related to that.

Kushner met with Russian Ambassdor Sergey Kislyak and then with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, which faced U.S. sanctions after Russia's annexation of Crimea. Beyond that, there aren't many details.

If it does lead down a path to corruption allegations, though, there will be plenty of I-told-you-sos.

“You’ve seen it in countries all over the world where they’ve appointed family members, whether it’s their son, daughter, in-laws — it provides for tremendous opportunities for corruption,” Shruti Shah, an international corruption expert at Coalition for Integrity, told HuffPost last month. “People who want to curry favor find their way to provide favors to family members as a way to get closer to the person in power.”

Added Gerald Feierstein, a former top State Department official and ambassador to Yemen in the Obama administration: “For many countries and governments, certainly in the Gulf, in the Middle East, they would recognize this pattern immediately. ... I think that they would find it completely normal that leaders mix personal business interests with government affairs and would use family members in various official responsibilities.”

Kushner has already come under scrutiny for his family possibly benefiting personally from his proximity to his leader-of-the-free-world father-in-law. His sister earlier this month mentioned Kushner's advisory role in the White House while pitching Chinese investors on a New Jersey housing development.

Former Obama administration ethics counsel Norman L. Eisen was among those criticizing that move. And here's what Eisen said back in December, when Kushner's potential role in the Trump White House first made news:

The problem with it is it sends a message that if you want to have influence in the administration, do it through the kids. And there’s a tradition. This is not the first time this has happened. I’m just shocked it’s happened in the United States.

It's possible that Kushner's familial relationship with Trump is part of the reason he's been subjected to more scrutiny than any other White House adviser in this probe. And as emphasized above, we have no idea what will come of this.

But if scrutiny of Kushner becomes more intense and there appears to be some validity to it, it will reinforce a central reason why ethics experts say these kinds of arrangements are to be avoided in the first place.

There's a reason for anti-nepotism rules. Oh, wait, the rules don't apply to Agent Orange and his family.

[GreyhoundFan]

No, thank you: "Meet the Real Jared Kushner"

Spoiler

He was supposed to be the calm one, cool and unflappable under his Ray-Bans and beltless blue bespoke suits. If Steve Bannon was the Rumpelstiltskin of the administration, donning multiple half-tucked dress shirts at a time and always carrying a clutch of briefing papers and barreling through the administrative state, Jared Kushner, through pedigree and temperament, could reach out one of his long, elegant fingers and tap everyone in the West Wing on the shoulder and urge them to just cool out a bit. In a White House sullied by ties to Russia and all sorts of unsavory characters from the fringe, Kushner was set to float above, surrounding himself with fellow figures from the elite worlds of Manhattan finance and real estate and deep-sixing the harder-edged ideas of the White House’s “nationalist” wing.

Except that this isn’t quite how it has gone in the White House over the last several months. It was Kushner who reportedly pushed for the firing of FBI Director James Comey over the objections of Bannon. And it was Kushner who was the lone voice urging for a counterattack after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the appointment of a special prosecutor, according to the New York Times. And it is now Kushner whose family’s business activities leave him open to the same level of charges of conflict of interest that have dogged his wife and father-in-law, and Kushner who appears to be as closely tied to the Russian government as anyone serving in the White House: NBC News and the Washington Post reported Thursday that the FBI is taking a close look at his contacts with the Russians.

What happened to America’s princeling? Is he hearing footsteps from Bannon and the other anti-globalists in the White House’s great and daily game of dominance? Is he trying to play to the instincts of his audience of one, President Donald Trump? The widespread assumption liberals make about Kushner seems to be this: Because he is soft-spoken, slim and handsome, with degrees from Harvard and NYU and a family that donates to Democrats, he couldn’t possibly be the same guy knifing his West Wing rivals and urging the president to go to war with the Justice Department and the FBI.

But that assumption is wrong. Kushner and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment about this story. But those who know him from his days as a young New York real estate magnate and newspaper publisher say that America is just getting to know the Jared Kushner they have always known, that beneath the unflappable golden exterior is someone unafraid to bungee jump or to counter-punch when he feels slighted.

“Polite elegance,” said his friend Strauss Zelnick, an entertainment mogul and founder of the private equity firm Zelnick Media Capital, when asked to describe Kushner’s modus operandi. But, Zelnick added, “He’s tough. In an exceedingly polite way, he is as tough as any one is in New York City real estate.”

***

In the world of New York real estate, Kushner’s ability to play a new kind of game was immediately apparent soon after he moved to the city and took over his father’s sprawling New Jersey-based midmarket real estate empire, in 2008. By that point, the Kushner name was associated not with the malls and cul-de-sacs of the Garden State but with tawdry scandal after Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, was convicted in 2005 and sent to prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering after he attempted to blackmail his brother-in-law by hiring a prostitute to seduce him and then sent the videotaped encounter to his sister.

“I believe that God and my parents in heaven forgive me for what I did, which was wrong,” Charles Kushner told an interviewer years later. “I don’t believe God and my parents will ever forgive my brother and sister for instigating a criminal investigation and being cheerleaders for the government and putting their brother in jail because of jealousy, hatred and spite.” By all accounts, Jared was deeply affected by his father’s prison sentence, and visited him weekly.

And so in an effort to rehabilitate the family name, Kushner focused the family business on Manhattan and purchased the New York Observer, a pink-paged society weekly that made up in influence among the social and literary elite what it lacked in circulation or profitability (full disclosure: I worked as a political reporter there from 2010-2012). But the paper soon expanded into coverage of Kushner’s home turf of commercial real estate, and people in that world saw the paper’s editorial resources devoted to pushing Kushner’s agenda or settling his scores.

“I think he is someone who saw all this shit with his father go down, and it turned him into a person who was determined to operate in much the same way but just be quieter about it,” said Brian Thomas Gallagher, who worked as a deputy editor at the paper during the Kushner era. “The idea that he thought the thing to do was to buy himself a position in the New York cultural elite is probably true in its way, but I don’t think he ever saw that way. He saw how poorly his dad was treated in the papers, and the Observer was his tool or a house organ for his real estate company.”

Under Kushner, the new New York Observer became a center of the real estate industry’s social world, spinning out a packed calendar of panels and events and an annual list of the hundred most important people in the industry, which industry pros pored over with Talmudic intensity—assuming that the list was more a reflection of who was in Kushner’s good graces rather than who was actually on the up and up in terms of what they built in the five boroughs.

“The Observer became his mouthpiece in the world of New York City real estate,” said one prominent real estate broker who asked to remain anonymous because “like everybody else in New York and New Jersey real estate I realize there is no upside to talking about Jared Kushner or Donald Trump.”

