The Golden Couple (Ivanka and Jared)

[Cartmann99]

48 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

-- Her attempts to humanize herself only reinforce the degree to which Ivanka is part of the 0.1 percent. Encouraging women to regularly bring their kids with them to work, for instance, the author nonchalantly reveals that that she has two offices: “I had a standing lunch date every Wednesday with Arabella every Wednesday before she started Kindergarten. She came into the office – she prefers my Ivanka Trump office to my real estate one, in part because it has a kids’ desk that folds out of the wall, complete with treats, toys, colored pencils, and markers. We’d play for a bit … Then we’d go downstairs to the Trump Grill for lunch.”

Taco bowls or wedge salads with Bleu cheese dressing?  

[GreyhoundFan]

"Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump should recuse themselves from China policy"

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According to media reports, Kushner’s sister pitched a roomful of Chinese investors to participate in the EB-5 visa program and qualify for a path to U.S. citizenship by investing at least $500,000 in a New Jersey real estate project, Kushner 1. The proposal reportedly included dropping Jared Kushner’s name, alluding to his administration role and noting that the president will be a key decision-maker about the future of the controversial visa program. The implications were unmistakable; one Chinese investor who attended told a reporter that the Kushners’ proximity to the president was a key part of the project’s appeal.

This sales pitch is clearly unacceptable. The family business should not benefit from Jared Kushner’s name and position as assistant to the president. Moreover, while it’s not clear whether Kushner had any knowledge of or involvement in this conduct, he retains a financial interest in many family businesses. Thus, he stands to benefit when the company trades on his name. Kushner’s lawyers assert that he sold his interests in this particular project to a trust of which he is not a beneficiary — although we know of no reason he couldn’t be reinstated as a beneficiary in the future.

Kushner and his wife have in the past said they will comply with all ethics rules. If so, as a starting point, Kushner must immediately take steps to ensure that businesses with which he is or has been associated refrain from using his position to promote investments. In fact, no Trump or Kushner companies should utilize the EB-5 program; the possibility for the appearance of improper influence, and perhaps worse, is too great. Kushner also initially indicated that he would recuse himself from “particular matters” involving the EB-5 program, but under pressure this weekend appeared to be stepping back more broadly from participating in any issues related to that program — a welcome development.

But given the complex ties at issue here, and the events of the past several months, that is not enough. Other ties and negotiations between Kushner companies and China have emerged in recent months, and under federal ethics rules, these interests must be considered together with those of Ivanka Trump, also a senior presidential adviser. Trump’s companies, in which she retains ownership interests, do business in China, and she was recently granted provisional approval for valuable trademarks by China just as she was engaged in high-level contacts with Chinese leaders.

These involvements raise profound questions about whether the couple should more broadly recuse themselves within the area of China policy. There can be little doubt now that both Kushner and Trump face at least the appearance of a conflict — indeed, of multiple conflicts — when it comes to China policy, particularly on issues of trade, investment and immigration.

As one of the president’s most trusted advisers, Kushner has a much broader and more fluid portfolio than most other administration officials. Kushner’s situation is vastly different than that of former Obama administration secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker, who was permitted to retain her interests in a publicly traded hotel company that has properties in China. Compared with Pritzker’s situation, involving a company that was required to file public documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, there is much less transparency into Kushner or his family’s privately held business investors and lenders, or the degree to which these businesses are leveraged, at the same time that his influence within the administration appears unparalleled.

This is far more than a technical issue about the scope of ethics rules. We now face core questions about whether administration decisions relating to an important — perhaps the most important — foreign power are being made based on the interests of the country and the American people, or based on the business interests of senior officials.  

Of course, we already had that concern with the president himself, who has refused to divest from ownership of his global web of business interests. With regard to China specifically, the president has also received valuable trademarks from the Chinese government, including one that the government had denied for a decade but granted after Trump switched course and reaffirmed the one-China policy. In addition, a bank owned by the government of China is a major tenant in Trump Tower in New York.  

Can the president, Kushner and Trump be trusted to protect American jobs from flowing to China or to pressure China if necessary in containing North Korea, or act appropriately on any of the other difficult issues that will arise with respect to China when these vast conflicts of interest persist?

It is well past time for this administration to begin drawing real and meaningful lines to avoid catastrophic conflicts of interest. The latest reports make it is even more important that Kushner and Ivanka Trump step forward and do the right thing. A broad recusal on China policy would be a good — and essential — start.

This is so true, but it won't happen, since it seems that every person involved in this administration is only in it for the money.

[candygirl200413]

Also I'm assuming that no one from the GOP has said anything about this yet?! I think it was Chris Hayes yesterday who tweeted about this but he was like we only knew this was happening because press was there, now imagine how many times this was done behind close doors

[GreyhoundFan]

45 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

Also I'm assuming that no one from the GOP has said anything about this yet?! I think it was Chris Hayes yesterday who tweeted about this but he was like we only knew this was happening because press was there, now imagine how many times this was done behind close doors

They booted the WaPo researcher who was at the sales pitch given by Jared's sister. I'm sure none of the DOHers will weigh in.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The most frustrating thing about Ivanka Trump"

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These days we’re much less impressed. Nearly everything about Ivanka Trump prompts a rolling of the eyes, whether it’s her clothing line (struggling), her role in the White House (unclear), or her recent book (badly panned). Will she do anything to counter that perception? It seems unlikely. The most frustrating thing about Trump is that she doesn’t seem to do much of anything at all.

Goodness knows America doesn’t love a woman who tries too hard: Look at the response to Hillary Clinton, the ultimate striver. What we do appreciate, however, is a hint of hard work. There’s an understanding that a person should have to put in at least a modicum of effort to get — and stay —  in a position above ours. President Trump’s original appeal stemmed in large part from his purported bootstrapping to business success. And much of Ivanka Trump’s promise lay in the way that, although a child of privilege, she seemed willing to work hard and maybe even make a difference for others.

But the first months of her father’s presidency have undermined that impression. The emptiness of her claims to enterprise have become increasingly apparent. And in the few instances where a shadow of exertion dares appear, it’s done in her own self-interest — and even then rarely done well.

Despite lofty pronouncements during the campaign that she wasn’t her father’s adviser, Trump was quick to take an official White House advisory position and an office in the West Wing. But what exactly has she done since? She has shilled her jewelry by wearing it at official events, and dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping the day Chinese trademarks for her business were approved. But as for actual policy, even in the areas — women, gender and work — that she promised to make her own? “I do believe that in time I’ll get to the right place,” she told the New York Times. That’s a public figure’s version of the “I’m still researching” excuse every student has used for an overdue paper, and it’s just as unconvincing.

More recently, the publication of her book seems to have served as a flashpoint for those fed up by her increasingly lackadaisical persona. “Women Who Work” has already been shredded in enough columns to make up their own, much more useful book of essays. It’s a mishmash of anodyne advice, cribbed baldly from the most popular of the other “having it all” books for white-collar working women. The inspirational quotes, of which there are many, are trite and often misused. The book adds nothing to the conversation, a disappointment from someone who we thought might work to change the conversation for us all.