“It was not something a lot of real estate people do,” this person added. “They aren’t usually so upfront about these kinds of things. But he burst onto our scene with it and made his vehicle for being out there.”

Elizabeth Spiers, a former Observer editor, has told the story of how Kushner directed her to dig up dirt on Richard Mack, another real estate developer who held some of the debt on one of Kushner’s buildings, after he refused to write down the loan during a cash-flow crunch. “[D]uring one of our weekly meetings,” she wrote in a blog post, “Jared told me he had a story he wanted us to pursue and that it was very important to him.” Spiers says she knew Kushner had an agenda, but agreed to run it down. “Apparently Richard Mack had been on the other end of some transaction nearly gone wrong and it had rubbed Jared the wrong way,” she wrote.

Spiers put her most aggressive real estate reporter, Dan Geiger, on the case—but after calling up “everyone within a 100-mile radius of the subject,” the best he could find were vague suggestions that Mack could be “kind of an asshole.” Kushner was disappointed, and insisted she assign another reporter to the story—who also came up empty. Vicky Ward, a well-regarded journalist who profiled Kushner for Esquire, disclosed last year that he then ordered Spiers to find an authority outside the newsroom to write the same story: her. She declined.

Spiers departed on amicable terms with Kushner, she says, but the anger toward him among former Observer employees runs deep. Harleen Kahlon was an experienced digital media maven when she was hired by Kushner in 2010 to boost the paper’s digital outreach. The two worked closely together to redesign the website, with a weekly one-on-one meeting in her office in which Kushner would come in, put his feet up on her desk and check in on the progress of the site’s redesign, for which he hired one of New York’s top digital firms. “He would compensate his lack of knowledge by saying stuff like, ‘Let’s just blow up the whole concept of digital.’ It would sort of sound interesting for a second and then you would just forget about it and get on with the work.”

At the end of the year, when she went to collect her performance bonus at his real estate office for meeting agreed upon metrics on page views and audience growth, Kushner told her that they couldn’t pay, citing financial concerns, and asked her to “take one for the team.” Instead, Kahlon abruptly quit. Every time she sees him on TV or on the streets of New York ever since, she would point him out to people: “There is the guy that stole my money.”

Just before the election, Kahlon described her former boss on Facebook thusly: “We’re talking about a guy who isn’t particularly bright or hard-working, doesn’t actually know anything, has bought his way into everything ever (with money he got from his criminal father), who is deeply insecure and obsessed with fame (you don’t buy the NYO, marry Ivanka Trump, or constantly talk about the phone calls you get from celebrities if it’s in your nature to ‘shun the spotlight’), and who is basically a shithead.”

Kushner could play hardball with his politics too. In February 2014, when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman began an investigation into Trump University, he was treated to a front-page hit piece in the Observer in which he was caricatured as a sociopath from “A Clockwork Orange.” When I was at the paper, I once wrote a small item about a Trump appearance on “Fox and Friends,” in which he complained about a New York Times article that described Trump’s real estate empire as little more than an effort to cash in on Trump’s name for a marketing fee, it prompted a quick complaint from the father-in-law to Kushner, who promptly called my editor to relay the concern.

Kushner operated much the same way across the river in his old home in New Jersey, only without the real estate angle to pose political complications. There he set up an Observer online outpost called The Politicker, which consisted for a time at least of little more than anonymous tips wired through an anonymous blogger. That anonymous blogger, David Wildstein, ultimately went to work for Chris Christie, a Kushner nemesis ever since Christie had prosecuted Kushner’s father while serving as a U.S. attorney. Wildstein faces up to 27 months in federal prison for his role in shutting down Fort Lee traffic as part of Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal, but before he was sentenced he received a note from Kushner, telling him that “I thought the move you pulled was kind of badass.”

It has always been part of the Kushner Way: unfailingly polite and urbane on the surface, while searching for the soft underbelly to stick the knife in.

Asher Abehera, a Brooklyn-based developer of hip commercial and residential real estate properties who has done five major deals with Kushner, remembers him sitting in the conference rooms of major law firms as billions of dollars worth of transactions were being sorted out and Kushner filling up the glasses on the table with water, and staying around afterwards to clean up. “He is obsessed with this notion that the whole New York City real estate world is antiquated. He wants to do things differently,” Abehera said, in part by creating high-end bespoke living and working spaces in previously under-recognized neighborhoods for a world in which “even an accounting company wants a hip office space.”

“This was a guy buying iconic buildings at an incredibly young age. It’s a massive feat. It is hard to do any deal in New York because you are in this sea of hyper-aggressive people. He is like alkaline in that sea of aggressive people.”

Which is not to say that Kushner shrinks from a fight. Soon after taking charge of the company, Kushner tried to renovate The Puck Building, a 19th Century red-brick neo-Romanesque jewel in the city’s SoHo neighborhood, and one of the few iconic Manhattan properties that the company owned. The building was landmarked, and Kushner wanted to add six penthouses to the top. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected Kushner’s plans. Rather than go back to the drawing board, Kushner and his architects resubmitted them with only slight modifications. The LPC, which has been accused of being too landlord-friendly in the past, rejected them again. Kushner re-submitted again, again with only slight revisions. Again they were rejected, until the fifth go-around when Kushner finally got approval.

“It was clear from the beginning that they weren’t willing to fundamentally re-think what they were trying to do, so they just tried to shave the corners and hope it sneaked past Landmarks,” said Andrew Berman, who fought Jared on the deal as head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “He was shockingly persistent.”

It was not the first or the last time that Kushner sparred with Berman, whom Trump loved to use as a punching bag as he devised his own plans to rip up the New York City skyline. Unlike Trump however, Kushner never took on Berman or the preservationists frontally, and never met with them privately to broker a compromise. In 2008, Kushner was behind a plan to tear down a hundred-year-old neo-classical tenement synagogue in the East Village in order to build condos on the site. After an outcry from the congregation, Kushner quickly retreated. In 2013, when Kushner purchased a beaux-arts tenement building in the South Village, preservationists, figuring that he “was probably not interested in preserving those buildings for posterity,” as Berman put it, rushed to have them landmarked.