But perhaps the most irritating thing about the book is how glib and careless it appears from the first page onward, and how Trump clearly couldn’t be bothered to hide it. A Woman Didn’t Work very hard on this book at all. Had even a moment’s effort been put into text apart from assessing its revenue potential, a good deal of the vapidity that plagues it could have been avoided.

It’s not that Trump should be forced into a role she doesn’t want to play. Her stepmother Melania, for instance, has made it clear that she is not interested in expending the effort needed to be first lady, and we rather appreciate her silent candor. Yet many progressive, ambitious women harbored some secret hope that Ivanka Trump might be one of the few in Trump-land who “got it.” With recent days as evidence, it’s no longer possible to hold out that hope.

Deep down, after all, Americans still love a doer and dislike being sold a false bill of goods. Ivanka Trump’s not as much the former as we would have liked to believe. Now we’re left with the disappointing sensation of holding the latter.

I never cared for Ivanka, but I think this article is valid.

[Childless]

Ivanka is a spoiled know-it-all who was handed everything she has with minimal work on her part.  Her daddy fronted the money to start her business.  She didn't have to build it from the ground up or hustle to find investors.  She stole the designs for her merchandise from others who put in the hard creative work.  And now she sits in an office in the White House and travels around the world doing absolutely nothing.  Her one stab at policy was a tax giveaway to rich people and did nothing to help those who really need it.  When she was called out on it, she simply scrapped her attempt to help working families instead of putting in the hard and time consuming work of developing a better policy.

[sawasdee]

The nepotism is unreal in this WH. Totally unqualified Ivanka and Jared hold important positions - and they've not even been properly vetted to have access to all they see and hear.

Can you imagine the outcry if Hillary had given Chelsea a job in the WH mail room - let alone anything more?

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Embassies court Ivanka Trump to build a relationship with her father’s administration"

Spoiler

The president of the Czech Republic is eager to have Ivanka Trump visit his country and he believes he has a compelling case to make.

By a “happy coincidence” her mother is half Czech and President Miloš Zeman hopes that’s the opening he needs to secure a high-profile visit from the first daughter as he tries to realize the kind of relationship with the U.S. government his country has long craved.

“We would like her to know that we are the country where she might find a surprising number of people who will treat her very, very nice,” said Hynek Kmoníček, the Czech ambassador to the United States, who has been entrusted by Zeman to deliver a letter to Ivanka Trump at the earliest opportunity. “Because she’s, like, preapproved.”

The letter remains undelivered, but Kmoníček is optimistic.

“I hope I will be able to put a selfie on the Twitter,” he said with a smile as he mused about the meeting while lounging in his Northwest Washington office.

The Czechs are just one of several countries that see the first daughter as an avenue of entry into her father’s White House, citing the image she has cultivated as culturally curious and active on policy as reason to believe she will be receptive to their outreach. A relationship with the first daughter is coveted because she and her husband Jared Kushner are top White House advisers with broad, largely undefined portfolios, stretching from domestic to foreign policy and an all-important familial connection that gives them rare influence.

Ivanka Trump, in turn, has used foreign nations’ interest to help soften her father’s rough edges amid uncertainty over his foreign policy and promises to upend long-standing alliances if he deems them unfair to the United States.

“She’s being seen as a goodwill ambassador slash adviser, slash soft-power effort for an administration that has had a lot of challenges in those areas,” said a senior diplomat for a Latin American country, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the embassies’ outreach to Trump. “By all accounts, she seems to be everything that her father is not: likable, soft-spoken, and she’s not impulsive, she seems to be thinking through everything that she does.”

As President Trump embarks Friday on his first foreign trip since taking office, Ivanka Trump will accompany him and make public appearances on her own. She is likely to take on a similar role abroad as she has in the last four months in Washington where she has been an eager participant in social and cultural events.

She and her children have made appearances at the Chinese and Japanese embassies. She visited the French ambassador’s residence and in March, dined with the British ambassador along with Kushner.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel extended the invitation for Ivanka Trump to attend a women’s economic summit in Berlin and the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau treated her to a Broadway show with a not-so-subtle message about the virtues of taking in strangers in need.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who frequently visits the White House, communicates with Kushner and Ivanka Trump regularly about ongoing diplomatic issues, including their family’s visits with embassy officials.

“One of the things that’s been useful about both Ivanka and Jared and the members of the White House staff is that they have existing relationships that they’ve built, but then they’re turning around and making them everyone else’s relationships,” said R.C. Hammond, a senior adviser for State.

As word has gotten around the diplomatic world about the potential return on investment in courting the first daughter, embassies have begun actively looking for ways to bring her into the fold, mulling invitations to gala events and cultural celebrations where they can establish a low-stakes, personal relationship with the first daughter.

Early in her father’s tenure, Trump inserted herself into U.S.-China relationship with a high profile trip to the Chinese Embassy for their Lunar New Year celebration. It came at a time when President Trump was struggling to establish a diplomatic relationship with Beijing after raising the ire of the Chinese by fielding a phone call from the Taiwanese President, in defiance of China’s long-standing “one-China” policy.

For weeks after the call from Taiwan, there was radio silence between President Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping, a sign of Beijing’s coldness toward the new U.S. president. More than two weeks after Trump was inaugurated, he had still not spoken to his Chinese counterpart despite having spoken to more than a dozen other world leaders in the same time frame.

But while official diplomatic doors appeared to be closed, Ivanka Trump, with her Mandarin-speaking children in tow, appeared at the Chinese Embassy in upper northwest Washington on Feb. 1. Doors opened, cameras flashed, Trump smiled as she was greeted warmly by embassy personnel. The next day on Ivanka Trump’s Instagram page, 5-year old Arabella made an appearance singing sweetly as she played with a puppet dragon.

,,,

“Arabella singing a song she learned for #ChineseNewYear,” her mother wrote in the caption. “Wishing everyone an amazing year to come during these days of celebration.”

Days later, the freeze had thawed. In a phone conversation with the Chinese president nearly 20 days after his inauguration, Trump promised to honor the “one-China” policy.

Hammond cited President Trump’s improved relationship with China as evidence of the success of Ivanka Trump’s engagement.

“Overall you look at the relationship that we’re building, we’re engaging with China,” he said.

At the Japanese Embassy in April, a scene similar to the one that occurred at the Chinese Embassy played out. The embassy painstakingly extended an invitation to their Cherry Blossom Fesitval. Then, the planning began.

Embassy staff hatched an elaborate plan to invite a Japanese YouTube star Pikotaro to perform for Arabella, who was a fan of the signer’s earworm song. They called the company that makes the video game and anime character Pikachu and ordered up stuffed dolls to entertain Trump’s young children as well as other traditional Japanese toys.

The visit was a slam dunk, in the embassy’s view, garnering them media coverage in the United States and in Japan, where Ivanka Trump is an increasingly popular figure.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe enjoys arguably one of the best relationships with Trump, which has been repeatedly bolstered by his efforts to connect with Trump through Ivanka and her children. During a visit to Trump Tower in New York during the transition, Ivanka Trump greeted Abe at the elevator and escorted him to her father’s office, where she participated in the meeting with Kushner. Abe chatted it up with Ivanka Trump over Arabella’s fascination with the YouTube star Pikotaro. And again, after she and her children made a visit to the embassy in April, Abe raised the event as an icebreaker in his phone conversation with President Trump a day later.

Ivanka Trump has returned the gesture with subtle signals to the Japanese of her attention to their culture. This month on Instagram, she posted a short video of a private moment of dancing with her two young sons in their kitchen, delighting Japanese Embassy officials by choosing Pikotaro’s latest tune “I like O.J.” as her song.

...

Ivanka Trump’s emerging role as an official and unofficial emissary to her father’s government has sparked some controversy at home and abroad. But it is not entirely unusual.

Carl Anthony, a historian with the National First Ladies Library, said that her role is similar to other first daughters who were deputized by their fathers to step in to areas where, at times, the first lady could not or would not go.

“The first lady role when you really break it down consists of about seven or eight different kind of roles,” Anthony said. “What you’ve had on occasion, but not really in our lifetime, is more than one women in the family assuming some of the roles, but not others.”

Teddy Roosevelt deputized his daughter Alice on a months-long diplomatic mission to three Asian countries, where she was dubbed a “princess.” Julie Nixon Eisenhower became her father Richard Nixon’s liaison on environmental issues. And Franklin D. Roosevelt chose his daughter Anna to accompany him to the Yalta conference toward the end of World War II, where she met with foreign dignitaries but primarily served as a source of encouragement and support for her father.

“Ivanka’s role is ineffable,” said Anthony. “It’s knowing her father’s chemistry, it’s knowing how to approach him and when to approach him. It’s choosing her battles carefully and knowing how to frame her, perhaps, disagreement on something.”

 

[Zola]

What Trump's going on with Ivanka goes far, far beyond mere traveling abroad to schmooze with foreign dignitaries or provide support/encouragement, as that article describes of previous first daughters. This is way more than daughter playing a bit of First Lady role. And it isn't just Ivanka, what's going on here extends to her husband as well.

These two have been set up in the White House in official government capacity with clearance to accompany. They haven't been vetted, they don't have any experience in their new roles, and they aren't qualified for the government positions they occupy  - how many job titles does Kushner hold? More than he can properly attend to at the level which they require attention, and more than with which he could claim to have necessary education, experience, or expertise.

And Ivanka is a model and a designer, more or less? I believe she studied finance in college, but that's pretty much irrelevant to the role Trump has her in and certainly not why she's there. Yet she's right there she is, in meetings, with her very own office, etc, *plus* people all over the world are openly scheming to use her relationship with and proximity to Trump to their advantage (in a manner I've never heard of with other first daughters) whatever that advantage may be. And she glories in it. 

Thoroughly unqualified of horrific proportions...except that they are related to and trusted by Trump. That is the only reason that they are not both apprehended, questioned, and escorted out of the White House the second they step foot in or near it.

There are decent, qualified people who have the expertise to fulfill these positions, people who have the expertise through education and experience that could be doing these jobs. But no. Trump don't roll that way, and America's just going to have suck it up and deal because Trump wants his way, no matter what happens to anyone who isn't a Trump. Especially at the cost of anyone who isn't a Trump, and that includes the USA.

Are there no laws whatsoever for preventing or at least curtailing this level of nepotism?

[Flossie]

I've suspected that Ivanka is making friends all over the world because she has presidential aspirations of her own.  Here's hoping that we'll find some dirt on her and her husband during the investigations.  One Trumproach in the White House is one too many.

[GreyhoundFan]

54 minutes ago, Zola said:

snip

Thoroughly unqualified of horrific proportions...except that they are related to and trusted by Trump. That is the only reason that they are not both apprehended, questioned, and escorted out of the White House the second they step foot in or near it.

There are decent, qualified people who have the expertise to fulfill these positions, people who have the expertise through education and experience that could be doing these jobs. But no. Trump don't roll that way, and America's just going to have suck it up and deal because Trump wants his way, no matter what happens to anyone who isn't a Trump. Especially at the cost of anyone who isn't a Trump, and that includes the USA.

Are there no laws whatsoever for preventing or at least curtailing this level of nepotism?

Unfortunately, if congress doesn't hold him accountable for the nepotism, it's quite difficult for anything to be done. Agent Orange has worked around the rules for so long, that's all he knows how to do. And, because the Branch Trumpvidians don't know or care about anything he's done that is illegal or appears illegal, they'll talk to Faux News about how persecuted he is, and that he's a "good person" because he says he's against abortion and he will let them have eleventy guns.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Kushner called Lockheed CEO about $100B Saudi arms deal"

Spoiler

President Donald Trump's son-in-law and utility diplomat, Jared Kushner, shocked a high-level Saudi delegation earlier this month when he personally called Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson and asked if she would cut the price of a sophisticated missile detection system, according to a source with knowledge of the call.

Pressured to finalize a massive $100-plus billion arms deal in the two weeks leading up to Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, Kushner hoped to maneuver a discount on Lockheed's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system during the Saudis' visit to the White House on May 1 -- a request that Hewson said she would look into at the time.

The New York Times first reported the exchange between Kushner and Hewson.

The White House declined to comment for this story.

Ultimately, the two sides were able to reach an agreement on a weapons package that amounts to $110 billion in tanks, fighter jets, combat ships and the THAAD missile defense system, according to the White House.

It is unclear how much the Saudis will be paying for THAAD but Trump called it a "billion-dollar system" last month when the US deployed the advanced missile defense radar to South Korea.

Trump is expected to officially unveil the deal when he arrives in Saudi Arabia on Saturday -- the first stop in his 10-day trip to the Middle East. Kushner and several of Trump's other top advisers will also make the trip.

While calling the head of a major defense company and simply asking for a lower price is widely considered an unorthodox negotiation tactic, Kushner's hands-on approach has drawn comparisons to when then-President-elect Trump criticized the stealthy F-35 fighter jet for being too expensive and Hewson gave her "personal commitment" to cut the cost of the program in February.

And the details of how the call took place also provide a window into Kushner's role during negotiations with the Saudis and the range of his influence on matters of foreign policy as a whole.

During last year's presidential campaign and later during the transition, Kushner was identified by Trump's team as the principal point of contact for foreign governments looking to either congratulate the new US leader or begin diplomatic talks.

The 36-year-old commercial real estate magnate started building a relationship with members of the Saudi royal family shortly after the election, a source told CNN, and was on hand when Trump hosted the deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in March.