Kushner has found frustration at the high end of the real estate business, too. As global capital has poured into the New York City real estate market over the last five to seven years, he has been riding around in the froth, embarking upon acquisition after acquisition. But industry-watchers say that it remains unclear what all of that activity will amount to. Kushner landed on the Manhattan scene with a bang, buying 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, a record sum at the time for an individual building in New York. The acquisition came at the height of the city’s real estate bubble, and raised eyebrows around town that the Kushners were no-longer bit players from the Jersey swamps. Instead, however, the building has been nothing short of a burden, nearly going into foreclosure in 2011 and now with only 70 percent of the property currently occupied—far below the Manhattan average of the low 90s—and after losing $10 million in 2015 after debt payments. The Kushners now face a looming $1.2 billion debt payment on the building that has sent them scrambling to find other investors. Real estate experts remain mystified by the purchase, doubting the building will ever be profitable for the amount that Kushner paid. (Kushner has sold his personal stake in the building since joining the White House.)

“There has always been a lot of eye-rolling around town about that purchase,” said one real estate attorney. “What’s the German word? Schadenfreude? You see some kid pull these audacious deals and then you see them sucking wind. People are waiting for him to fall on his face.”

It’s true elsewhere too. One appraiser pointed out that you would often hear of Kushner making deals in the real estate press, but rarely read about those deals panning out with rental income or occupancy rates that are exceeding expectations.

If the purpose of the foray into Manhattan and into publishing was to rehabilitate the Kushner name, it is hard to know how well that worked out. The Kushners are not on the city’s bold-faced cultural boards or civic institutions, and now that he is more associated with Trump than with even his own family, such invitations are likely to be less forthcoming.

As for the Observer, rather than use a storied journalistic institution for an entryway into the right rooms of Manhattan, Kushner wanted to see the paper turn profitable—something that had never occurred in its previous decades of existence. He pushed for page views and cut staff and page counts when possible, and cycled through a string of editors. When the paper at last became profitable for a small period of time in 2011, Kushner pushed to cut staff to increase margins. During the height of the Trump campaign, a number of reporters quit and one wrote an open letter on the paper’s website decrying her boss’ role in the Trump campaign. Ken Kurson, the longest-serving editor in the Kushner era and a family friend and political operative, resigned this week to work at Teneo, a global advisory firm founded by Clinton insiders. Kushner has handed over the reins of the paper to his brother-in-law and shuttered the print edition for good, and with it any intention of remaining an influential player in New York City.

Meanwhile, damaging stories keep landing as journalists dig into the Kushner real estate empire, which is said to have taken part in at least $7 billion worth of acquisitions over the past decade and, according to Forbes, to have a worth close to $1 billion. A recent investigation by ProPublica revealed that Kushner Companies have bought thousands of distressed apartment complexes in Rust Belt cities in recent years, hardly the stuff of Manhattan dreams. A subsidiary that manages the complexes has been ruthless in pushing out those who didn’t pay their rent, ProPublica reported, hitting them with steep late fees and even going after them in court. “It was a lot of construction and a lot of evictions,” Kushner said in 2012. “But the communities now look great, and the outcome has been phenomenal.”

Alec MacGillis, who reported the story, found that few of the “Kushnerville” residents he met knew their money was going to a company owned by the son in law of President Trump. “That Jared Kushner?” one exclaimed. “Oh, my God. And I thought he was the good one.”

 

[onekidanddone]

Poison, this presidency is poising the country.

Jared Kushner under the microscope: What does he know?

Quote

The Post on Thursday dropped another bombshell:

Investigators are focusing on a series of meetings held by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and an influential White House adviser, as part of their probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and related matters, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Kushner, who held meetings in December with the Russian ambassador and a banker from Moscow, is being investigated because of the extent and nature of his interactions with the Russians, the people said. . . .

The Post has not been told that Kushner is a target — or the central focus — of the investigation, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

He might at a later point become a target, but he may merely be a witness to suspected “collusion.” What we do know is that Kushner was a key participant in the campaign, the transition and the decision to fire former FBI director James B. Comey.

We also know that Kushner did not initially disclose contacts with Russian officials. The Post recounts:

In early December, Kushner met in New York with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, and he later sent a deputy to meet with Kislyak. Flynn was also present at the early-December meeting, and later that month, Flynn held a call with Kislyak to discuss U.S.-imposed sanctions against Russia. [Former national security adviser Michael] Flynn initially mischaracterized the conversation, even to Vice President Pence — ultimately prompting his ouster from the White House. Kushner also met in December with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, which has been the subject of U.S. sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Right now the questions far outnumber any concrete facts. These include:

• Did Kushner have meaningful contacts with Russian officials during the campaign? (“FBI agents had been looking closely at earlier exchanges between Trump associates and the Russians dating to the spring of 2016, including one at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington” when Kushner and Kislyak were present for a Trump speech.)
• Did the campaign know in advance of the WikiLeaks disclosures? Did it know about Russian use of disinformation?
• Did Kushner know of other campaign team members’ connections and/or communications with Russian officials?
• Why was Paul Manafort fired? What does Kushner know about Manafort’s ties to Russia?
• Why was the RNC platform changed to take out the pledge to provide defensive weapons to Ukraine?
• What financial ties does Kushner have to Russia or Russian oligarchs, and what does he know about any such ties between Trump and the Russians?
• Did Kushner know Flynn was under investigation as an agent of Turkey when he entered government?
• Did Kushner know about — or join in — a scheme to fire Comey in order to derail the Russia investigation, create a fake reason for the firing and dispatch the vice president to vouch for a pretextual reason?
• Is there a recording system in the White House?

Quite apart from the Russia investigation and any possible scheme to obstruct justice, Kushner’s own finances should be of concern to Congress (if we had a majority interested in conscientious oversight). The Post has reported that Kushner is “keeping nearly 90 percent of his vast real estate holdings even after resigning from the family business and pledging a clear divide between his private interests and public duties. The value of his retained real estate interests is between $132 million and $407 million and could leave him in a position to financially benefit from his family’s business.” Congress certainly should investigate the extent to which Kushner has conflicts of interest and/or is enriching himself by virtue of his perch in the White House, either of which would violate ethics rules. Moreover, the Constitution’s emoluments clause — which bars anyone who is holding an office from receiving gifts and other things of value from a foreign government — applies to him, just as it does the president. Is Kushner taking steps to make certain that he is not violating the Constitution?

Trump brought his unqualified, inexperienced multimillionaire son-in-law into the White House and gave him a gigantic portfolio. In the long run, that may prove to be a financial and/or legal headache for both of them.

 

[SilverBeach]

I love the tag "gag me"!

Let's see how Cheeto deals with Jared, since he can't go all scorched earth on him because of Ivanka.

[onekidanddone]

23 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

I love the tag "gag me"!

Let's see how Cheeto deals with Jared, since he can't go all scorched earth on him because of Ivanka.