Issues of foreign diplomacy evolved into an interagency effort once the administration began, according to a source, and Kushner's role in negotiating the arms deal was just one part of an larger effort that included the State Department, Department of Defense and National Security Council.

But the scope of Kushner's influence on matters of foreign policy have remained in the spotlight through the early months of Trump's presidency.

CNN reported last month that multiple White House and administration officials said Kushner had eclipsed nearly all of Trump's West Wing and Cabinet advisers in terms of influence and established himself as the key envoy for those outside the administration.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at the time that Kushner was working jointly with the State Department to manage the administration's foreign affairs.

"He's continuing to work with them and facilitate an outcome. But he brings a perspective to this, and began doing that during the transition. But again, it's not a binary choice where he's doing this at the expense of somebody else."

 

[ShepherdontheRock]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/19/1664251/-Jared-Kushner-is-The-Person-Of-Interest-Twitter-s-On-It

Y'all. The FBI named a senior advisor close to Trump as a "person of interest." It's almost certainly Kushner. It could also be Stephen Miller, but I have a gut feeling it's Kushner

Also his twitter is completely blank. People are speculating he deleted every tweet. But apparently he's not a big tweeter.

Either way this is a curious development. 

https://twitter.com/jaredkushner

 

[fraurosena]

It's BAD when Hillary does accepts money from Saudi's.... but when Ivanka does, well, I guess it's ok then, huh?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Ivanka Trump meets with Saudi women leaders as some activists remain critical"

Spoiler

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Ivanka Trump brought her message of female empowerment Sunday to the world’s most repressive society for women, a place where women are not allowed to drive, must cover themselves from head to toe in public and require permission from a “male guardian” to travel outside their homes.

“In every country, including the United States, women and girls face challenges,” Trump told a small group of accomplished Saudi women gathered for a dialogue with her about how to build on their successes. “Saudi Arabia’s progress, especially in recent years, is very encouraging,” she said, “but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

President Trump is also accompanied here by his wife, Melania, and she and Ivanka Trump have often been the only women present in public meetings with Saudi officials. The first lady, who was courteous but silent and largely without expression during a number of formal sessions Saturday, was praised Sunday by the English-language Arab News as “classy and conservative” for her demeanor and designer outfits, covering her arms and legs.

Neither Melania nor Ivanka Trump have worn headscarves during the visit, following the tradition of other presidential spouses who visited Saudi Arabia.

Beyond the streets of this country’s locked-down capital, social media has been filled with both flattering and not-so-positive comments about the Trump family, including cartoons of the president picking Arab pockets as he shakes hands with royal leaders and memes of him in an imam’s beard beside racy photos from days when he owned the Miss Universe competition.

One cartoon showed the Statue of Liberty dolefully sitting with her chin on her fist — an apparent reference to the president’s entry ban affecting six majority-Muslim countries, although not Saudi Arabia — while Trump dances a jig, holding aloft a torch spewing American warplanes.

In her meeting with the women, Ivanka Trump described herself as a “female leader within the Trump administration” and said her focus was “to help empower women in the United States and around the globe.”

She noted problems of affordable child care, paid family leave and a “persistent pay gap,” and she said women around the world have told her of their lack of access to capital, networks and markets.

The 15 black-wrapped women gathered at Riyadh’s Tuwaiq Palace to speak with the first daughter, who was dressed in a powder-blue pantsuit, were all highly educated, many of them in the United States. They held a variety of positions: heads of a national youth organization and the first public women-only university in the kingdom, senior roles in the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the small-business authority, and company founders.

Hosting the meeting was Princess Reema bint Bandar, head of the women’s section of the General Authority of Sports, who said she had met Trump because both had a life in retail. “And today,” the princess said, “we both find ourselves quite interestingly in governmental positions where we hope to make a difference for the future of women.”

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, the only man at the gathering, described Trump and the princess as “two incredibly successful entrepreneurs” and praised the development of the International Women’s Empowerment Fund under “Ivanka’s leadership.” He said that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have together contributed $100 million and that he expected to announce a total of $41 billion in the fund — used to help female entrepreneurs — at the Group of 20 summit in July.

Kim called it “a stunning achievement.” The German government has been deeply involved in the effort, and the World Bank has increased its involvement after critics suggested that any role for Trump in soliciting funds would conflict with her White House role.

Throughout the president’s two-day visit to the kingdom, neither he nor any other U.S. official has publicly mentioned human rights here, although he briefly mentioned women’s empowerment in his keynote speech to Muslim leaders Sunday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a Saturday news conference, did not respond to a question about whether human rights was raised in private talks.

In its most recent assessment of human rights around the world, the State Department noted that reported problems in Saudi Arabia included “citizens’ lack of the ability and legal means to choose their government; restrictions on universal rights, such as freedom of expression, including on the Internet, and the freedoms of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and pervasive gender discrimination and lack of equal rights that affected most aspects of women’s lives.”

Trump’s message did not appear to resonate with at least some Saudi women.

“All the women that Ivanka Trump met have a guardian,” said Aziza al-Yousef, a 58-year-old Saudi activist who has campaigned to abolish the guardianship rules. A retired computer science professor at King Saud University, she was recently rebuffed when she tried to deliver to the government a 14,700-signature petition on eliminating the guardian system.

“All these achievements depend on whether you’re lucky to be born in a family where your guardian will be understanding, will help you,” Yousef said. “If Ivanka is interested in women empowerment and human rights, she should see activists, and not just officials.”

A recent royal decree called for easing some aspects of the guardian system, which requires a father, brother, husband or other close relative to accompany women outside the home and give written consent for them to access higher education, jobs and health care. The decree, which gave agencies three months to come up with new rules, does not include the right for women to travel independently outside the country.

“It’s not about Ivanka speaking at the meeting,” said activist Loujain al-Hathloul, “but is it actually useful for these women from Saudi Arabia to speak as well? Is their contribution in such events helpful to us Saudi women in general, not princesses or business owners or rich women? Does it actually help us? I doubt it.

“For instance, Princess Reema has her own business; she’s hiring a lot of Saudi women,” Hathloul said. “Thank you for this.” But as a member of the global advisory board for Uber, “she hasn’t pushed for women to drive,” the activist said.

Hathloul, 27, was jailed in 2014 for daring to drive in Saudi Arabia, an event she chronicled on social media. “I haven’t tried since then,” she said, noting that she has a Persian Gulf-wide license that allows her to drive in every other country on the Arabian Peninsula.

“My issue with these events,” she said of Ivanka Trump’s discussion, “is that they show these women as powerful and making an impact, making a change. But in real life, they’ve been given these opportunities by the men. They did not fight for them.”

“We are fighting to abolish the guardianship system. Have they taken part in it?” Hathloul said about what she called “the biggest wall in front of Saudi women.” The businesswomen in the group, she said, “did something to reach that level, they worked for it. . . . But what are they doing in real life to change the laws that are restricting women from actually developing themselves?”

“Can I ever be one of those women?” she said.