I wonder how much this will siphon support from his hard core fringe base.  So many are anti Semitic and seemed to either not know or give him  a pass on having a Jew in the family. Now Jarred might be one of the ones who bring the house of cards down. Steve Bannon must be having shit fits as he and Jarred are less than frenemies.

My grandfather with his thick Yiddish accent would have pretend to spit on the ground and say "Oy, these people". While my grandmother would have said in her Cockney accent "A pox  on their houses".

[GreyhoundFan]

More from the WaPo on Jared: "Here’s why the FBI is likely to be interested in Jared Kushner’s meeting with Russians"

Spoiler

FBI investigators have a simple reason for believing Jared Kushner can help them determine whether President Trump's campaign helped Russia influence the presidential election: Kushner met with senior Russians during the campaign.

And while it's not weird for presidential campaigns to meet with foreign officials, under this context, it was.

Right around the time Trump's son-in-law and top adviser held a meeting with the Russian ambassador to the United States last spring, the CIA director started to notice something weird: The Russians were talking about actively, aggressively trying to influence the U.S. presidential election against Hillary Clinton.

John Brennan, who was CIA director at the time, then started to notice that the Russians were reaching out to Trump campaign officials. His “radar” went off. Here's what he told Congress in a hearing about Russian meddling on Tuesday. It's worth reading the whole paragraph, but I've bolded some key points:

“Having been involved in many counterintelligence cases in the past, I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals, and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to try to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly. And I was worried by a number of contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons. And so therefore, by the time I left office on January 20, I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons involved in the campaign or not to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion. And so, therefore, I felt as though the FBI investigation was certainly well-founded and needed to look into those issues.”

In other words: When the Russians want to spy or meddle in other nation's affairs, their go-to move is to find people from that nation to cuddle up with — or to blackmail, if it gets to that. (“Suborn” sits right in the middle of those two. It means to bribe or secretly convince someone to do something.)

... <great tweet from Merriam-Webster>.

When the director of the CIA realized that the Russians wanted to influence the U.S. election, he knew to keep an eye out for Russians reaching out to people tied to the election. And sure enough, Brennan said, Russian officials started holding meetings with members of the Trump campaign.

Michael Flynn. Kushner. Now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They all met with Russian officials at some point, and CNN and the New York Times, respectively, have reported that Sessions and Kushner did not disclose their meetings with Russians on their security-clearance forms. A security clearance is required before a person can be privy to the nation's top secrets. Other members of Trump's campaign already had deep ties to Russia, among them former campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser Carter Page.

And it's fair to say that U.S. investigators would have been very intrigued to see then-candidate Trump's son-in-law, one of his closest advisers, receiving meetings with Russians. This is a member of Trump's inner circle, as close as you can get without meeting with the candidate himself. Not to mention that Kushner is family. Going back to April 2016, we know Kushner met at least twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, and a Moscow banker.

That's not to say meeting with the Russians equates to colluding with the Russians.

Brennan emphasized to the House Intelligence Committee: “These are contacts that might have been totally, totally innocent and benign as well as those that might have succumbed somehow to those Russian efforts.”

“Many times they know that individuals may be Russian officials,” he said later, speaking broadly about how Russians use people, “but they don't know that there is an intelligence connection or an intelligence motive behind it.”

Brennan made clear that he had only suspected that Russians may have used or tried to use members of the Trump campaign to influence the election.

But — and this is a really key but — his suspicions were enough to refer everything he knew to the FBI.

The FBI, we know now, took Brennan's concerns seriously. The agency is waist-deep in a months-long, mostly covert investigation of Russia meddling and whether the Trump campaign helped. And its investigation has led it to the highest ranks of the White House.

Exactly what investigators want to know from Kushner (whose lawyer said he will cooperate) isn't clear. But why their investigation has led them to Kushner is clearer.

Given what we know about how the Russians try to use people, it makes sense that Kushner, who had several meetings with high-level Russians and is one of the president's closest advisers, is part of this investigation.

I keep going back to the lying on the security clearance forms. Many of my neighbors have clearances, so I've been interviewed multiple times. Each time, many questions circle around contact with foreign nationals or travel to foreign countries. I mean, I can understand forgetting a meeting with a close ally like The UK or Germany, say six years ago, but less than six months ago? And with representatives of Russia?

[onekidanddone]

BOOM.

Russian ambassador told Moscow that Jared Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin

Quote

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

The White House disclosed the fact of the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest.

Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

Neither the meeting nor the communications of Americans involved were under U.S. surveillance, officials said.

The White House declined to comment. Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Flynn, declined to comment. The Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

Russia at times feeds false information into communication streams it suspects are monitored as a way of sowing misinformation and confusion among U.S. analysts. But officials said that it’s unclear what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing his contacts with Kushner to Moscow, particularly at a time when the Kremlin still saw the prospect of dramatically improved relations with Trump.

Kushner’s apparent interest in establishing a secret channel with Moscow, rather than relying on U.S. government systems, has added to the intrigue surrounding the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia.

To some officials, it also reflects a staggering naivete.

The FBI closely monitors the communications of Russian officials in the United States, and it maintains a nearly constant surveillance of its diplomatic facilities. The National Security Agency monitors the communications of Russian officials overseas.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that although Russian diplomats have secure means of communicating with Moscow, Kushner’s apparent request for access to such channels was extraordinary.

“How would he trust that the Russians wouldn’t leak it on their side?” said one former senior intelligence official. The FBI would know that a Trump transition official was going in and out of the embassy, which would cause “a great deal” of concern, he added. The entire idea, he said, “seems extremely naive or absolutely crazy.”

The discussion of a secret channel adds to a broader pattern of efforts by Trump’s closest advisers to obscure their contacts with Russian counterparts. Trump’s first national security adviser, Flynn, was forced to resign after a series of false statements about his conversations with Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from matters related to the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he had failed to disclose his own meetings with Kislyak when asked during congressional testimony about any contact with Russians.

Kushner’s interactions with Russians — including Kislyak and an executive for a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions — were not acknowledged by the White House until they were exposed in media reports.

It is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders and officials. But new administrations are generally cautious in their handling of interactions with Moscow, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of waging an unprecedented campaign to interfere in last year’s presidential race and help elect Trump.

Obama administration officials say members of the Trump transition team never approached them about arranging a secure communications channel with their Russian contacts, possibly because of concerns about leaks.

The State Department, the White House National Security Council and U.S. intelligence agencies all have the ability to set up secure communications channels with foreign leaders, though doing so for a transition team would be unusual.