Okay, it's a bit childish, but when I read this line: "Neither Melania nor Ivanka Trump have worn headscarves during the visit, following the tradition of other presidential spouses who visited Saudi Arabia.", I snorted a little, thinking that the WaPo was calling Ivanka a daughter-wife. I realize they weren't, but it made me laugh.

[GreyhoundFan]

Kushner keeps most of his real estate but offers few clues about potential White House conflicts

Spoiler

As chief executive of his family’s real estate empire, Jared Kushner planned two apartment projects across the street from each other in Jersey City.

Both would be luxury skyscrapers, complete with retail space and sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline. A new crosswalk would connect them, intended to link the two Kushner Cos. developments practically and visually.

But when Kushner prepared an ethics plan ahead of joining the White House as a top adviser to his father-in-law, President Trump, he drew a curious distinction between the two projects. He sold his stake in one while keeping his share of up to $5 million in the other.

Kushner, 36, who is emerging as a singularly powerful figure in the Trump White House, 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.

... <great graphic here>

The documents reflect the opaque decisions that Kushner and his attorneys made to allow him to keep much of his outside investments while seeking to remain within the boundaries that government ethics officials would find acceptable.

Kushner’s form lists hundreds of private companies. Some of the investments he kept are held by shell companies that are virtually impossible to track, and Kushner has declined to make public more information on those entities.

The 124 real estate assets that Kushner has kept include residential real estate in suburban Maryland, a Times Square retail complex, and apartments across the Midwest, from Toledo to the small town of Speedway, Ind. Kushner also kept his stake in a New Jersey mobile-home park.

His decision to divest from one of the Jersey City projects, One Journal Square, gained attention this month after his sister appeared at a conference in China promoting the use of a special U.S. visa program to lure investors for the development and publicly noting her brother’s connection to the president.

The White House said Kushner had recused himself from discussions of the EB-5 visa program.

It is not clear from Kushner’s financial filings whether any of his holdings might intersect with his broad and evolving responsibilities in the White House. This week, Kushner has been close by the president during the administration’s first international trip, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Belgium and Italy.

Kushner rejected a request by The Washington Post to review his ethics agreement with the White House, which would lay out the topics that he has pledged to avoid because of concerns about conflicts of interest. White House officials have said that it is a long-standing policy for the agreements to remain confidential.

As a result, ethics experts say, Kushner is asking Americans to take his word for it.

“Right now, the only thing that the public has is the assurances from the White House that everybody is complying with ethics rules,” said Don Fox, a former general counsel of the Office of Government Ethics.

Kushner declined to comment for this article. One of his attorneys, former Clinton administration Justice Department official Jamie Gorelick, said that they were “striving for simplicity” in choosing which assets to sell and which ones to keep to minimize potential areas of conflict.

For instance, Kushner sold his interests in 666 Fifth Avenue, the company’s landmark building in Manhattan, because it may be refinanced and posed many uncertainties.

He also sold his interests in a venture capital firm because of its investments in broad sectors of the economy, including a health-care company. Had he kept his interests, Kushner might have needed to recuse himself from discussions related to health care or risk violating a conflicts of interest statute.

“Jared takes the ethics rules very seriously and would never compromise himself or the administration,” said Joshua Raffel, his spokesman.

Kushner sold some assets to a trust controlled by his mother. But his attorneys have declined to provide details about other buyers, except to say that they include other family members and third-party buyers.

Kushner’s team has said that he might sell more of his holdings. Additionally, they are filing an updated disclosure form to correct several omissions related to positions and stakes in assets that he did not previously list on his form.

Trump has cited a presidential exemption from federal ethics laws in his decision to retain ownership of his own global real estate holdings and properties such as the luxury Trump International Hotel near the White House.

Even so, Trump has been accused by Democrats and ethics experts of leveraging his presidency for personal profit. And although Trump has denied doing business in Russia, Democrats have called on federal investigators to examine his financial dealings as part of their probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the ­Kremlin. Trump has also refused to release his tax returns, which could shed more light on his holdings.

But Kushner is bound by the ethics guidelines that govern members of the executive staff — including restrictions on participating in actions that could affect an official’s personal financial interest or appear to show favoritism to a close associate or family member.

In Jersey City, the dual apartment projects illustrate the complexity of Kushner’s divestiture strategy.

On one side of Sip Avenue is One Journal Square, the Kushner Cos.’ proposed two-tower apartment development that became embroiled in the EB-5 visa controversy.

On the other side, a proposed 72-story tower known as 30 Journal Square is also planned for development. Kushner held on to his individual stake — valued at between $1 million and $5 million — in the project, his disclosures show.

When asked why Kushner sold his investment in One Journal Square but kept 30 Journal Square, his attorneys issued a statement to The Post: “30 Journal Square is a separate project that did not pose the same complexities, including EB-5 financing, as One Journal Square.”

Many of the real estate properties that Kushner still owns rely on the support of financial institutions, investors and local officials — and often fall under the purview of regulatory agencies — over which he might now enjoy considerable influence.

In Maryland, Kushner has ­retained his stake in several ­Baltimore-area apartment complexes that rely on federal housing assistance. In New Jersey, Kushner has kept his multi­million dollar interests in a suburban mall complex in Monmouth County that is slated to be redeveloped in partnership with an affiliate of a Canadian firm. In Brooklyn, Kushner still owns upscale housing developments on industrial properties financed by private investors and banks.

In joining his father-in-law’s administration, Kushner exited a family business that he led for more than a decade.

He was a 24-year-old graduate student when his father, Charles, went to federal prison for witness tampering, tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions. As the eldest son, Jared Kushner took over his family’s real estate firm, Kushner Cos. He changed the company’s focus from modest apartment buildings largely in New Jersey to luxury commercial and residential properties in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

In 2009, Kushner married Ivanka Trump, and he formed a bond with her father that now has him in a unique position of trust and power in the White House.

The president has charged Kushner with managing foreign relations including with the Middle East and Mexico, as well as policies affecting the opioid-
addiction crisis and veterans affairs. Kushner also heads the newly formed Office of American Innovation, designed to deal with agencies to fix problems in the federal government.

Over the years, many wealthy White House appointees have wrestled with similar questions. President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Bill Daley, for example, was a former JPMorgan Chase executive who reported individual assets that could exceed $35 million.

“Anything that could possibly give an appearance of an impropriety, I sold,” Daley said in a recent telephone interview with The Post.

Daley said his financial interests were more transparent than Kushner’s because most of his investments were in publicly traded companies.

By contrast, Kushner owns stakes in limited liability companies that often have no employees, offices or websites. Some are owned through generic ­registered-agent offices in Dover, Del., and function as holding companies for other assets.