Trump’s advisers were similarly secretive about meetings with leaders from the United Arab Emirates. The Obama White House only learned that the crown prince of Abu Dhabi was flying to New York in December to see Kushner, Flynn and Stephen K. Bannon, another top Trump adviser, because U.S. border agents in the UAE spotted the Emirate leader’s name on a flight manifest.

Russia would also have had reasons of its own to reject such an overture from Kushner. Doing so would require Moscow to expose its most sophisticated communications capabilities — which are likely housed in highly secure locations at diplomatic compounds — to an American.

 

[Howl]

Jared's not looking too good these last few days.  One of the talking heads on Michael Smerkonish this morning said that Kushner's conversation wtih Kislyak was way out of line but technically? Probably not illegal. 

[fraurosena]

The evidence for all these interconnections between the presidunce, Jared & Ivanka, the Heads of State Departments is making it difficult to decide where to post things, but hey, I don't mind as long as the evidence keeps on coming! 

This one is about stuff McMaster said about the Russia back-channel that Jared asked for. (See the dilemma about where to post )

Trump adviser: ‘I would not be concerned’ about a Russia back-channel, irrespective of Kushner

Quote

President Trump's National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Saturday he "would not be concerned" about having a back-channel communications system with Russia, though he and other top White House officials refused to comment specifically on the growing controversy surrounding Jared Kushner.

A news conference here at the conclusion of Trump's maiden foreign trip was overtaken at times by questions about Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and Friday's Washington Post report that Kushner had discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin. [...]

McMaster and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, who together briefed reporters Saturday, were unwilling to discuss the Kushner matter, as was White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

"We're not going to comment on Jared," Cohn said. "We're just not going to comment."

McMaster said he could not talk about Kushner's talks with Russia because "it's not something that I've in any way been involved with or that I have any knowledge of."

McMaster, a decorated three-star Army general, was asked whether he would be concerned if an official on his National Security Council staff or elsewhere in the Trump administration sought a back-channel communications system with the Russian embassy or the Kremlin in Moscow.

"No," McMaster said. "We have back-channel communications with a number of countries. So, generally speaking, about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is to communicate in a discreet manner."

He continued, "No, I would not be concerned about it."

If there was any doubt about McMaster's allegiance, it's pretty clear now in which camp he resides.

Quote

The news conference grew tense, in part because Trump has refused to hold a news conference of his own or answer questions in an extended format with journalists during his marathon foreign trip. U.S. presidents traditionally hold news conferences when they travel overseas.

Cohn defended Trump's decision to evade the news media, citing the president's "robust" travel schedule.

"The president, since he left New York [he later corrected himself to say Washington] has been dealing with foreign leaders, he's been dealing with jobs, he's been dealing with economic growth, he's been dealing with diplomacy, he's been dealing with unfair trade, he's been dealing with Paris [climate agreement], he's been dealing with China," Cohn said. "His agenda has been overflowing. He's been fully consumed with what's going on here."

Still, the Kushner questions persisted. When the first one was raised, McMaster punted it to Spicer.

"I'll ask Sean to cover that later," McMaster said.

Spicer, seated in the corner of the room, interjected, "We have nothing."

Indeed, once McMaster and Cohn called an end to their briefing, which lasted about a half an hour, Spicer and other administration spokespeople hurried out of the room.

Re the bolded: Well, that comes with the territory of being presidunce, you imbecile. Former presidents tackled all these things and more (and way better, I might add) and still took the time to speak with the press.

They really are scared to death of the press, aren't they, scuttling out of the room whithout really answering the important questions.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The evidence for all these interconnections between the presidunce, Jared & Ivanka, the Heads of State Departments is making it difficult to decide where to post things, but hey, I don't mind as long as the evidence keeps on coming! 

This one is about stuff McMaster said about the Russia back-channel that Jared asked for. (See the dilemma about where to post )

Trump adviser: ‘I would not be concerned’ about a Russia back-channel, irrespective of Kushner

If there was any doubt about McMaster's allegiance, it's pretty clear now in which camp he resides.

Re the bolded: Well, that comes with the territory of being presidunce, you imbecile. Former presidents tackled all these things and more (and way better, I might add) and still took the time to speak with the press.

They really are scared to death of the press, aren't they, scuttling out of the room whithout really answering the important questions.

I was so upset when I read the article you posted. I had so much respect for McMaster (note the past tense). But, he has dived into the tangerine swamp headfirst. I can't believe a man of honor could say such insane things publicly.

[fraurosena]

@GreyhoundFan, I'm sorry the news upset you. It's always hard when someone turns out to have feet of clay.
So, it seems that everyone in this administration is contaminated. I suspect that the Russians have something on each and every one of them.

Here's some more information about that banker Jared met with. If we needed any more confirmation that Jared is up to his eyeballs in Russian espionage, then this is one more nail in that coffin.

Kushner Met With Russian Banker Who Is Putin Crony, Spy School Grad

Quote

The Russian banker Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner met with in December is viewed by U.S. intelligence as a "Putin crony" and a graduate of a "finishing school" for spies who was often tasked with sensitive financial operations by Putin, according to multiple U.S. officials and documents viewed by NBC News.

Sergey Gorkov, 48, graduated from the FSB Academy, which was chartered in 1994 to educate Russian Intelligence personnel. He has long served Russian President Vladimir Putin in critical economic roles. Most recently, Putin chose him to head of the state-owned VneshEconomBank (VEB). As the Russian state national development bank, VEB has played a critical role in blunting the impact of U.S. sanctions against Russia by finding other sources of foreign capital.

Before that, Gorkov was the deputy chairman of Sberbank, Russia's biggest bank, also state-owned, and also under U.S. sanctions since 2014.

Rachel Maddow has reported extensively on these two banks and their relations to Putin, oligarchs, money-laundering, and intelligence-gathering. 

Quote

Sberbank and VEB, Gorkov's two banks, have been critical to the Russian economy, but have also engaged in high-profile bailouts of Russian companies, including those owned by favored oligarchs. They have also played a major role in attempts to mitigate the U.S. sanctions that were imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea.

VEB was sanctioned in July 2014, Sberbank two months later. The U.S. cited the banks' record of securing medium- and long-term U.S. sources of financing. Sanctions severely limited their ability to raise funds in the U.S. The European Union later joined in the sanctions. The banks have responded by seeking funds from other sources, including China. [...]

Putin authorized a $22 billion of state financing for VEB to cover bad debts built up since the imposition of sanctions.

VEB was also implicated in an espionage case that began before Gorkov took over 2016 but continued after he took over.