His initial disclosure, made public on March 31, also had omissions. Although he listed his position on the board of a real estate trading platform founded with his brother, Joshua, he did not disclose his financial stake in the company, which is known as Cadre. The omission was originally reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The form also did not disclose Kushner’s position with another limited liability company in Delaware — “JCK Cadre.” When asked about the omission of the Delaware company by Post reporters, Kushner’s attorneys said the position would be added in an upcoming revision to his form. Officials from the White House and the Office of Government Ethics have said that revisions to the forms are common.

Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission, said Kushner should go beyond what the law requires because of his close relationship with the president and the breadth of his holdings.

“We have an unprecedented situation here,” Noble said. “I think it is up to them to disclose as much as they possibly can.”

666 Fifth Avenue, from which Kushner divested, was purchased by the family company in 2007 for $1.8 billion. Kushner Cos. recently discussed an investment deal with Chinese insurance giant Anbang, according to real estate executives familiar with the deliberations. Anbang pulled out of the negotiations.

“We knew that it had the potential to be undergoing a major redevelopment, which would involve significant transactions with parties that had not yet been identified,” said another Kushner attorney, Blake Roberts. “It seemed to pose so many complications that the prudent thing to do would be for him to divest from it.”

The lawyers also thought that Kushner’s investment in Thrive Capital, a venture capital fund, could be problematic. Through Thrive, Kushner owned a stake in Oscar, a health-care company founded by his brother. Kushner has since divested from his Thrive ownership.

A review of the ethics form shows the ambiguity surrounding some of Kushner’s biggest investments.

Kushner’s most valuable asset, BFPS Ventures, is described as “real estate in New York” with a value of at least $50 million. A footnote states that “conflicting assets” within the company have been sold.

But there is no simple way to determine what BFPS actually owns. The “real estate in New York” is not specified, and city property-record searches do not show any results under the name BFPS.

Kushner’s attorneys said BFPS is an investment partnership between Jared and Joshua Kushner that includes bank accounts, their start-up real estate trading platform and other assets.

Initially, Kushner planned to sell his entire stake in BFPS, but he later reversed course and decided to sell off only individual assets within the company that might pose a conflict.

Documents show that Kushner sold his interest in an oil and gas company in Oklahoma, known as Circle 9, to avoid conflicts concerning oil and gas issues. Kushner’s attorneys have declined to reveal what other assets were sold within BFPS. A Circle 9 representative told The Post that BFPS sold off its small interest — ­approximately one-quarter of 1 percent — in an affiliated passive investment company that Circle 9 manages.

“It ended up being more practical to sell the underlying investments that created the conflicts we were trying to eliminate, like Circle 9, than to sell BFPS as a whole,” said Roberts, Kushner’s attorney.

Kushner’s representatives have declined to reveal what the initialism BFPS stands for.

This whole administration is a living and breathing ethics violation.

[sawasdee]

Vox is very suspicious of Kushner - and doesn't like him at all!

https://www.vox.com/2017/5/20/15668162/kushner-trump-russia-corruption

Spoiler

Quote

Jared Kushner: the young, pragmatic, hardheaded businessman out to modernize the US government and moderate the worst tendencies of his father-in-law, Donald Trump.

But what if, instead, Jared is not a panacea for the chaotic White House, but one of its biggest problems?

As the Trump administration’s been sent into a death spiral over the firing of FBI Director James Comey last week — a failed move to curtail the Justice Department investigation into contact between his campaign and the Russian government — Kushner hasn’t been the “adult in the room” urging caution and scrupulousness. To the contrary, he’s been urging aggression and retaliation.

And the White House’s reaction to the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel in the Russia inquiry, including a possible attempt to use ethics rules to limit the scope of his investigation, shows that somebody in the White House is deeply worried about what might happen if Kushner were included in the probe.

As Trump deals with scandals surrounding his former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, now the family businessman could have another problem right inside his own house.

Kushner’s getting mighty antsy about special counsel Robert Mueller

It was surprising enough, to people who had bought into the narrative that Kushner (and wife Ivanka Trump) were steadying influences on the president, that he hadn’t warned Trump not to fire FBI Director James Comey — a move that anyone could have predicted would blow up in the administration’s face. (In fact, Kushner appears to have been “generally supportive” of the firing, according to the New York Times.)

By now, though, it’s clear that Kushner (at least sometimes) is the person who wants to lash out at the investigators. Here’s what happened (according to reports from the New York Times) when the Trump administration found out that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Mueller as a special counsel to lead the Trump/Russia probe:

Most of those gathered recommended that the president adopt a conciliatory stance and release a statement accepting Mr. Rosenstein’s decision and embracing a swift investigation that would clear the cloud of suspicion hovering over the West Wing.

Mr. Kushner — who had urged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Comey — was one of the few dissenting voices, urging the president to counterattack, according to two senior administration officials. After a brief discussion, however, calmer heads prevailed, and Mr. Trump’s staff huddled over a computer just outside the Oval Office to draft the statement that was ultimately released, asserting the president’s innocence and determination to move on.

Trump’s eventual statement was actually much less conciliatory than prior presidents have been. Yet Kushner wanted it to be even harsher — despite the existing concerns about independence at the Department of Justice.

It’s also interesting that, according to Reuters’ Julia Edwards Ainsley, the White House is considering trying to hobble Mueller — using a regulation barring Mueller from investigating anyone his former law firm had represented. In practice, that would be Kushner and former campaign head Paul Manafort.

Legal experts said the ethics rule can be waived by the Justice Department, which appointed Mueller. He did not represent Kushner or Manafort directly at his former law firm.

If the department did not grant a waiver, Mueller would be barred from investigating Kushner or Manafort, and this could greatly diminish the scope of the probe, experts said.

For all the reporting that President Trump is still deeply committed to Mike Flynn, this proposed “solution” to the Mueller investigation wouldn’t protect Flynn. It would protect Manafort, who has been out of the Trump family’s orbit for quite some time. And it would protect Kushner.

Kushner’s closely connected to Mike Flynn — and fairly connected to Russia

What could Kushner be so worried about?

He does appear to have been relatively close to the disgraced Flynn. According to at least one report (from NBC News’s Peter Alexander), he and Ivanka Trump were the ones who assured Flynn he could get the job of national security adviser — at a meeting at Trump Tower after the election, Alexander said, Ivanka Trump and Kushner told Flynn that his “loyalty” to the family would be rewarded.

Kushner also accompanied Flynn to his meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period — part of the pattern of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that Flynn subsequently lost his job for lying about. Kushner, however, also arranged subsequent meetings with Kislyak and other Russian officials — and the White House didn’t disclose those at the time, either.

Kushner’s meetings with Russian officials were enough to bring him onto the radar of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Trump/Russia probe, which is questioning all Trumpworld figures who had contacts with Russia. And his failure to disclose all of those meetings — even when applying for a security clearance — has raised some eyebrows (Democratic Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has called for Kushner’s clearance to be stripped.)

At least one figure within the Trump White House saw Kushner’s contacts with Russia as a disaster waiting to happen for the administration: Steve Bannon. During a power struggle between Kushner and Bannon in early April, the Times reported that “Mr. Bannon has told confidants that he believes Mr. Kushner’s contact with Russians, and his expected testimony before Congress on the subject, will become a major distraction for the White House.”