One of its New York-based employees, Evgeny Buryakov, was arrested on espionage charges in January 2015. According to court records reviewed by NBC News, Buryakov used his position to spy on unnamed U.S. companies, and sought information on high-frequency trading. Prosecutors said his internet searches included "NYC Homeland Security" and "New York City critical infrastructure."

Buryakov claimed he had diplomatic immunity in his defense, which was paid by VEB, but after a court ruled he didn't qualify, he pleaded guilty in March 2016. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $100,000 fine. He returned to Russia last month after being released.

So these banks and bankers are very involved in espionage. And one of the things they are interested in is "NY City critical infrastructure". Hmmm.... remind me, who has property and infrastructure in NYC ?

Quote

Both the White House and VEB confirm that Kushner and Gorkov met at a banking "road show" but haven't disclosed either the location for the meeting or the specific date in December. Details of what they discussed have not been released, although Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said Kushner is prepared to cooperate with congressional investigators or the FBI if asked.

The White House subsequently characterized the meeting as part of Kushner's role as a transition adviser and conduit for the State Department. But Gorkov in a written statement to Reuters, said it was a business meeting. According to Reuters, Gorkov met "with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the U.S., including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies."

So what was it? Jared in his capacity as a transition advisor, or a business meeting? Or was it perchance something else entirely?

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- Oh, I was angry about it before signing on to FJ. I usually look at the WaPo when I first turn on the computer and saw that article. It upset me then. It is sad that there seems to be no person in this administration who will stand up for what is right for the American people.

As for Jared, every thing I read about him makes him look dirtier and dirtier.

[fraurosena]

15 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@fraurosena -- Oh, I was angry about it before signing on to FJ. I usually look at the WaPo when I first turn on the computer and saw that article. It upset me then. It is sad that there seems to be no person in this administration who will stand up for what is right for the American people.

As for Jared, every thing I read about him makes him look dirtier and dirtier.

Remember, this administration is very, very empty. Only a handful of posts have been filled up till now. Those that have been though, are filled with either cronies or people who in some way or other are indebted to the presidunce, the Kushners, or more likely, to the Kremlin. So there are no people in the administration who can even dare to think of the American people, let alone stand up for them.

Although, I have to add that on MSNBC's reporting on the Jared news yesterday, someone, (and dang, I don't remember who, I binge-watched/listened to all the news episodes whilst painting the hallway today) anyway, someone stated that there are leaks coming from someone within the administration itself, someone who is very close to the presidunce and sits in on many meetings in the WH.

Maybe it's because I'm conflating him with Melissa McCarthy's caricature of him, but I secretly hope it's Spicey...

[formergothardite]

41 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Maybe it's because I'm conflating him with Melissa McCarthy's caricature of him, but I secretly hope it's Spicey...

Spicy being the mole would certainly be a twist. When Hollywood turns this period in history into a movie they really won't have to add much to make it exciting. If this was the plot to a book it would come off as unbelievable. 

[fraurosena]

20 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Spicy being the mole would certainly be a twist. When Hollywood turns this period in history into a movie they really won't have to add much to make it exciting. If this was the plot to a book it would come off as unbelievable. 

And here I was thinking I was the only one that wonders what the movie about the TT presiduncy will be like...  

[onekidanddone]

Three things:

One: If he purges the staff, the mole(s) will just keep talking and might say even more. 

Two: Since he said at the start of his term that he has the "smartest" and "best" team EVER,  who would he bring in to replace them?

Three: Can we get Baldwin to play the the orange sewage menace? 

[GreyhoundFan]

"A high-stakes gamble: How Jared Kushner reacted to previous crises"

Spoiler

NEW YORK — Jared Kushner had barely survived a fight to save his family’s real estate empire.

Taking charge of the business after his father went to prison, Kushner, 25 at the time, paid $1.8 billion in 2007 for the nation’s most expensive office building. Then the market went south, the debts piled up, and Kushner spent years pushing banks to renegotiate the loans.

But after one disgruntled lender had tried to block him, Kushner had an unusual weapon at his disposal: He owned a newspaper.

Kushner, who had purchased the New York Observer in 2006, walked into his editor’s office and suggested a story exposing potentially embarrassing details about the uncooperative lender.

“I could tell he was angry at the guy,” said the editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who resigned in 2012. Only after months of dead-end reporting did Kushner finally stop asking for the story, she said. That followed a separate incident in which Kushner wanted a “hit job” on another foe, a second Observer editor told The Washington Post.

Kushner’s career in the cutthroat world of New York real estate shows how he dealt with his worst business crisis, averting catastrophe through connections, savvy negotiation and hardball tactics that left enemies in his wake. Kushner was not reticent to strike back against those he said had crossed him.

Now, as a powerful senior White House adviser, Kushner faces a new crisis that risks not only his own reputation but ultimately, the success of his father-in-law President Trump, who has entrusted him with responsibilities ranging from Middle East diplomacy to reinventing the federal government.

A federal investigation has focused on Kushner’s secret meetings with Russians during and after Trump’s 2016 campaign. The Post reported Friday that Kushner discussed with the Russian ambassador the possibility of establishing back-channel communications with the Kremlin, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Kushner’s attorneys have said he will cooperate with the federal investigation and answer questions from a special counsel examining allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, a probe that could also examine financial connections Trump advisers may have had with Russia. Kushner declined comment.

Kushner’s allies said his experience in New York’s aggressive business culture prepared him to manage crises and tackle any problem Trump gives him to solve.

But running a real estate company, where business deals and corporate rivalries stem from the singular goal of turning the biggest profits, is far different from navigating the vast federal government or mastering the tricky politics of Washington and complexities of overseas diplomacy.

Trump has relied on Kushner as the president makes his own transition from the business world. And just as Trump has struggled to adapt, Kushner is adjusting with the lessons of the past decade in mind, saying privately that he sees a parallel between his old and new careers, believing both are blood sports.

***

Kushner’s real estate career began with a family trauma. His father, Charles, a major Democratic Party donor whose company then focused on modest apartment buildings in New Jersey, was convicted in 2005 of federal tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations, including some in Jared Kushner’s name.

The prosecutor was then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who said the elder Kushner had not taken responsibility for his “vile and heinous acts.” (Christie’s prosecution scarred the family, Kushner associates told The Post. The wound reopened during the Trump campaign, when White House officials said the younger Kushner helped quash consideration of Christie for an administration role). Christie did not respond to a request for comment.

Jared Kushner was studying law at New York University as the case generated wide attention because of its scandalous details. Charles Kushner had arranged to secretly videotape his brother-in-law meeting with a prostitute, allegedly hoping to coerce relatives to stop cooperating with federal authorities. The judge called it an act of vengeance.

Kushner told New York magazine in 2009 that his father arranged for the sex tape as a warning to warring family members who he said were trying to hurt him.

“Was it the right thing to do? At the end of the day, it was a function of saying, ‘You’re trying to make my life miserable. Well, I’m doing the same,’ ” Kushner said.

With his father incarcerated in Alabama, barred from making business deals, Jared Kushner, the eldest son, took over the empire. It had 1,000 employees and owned more than 25,000 apartments. The family’s reputation was in tatters.

“A lot of their friends and business colleagues just disappeared,” said Arthur J. Mirante II, a business consultant who advised the Kushners.

Kushner went to Alabama every week to consult his father. He came up with two risky moves. In 2006, he bought an unprofitable newspaper, the New York Observer, for a reported $10 million. The newspaper, a broadsheet printed on pink paper, aggressively covered New York business and politics. It had been especially hard on real estate titan Donald Trump, calling him the “prince of swine,” according to former columnist Michael Thomas.

Kushner’s newspaper ownership gave him entree to the city’s powerful. Kushner by then had relocated the company to Manhattan, and he added to his allure by announcing in January 2007 a deal that shocked many real estate analysts.

He agreed to pay $1.8 billion for a 41-story office building at 666 Fifth Ave., only blocks from Trump Tower, the highest price paid at the time for a U.S. office building. Kushner called it “a great acquisition,” but some real estate veterans saw it as an act of hubris. Income projections suggested that Kushner had vastly overpaid — and that was months before the Great Recession further softened the market.

Within three years, Kushner’s project was drowning. A 2010 appraisal placed its value at $820 million, about half of what he paid, and well below his debt to banks, according to financial records. As the recession set in, office rents plunged, and his building’s occupancy rate dropped from nearly full to 77 percent in 2011, according to lending documents.

Bankers turned to LNR, a Florida firm that handles distressed real estate debt as a precursor to possible foreclosure. LNR represented the banks in their effort to collect Kushner’s obligations.

That created extraordinary pressure on Kushner to negotiate with LNR to reduce his debt burden. But that, in turn, meant some banks and investors might be paid less than expected. A battle began between Kushner and the companies that helped finance his risky purchase. LNR declined comment.

One of the biggest debt holders was Colony Capital, which owned $72.2 million, according to analysts’ estimates. The company was run by Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump friend. Barrack had worked for an oil baron who sold the iconic Plaza Hotel to Trump for $410 million, which Trump later acknowledged was too high, eventually forcing him to put the property into bankruptcy. The two men nonetheless remained close; Barrack had a speaking role at the Republican National Convention and headed Trump’s inaugural committee.

Kushner mentioned to his wife, Ivanka Trump — whom he married in 2009 — that Barrack was going after him on the debt. She told him that her father was close to Barrack, and so Donald Trump introduced Kushner to Barrack, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Barrack was concerned, but Kushner argued that lowering his obligation was better than foreclosure. “I’m asking you to make more money for yourself than you’ll make otherwise,” Kushner told Barrack, according to the person familiar with the conversation. Barrack did not respond to a request for comment.

A company run by another Trump associate, Steven Roth, chief executive and chairman of office giant Vornado Realty Trust, bought 49.5 percent of the project and helped run it. Roth is partners with Trump on other buildings and was chosen by the president to run a committee that will recommend how to spend federal money on infrastructure projects. Both Vornado and Roth declined comment.

At the same time, one of Kushner’s most severe challenges was dealing with a New York company called AREA Property Partners, which held $105.4 million of Kushner’s debt, according to industry estimates based on lending documents. Its chief executive, Richard Mack, objected to Kushner’s debt-relief requests. Mack declined comment.

Ultimately, Kushner made a deal with LNR to ease his debt burden and allow him to retain majority control. The agreement allowed Kushner to pay off some loans immediately, lowered his payment rate and extended the deadline on the bulk of the debt for two years, to February 2019. The initial $1.2 billion mortgage was split in two, with $115 million of what he owed subjugated by Kushner’s position so that banks may ultimately have to write it off, according to financial filings.

Such restructurings are not unusual for owners facing extensive real estate debt. But Kushner’s negotiations to protect his family’s investment left some hard feelings. A lender involved in the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing private conversations, told The Post he was upset because Kushner did little to protect his lenders. The lender said the various renegotiations could cost banks and investors hundreds of millions of dollars compared with what was originally expected.

“They could have taken steps to mitigate the damage,” the lender said.

But Kushner viewed it as a hardball business deal and showed that he was a tough negotiator, according to an individual familiar with his perspective.

Sources familiar with the arrangement said the Kushner family got back most of its $500 million investment.

Kushner divested himself of his interest in 666 Fifth Ave. when he joined the administration, although he kept stakes in about 90 percent of his real estate holdings, valued between $132 million and $407 million. He resigned from the family business and pledged a clear ethical divide. But ethics experts say his remaining business ties — many in partnerships and LLCs that cannot be easily traced — call for fuller disclosure.

His admirers in real estate say Kushner has never made deals in traditional ways, although he is quick to seek counsel.

Sandeep Mathrani, the chief executive of shopping mall giant General Growth Properties, said he has been periodically offering Kushner advice since the young developer asked to meet with him almost a decade ago.

“I think Jared got into the real estate business to redeem the reputation of the Kushner family, and I think he has definitely done that in the New York circles,” Mathrani said.

“Jared was always hungry for creative new ideas and not saying ‘This is the way we’ve done things for generations.’ Which is cool because a lot of people in real estate families, that’s how they behave,” said Asher Abehsera, a Kushner partner in a high-end project under development in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn.

***

Kushner had never shied away from hardball tactics, and as a newspaper owner, he had a media vehicle to spread negative information.

One editor of the Observer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing a private conversation, said Kushner wanted a negative story on a banker who was at odds with the family business. The editor recalled Kushner saying: “We have to do a hit job on this guy. He is a bad guy.”

“I said, ‘Jared, first off, never use the phrase ‘hit job.’ We can’t use that term. And second, there’s no story here,” the editor said.

A similar episode occurred with Spiers, the former editor who said Kushner offered a tip that cast Mack, the lender from AREA Property Partners, in a bad light.

Mainstream media organizations generally try to maintain editorial independence from their owners, so Spiers was concerned that Kushner was hoping to use the paper to punish an antagonist.

Spiers said Kushner urged her to pursue the tip, which included information about Mack’s business affairs. Spiers, who previously had founded the website Gawker, told The Post she had already determined that Kushner seemed to want to use the paper to advance his business interests.