Kushner won the power struggle. Perhaps Bannon’s warnings about Kushner and Russia were discarded as just an attempt to weaken a rival (which, in part, they almost certainly were). But in retrospect, it’s becoming clear that Bannon wasn’t wrong.

The idea that Kushner was some sort of moderating influence on Donald Trump was always more than a little overblown — there was never much evidence that Trump was being moderated. What’s becoming clear, though, is that Kushner isn’t just incapable of stopping the president’s intemperance or preventing his ethical lapses — and that he’s not simply a businessman trying to maximize his own profits, either.

If Kushner has, or is, a Russia problem, that means that the current investigations go to the beating family heart of the Trump White House. That could set up a very, very nasty fight indeed.

 

 

[nvmbr02]

Oh ,Ivanka. Really?

Ivanka Trump praises Saudi Arabia's progress on women's rights

Quote

“Saudi Arabia’s progress, especially in recent years, is very encouraging but there’s still a lot of work to be done and freedoms and opportunities to continue to fight for," Trump said at a women's roundtable in Riyadh as her father, President Trump, met separately with Arab leaders.

“In every country around the world women and girls continue to face unique systematic, institutional, cultural barriers, which hinder us from fully engaging in and achieving true parity of opportunity within our communities," she said. "Each of you know this to be true. And yet the stories of Saudi women, such as yourselves, catalyzing change, inspire me to believe in the possibility of global women’s empowerment.”

Women in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from driving or travelling alone, and society imposes strict segregation of the sexes in public places. Reporters were escorted out of the event before those issues could come up.

 

 

I need to add that I do think Saudi women who are working hard for change are very inspiring. However, I think praise of the progress  of the country as a whole is taking a bit too far, especially after reading the complete article.

[nvmbr02]

Shame on you Jared.

Spoiler

The townhouse on High Seas Court in the Cove Village development, in the Baltimore suburb of Essex, was not exactly the Cape Cod retreat that its address implied: It was a small unit looking onto a parking lot, the windows of its two bedrooms so high and narrow that a child would have had to stand on a chair to see out of them. But to Kamiia Warren, who moved into the townhouse in 2004, it was a refuge, and a far cry from the East Baltimore neighborhood where she grew up. “I mean, there were bunny rabbits all hopping around,” she told me recently.

In the townhouse next door lived an older woman with whom Warren became friendly, even doing her grocery shopping once in a while. But over the course of a few months, the woman started acting strangely. She began accosting Warren’s visitors. She shouted through the walls during the day. And at night she banged on the wall, right where Warren kept the bassinet in which her third child slept, waking him up.

Warren sent a letter reporting the problem to the complex’s property manager, a company called Sawyer Realty Holdings. When there was no response, she decided to move out. In January 2010, she submitted the requisite form giving two months’ notice that she was transferring her Section 8 voucher — the federal low-income subsidy that helped her pay the rent — elsewhere. The complex’s on-site manager signed the form a week later, checking the line that read “The tenant gave notice in accordance with the lease.”

So Warren was startled in January 2013, three years later, when she received a summons from a private process server informing her that she was being sued for $3,014.08 by the owner of Cove Village. The lawsuit, filed in Maryland District Court, was doubly bewildering. It claimed she owed the money for having left in advance of her lease’s expiration, though she had received written permission to leave. And the company suing her was not Sawyer, but one whose name she didn’t recognize: JK2 Westminster L.L.C.

Warren was raising three children alone while taking classes for a bachelor’s degree in health care administration, and she disregarded the summons at first. But JK2 Westminster’s lawyers persisted; two more summonses followed. In April 2014, she appeared without a lawyer at a district-court hearing. She told the judge about the approval for her move, but she did not have a copy of the form the manager had signed. The judge ruled against Warren, awarding JK2 Westminster the full sum it was seeking, plus court costs, attorney’s fees and interest that brought the judgment to nearly $5,000. There was no way Warren, who was working as a home health aide, was going to be able to pay such a sum. “I was so desperate,” she said.

If the case was confounding to Warren, it was not unique. Hundreds like it have been filed over the last five years by JK2 Westminster and affiliated businesses in the state of Maryland alone, where the company owns some 8,000 apartments and townhouses. Nor was JK2 Westminster quite as anonymous as its opaque name suggested. It was a subsidiary of a large New York real estate firm called Kushner Companies, which was led by a young man whose initials happened to be J.K.: Jared Kushner.

When Americans were introduced last year to Ivanka Trump’s husband and the nation’s prospective son-in-law in chief, it was as the preternaturally poised, Harvard-educated scion of a real estate empire whose glittering ambitions resembled Donald Trump’s own. In 2007, Kushner Companies, run at the time by Jared and his father, Charles, bought the aluminum-clad skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue for a record-breaking $1.8 billion; they are now seeking partners for a $12 billion plan to replace it with a glass tower that would be 40 stories taller. In 2013 they acquired 17 buildings in Manhattan’s East Village for about $130 million, and three years later they spent $715 million on a cluster of buildings owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses on prime land in Brooklyn’s fast-developing Dumbo district.

But the Kushners’ empire, like Trump’s, was underwritten by years of dealing in much more modestly ambitioned properties. Jared’s grandfather Joseph Kushner, a Holocaust survivor from Belarus, over his lifetime built a small construction company in New Jersey into a real estate venture that owned and managed some 4,000 low-rise units concentrated in the suburbs of Newark. After taking over the business, Charles expanded Kushner Companies’ holdings to commercial and industrial spaces, but the company’s bread and butter remained the North Jersey apartment complexes bequeathed to him by his father.

In the mid-2000s, the company began to sell off the more than 25,000 multifamily rental units it owned, culminating in a 2007 sale of nearly 17,000 units for $1.9 billion. The sale — near the peak of the housing boom, just months before the crash — was impeccably timed, but it also reflected a shift in the attentions of what would soon be a three-generation real estate dynasty. Charles, a major Democratic Party donor, had returned late the previous year from a brief stint in federal prison after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign donations. Back at the helm of the company, he began to shift its focus from New Jersey to New York City — and prepared to pass the reins to his son Jared, who had just received a degree in law and business from New York University.

But amid the high-profile Manhattan and Brooklyn purchases, in 2011, Kushner Companies, with Jared now more firmly in command, pulled together a deal that looked much more like something from the firm’s humble past than from its high-rolling present. That June, the company and its equity partners bought 4,681 units of what are known in real estate jargon as “distress-ridden, Class B” apartment complexes: units whose prices fell somewhere in the middle of the market, typically of a certain age and wear, whose owners were in financial difficulty. The properties were spread across 12 sites in Toledo, Ohio; Pittsburgh; and other Rust Belt cities still reeling from the Great Recession. Kushner had to settle more than 200 debts held against the complexes before the deal could go through; at one complex, in Pittsburgh, circumstances had become so dire that some residents had been left without heat and power because the previous owner couldn’t pay the bills. Prudential, which was foreclosing on the portfolio, sold it for only $72 million — half the value of the mortgages on the properties.