“Jared didn’t buy the paper because he was interested in journalism. He bought the paper because it was a mechanism to gain influence in New York,” Spiers said. “He was angry at the media because he thought the media was partly responsible for his father going to jail.”

She said she told Kushner that “you realize if we did this story, if anything is wrong, even by accident, he has a malice precondition, and Jared didn’t know what I was talking about.” A public official who sues for libel must show that the publication had “actual malice” against the subject of the story.

Spiers gave the tip to two reporters, but they could not substantiate it. Kushner insisted on meeting with the reporters twice and brought in a source to speak with them, according to Foster Kamer, one of the reporters. Still, it could not be confirmed.

Kamer said that Kushner had put him in an improper position.

“To Jared, it was such a benign thing, and to myself, it was just one of the most deeply offensive . . . things that had ever happened to me professionally,” Kamer said.

In the end, the reporters and Spiers convinced Kushner that the tip did not check out, and no story was published.

“I think it took a year off my life to pursue that story,” Spiers said. “Every meeting I had with him, he asked, ‘So how’s that story coming?’ ”

Kushner was asked in March 2016 at a forum how he managed conflicts between his real estate business and the Observer. He brushed off the question.

“If you don’t want conflicts, just go into your apartment and lock the door, don’t go to work, don’t do anything,” he said. “But as it comes up, you trust people to do the right things, and we found that we really haven’t had any issues.”

An associate defended Kushner by saying the newspaper owner spent less than 1 percent of his time on the Observer and was not involved in daily operations. As Kushner gave less attention to his newspaper, he hired a close friend, Ken Kurson, to become editor in 2013.

Kurson, who announced this past week that he was stepping down from his Observer job, said in an interview that those “who poke fun at the enormous portfolio” Kushner has at the White House fail to appreciate what he has gone through during the past decade — and what he means to Trump.

“It overlooks, first of all, the complexity and depth of what he has achieved in his business career,” Kurson said of Kushner. “It overlooks the major factor of how leaders select their teams. It is trust.”

More and more, I'd love to see him in an orange jumpsuit.

[Bethella]

6 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Three: Can we get Baldwin to play the the orange sewage menace? 

As long as Melissa can play Spicy, yes.

[candygirl200413]

So one of my best college friends is currently going through the clearance thing which she would have a pretty high up clearance and she was telling me how a few weeks ago she went in and got emotional cause it got extremely stressful so when this leaked a day or two later I was beyond PISSED cause he is still obvi there while others are really trying.

[47of74]

Ooopsie.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/25/ivanka-trump-giorgio-chinaglia-saint-lazio-striker

Quote

Ivanka Trump, the former model and presidential adviser, mistook a picture of a revered Italian footballer for a saint during a recent night out in Rome.

The first daughter was dining with her husband, Jared Kushner, at Le Cave di Sant’Ignazio on Tuesday night when she spotted a picture of former Lazio star Giorgio Chinaglia – standing on a pitch, his arms stretched out to the heavens – and asked: “Which saint is that?”

The large photograph of Chinaglia was nestled between a crucifix and a picture of Padre Pio, a saint who is revered in Rome.

“We explained to her that it was not a saint but a great Lazio player,” Luigina Pantalone, one of the restaurant owners, told Ansa. The episode was confirmed by the Guardian.

To be fair to her, football players and Saints are just about the same thing over there in Italy.

[fraurosena]

Speaking of Ivanka... Last night I was hit with a bout of insomnia, and being fed up with just lying in bed, wide awake and not able to sleep, I went downstairs and watched some video's on youtube. And one of those video's was voiced by an automaton instead of a human. Maybe you know the kind I mean, where text is automatically converted to speech. These things are usually hilarious because the pronounciation can get quite strange.

And then I heard it. The pronounciation of Ivanka. Not EE-vun-kah, as we all say her name. But EYEvan-ka. Or Ivan-ka, if you will. And it hit me: holy FSM, has he been in cahoots with the Russians so deeply and for so long already that he gave his favorite daughter a name that's in keeping with his love of all things Russian?

Surely not, and it's only my sleep-deprived brain making this Russian connection. Right? 

[AmericanRose]

34 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

And then I heard it. The pronounciation of Ivanka. Not EE-vun-kah, as we all say her name. But EYEvan-ka. Or Ivan-ka, if you will. And it hit me: holy FSM, has he been in cahoots with the Russians so deeply and for so long already that he gave his favorite daughter a name that's in keeping with his love of all things Russian?

Surely not, and it's only my sleep-deprived brain making this Russian connection. Right? 

I thought Ivanka was named after her mother, Ivana (who is Czech). Per Wikipedia, Ivanka is a dimunitive of Ivana.

And out of curiosity... per Wikipedia, most Ivanka's are Bulgarian.

[fraurosena]

Wow. 

U.S. Senator calls for probe into promotion of Kushner Cos deal

Quote

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has called for an investigation into "potentially fraudulent statements and misrepresentations" made by companies promoting investment in a property development involving the family company of White House advisor Jared Kushner.

Citing a May 12 report by Reuters, Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, requested a review of claims made by Chinese migration agency Qiaowai and the U.S. Immigration Fund (USIF) in the marketing of the One Journal Square project in Jersey City, New Jersey to potential investors in China.

Grassley flagged his concerns to the Department of Homeland Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission in a May 24 letter that was later posted on his website. [...]

In an emailed response to a request for comment on Grassley's letter, Stu Loeser, a spokesman for USIF, said: "Qiaowai and U.S. Immigration Fund are fully in compliance with all laws relating to the sale of securities to immigrant investors. These allegations are gross distortions and unsupported by the facts."  [...]

Qiaowai’s assurances to investors that their green cards were guaranteed and their funds were safe appeared to violate U.S. securities laws, Grassley's letter said. It also cited a report on the project's promotion by the New York Times.

Kushner Companies and the SEC declined to comment. Qiaowai, KABR Group and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend. [...]

Criticism of the program has centered on instances of fraud and the fact that most of the funds in a program originally intended to help impoverished areas have instead gone to wealthy urban districts. Despite these concerns, earlier this month, Congress extended the EB-5 program until September 30. [...]

I am pleasantly surprised that a Republican senator is calling for this investigation. I hope this is the first of many to come. 

[formergothardite]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I am pleasantly surprised that a Republican senator is calling for this investigation.

I'm hoping some are going to start growing a spine and standing up the the GOP. They have to realize that in the long term ignoring corruption this big is going to come back and bight them in the ass.