In the following months, Kushner Companies bought another 1,700 multifamily units in similar markets, according to the trade publication Multifamily Executive. Unlike the company’s big New York investments, the complexes were not acquired with an eye toward appreciation — these were not growing markets, after all — but toward producing a steady cash flow. “Our goal is to keep buying and incrementally growing — they’re good markets where you can get yield,” Jared Kushner told Multifamily Executive in October 2011, predicting that the net income for the year’s purchases would be $14 million within a year. The complexes buttressed the Kushner portfolio in another way, he said: They would serve as a hedge against an upswing in inflation he believed was looming on the horizon.

A year later, in August 2012, a Kushner-led investment group bought 5,500 multifamily units in the Baltimore area with $371 million in financing from Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage lender — another considerable bargain. Two years later, Kushner Companies picked up three more complexes in the Baltimore area for $37.9 million. Today, Westminster Management, Kushner Companies’ property-management arm, lists 34 complexes under its control in Maryland, Ohio and New Jersey, with a total of close to 20,000 units.

Kushner’s largest concentration of multifamily units is in the Baltimore area, where the company controls 15 complexes in all — which, if you assume three residents per unit, could be home to more than 20,000 people. All but two of the complexes are in suburban Baltimore County, but they are only “suburban” in the most literal sense. They sit along arterial shopping strips or highways, yet they are easy to miss — the Highland Village complex, for example, is beside the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, but the tall sound barriers dividing it from the six-lane highway render its more than 1,000 units invisible to the thousands traveling that route every day.

The complexes date mostly from the 1960s and ’70s, when white flight from the city was creating a huge demand for affordable housing in Baltimore County. They were meant to exude middle-class respectability — unglamorous but safe and pleasant enough, a renter’s Levittown. Since then, however, they have slipped socioeconomically, along with the middle class itself, into the vast gray area of the modern precariat — home to casino workers, distribution-warehouse pickers, Uber drivers, students at for-profit colleges. Although most of the tenants I met in a series of recent visits to the complexes pay their own rent, ranging from about $800 to $1,300, some of them receive Section 8 assistance, as Kamiia Warren did; Baltimore County has no public housing for a population of more than 825,000, so these and similar complexes have become the de facto substitute.

At the time of the 2012 Baltimore purchase, Kushner raved about the promise of the low-end multifamily market. “It’s proven over the last few years to be the most resilient asset class, and at the end of the day, it’s a very stable asset class,” he told Multifamily Executive. He said things were proceeding well in the Midwestern complexes he purchased a year earlier. “It was a lot of construction and a lot of evictions,” he said. “But the communities now look great, and the outcome has been phenomenal.”

Kamiia Warren still had not paid the $4,984.37 judgment against her by late 2014. Three days before Christmas that year, JK2 Westminster filed a request to garnish her wages from her in-home elder-care job. Five days earlier, Warren had gone to court to fill out a handwritten motion saying she had proof that she was given permission to leave Cove Village in 2010 — she had finally managed to get a copy from the housing department. “Please give me the opportunity to plead my case,” she wrote. But she did not attach a copy of the form to her motion, not realizing it was necessary, so a judge denied it on Jan. 9, on the grounds that there was “no evidence submitted.”

The garnishing started that month. Warren was in the midst of leaving her job, but JK2 Westminster garnished her bank account too. After her account was zeroed out, a loss of about $900, she borrowed money from her mother to buy food for her children and pay her bills. That February — five years after she left Cove Village — Warren returned to court, this time with the housing form in hand, asking the judge to halt garnishment. “I am a single mom of three and my bank account was wiped clean by the plaintiff,” she pleaded in another handwritten request. “I cannot take care of my kids when they snatch all of my money out of my account. I do not feel I owe this money. Please have mercy on my family and I.” She told me that when she called the law office representing JK2 Westminster that same day from the courthouse to discuss the case, one of the lawyers told her: “This is not going to go away. You will pay us.”

The judge denied Warren’s request without explanation. And JK2 Westminster kept pressing for the rest of the money, sending out one process server after another to present Warren with legal papers. Finally, in January 2016, the court sent notice of a $4,615 lien against Warren — a legal claim against her for the remaining judgment. Warren began to cry as she recounted the episode to me. She said the lien has greatly complicated her hopes of taking out a loan to start her own small assisted-living center. She had gone a couple of years without a bank account, for fear of further garnishing. “It was just pure greed,” she said. “It was unnecessary.” I asked why she hadn’t pushed harder against the judgment once she had the necessary evidence in hand. “They know how to work this stuff,” she replied. “They know what to do, and here I am, I don’t know anything about the law. I would have to hire a lawyer or something, and I really can’t afford that. I really don’t know my rights. I don’t know all the court lingo. I knew that up against them I would lose.”

A search for “JK2 Westminster” in the database of Maryland’s District Court system brings back 548 cases in which it is the plaintiff — and that does not include hundreds of other cases that have been filed in the name of the company’s individual complexes.

A vast majority of these cases have been filed by a single small law firm in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills. The law office of Jeffrey Tapper specializes in “collections” work, with an emphasis on landlord-tenant cases. It has represented several other real estate management companies, including Sawyer, which retains a stake in many of the Kushner complexes.

In April, I drove to Owings Mills in hopes of speaking to Tapper. As I waited for him by reception, I overheard an assistant making a call about a new case, saying that the firm would continue to pursue one tenant even if the other person on the lease had filed for bankruptcy. Tapper emerged, a man in his mid-60s with white hair, a paunch and a large smartphone clipped to his belt. Our interview was brief. “I’m not having any conversation with you that has to do with one of my clients,” he said. “I’m not helping you with any of whatever you’re trying to do.”

In the cases that Tapper has brought to court on behalf of JK2 Westminster and individual Kushner-controlled companies, there is a clear pattern of Kushner Companies’ pursuing tenants over virtually any unpaid rent or broken lease — even in the numerous cases where the facts appear to be on the tenants’ side. Not only does the company file cases against them, it pursues the cases for as long as it takes to collect from the overmatched defendants — often several years. The court docket of JK2 Westminster’s case against Warren, for instance, spans more than three years and 112 actions — for a sum that amounts to maybe two days’ worth of billings for the average corporate-law-firm associate, from a woman who never even rented from JK2 Westminster. The pursuit is all the more remarkable given how transient the company’s prey tends to be. Hounding former tenants for money means paying to send out process servers who often report back that they were unable to locate the target. This does not deter Kushner Companies’ lawyers. They send the servers back out again a few months later.

In March 2009, Joan Beverly, a probation agent, signed the lease for her daughter, Lennettea, for a unit at Dutch Village, a complex on the northern edge of Baltimore. Lennettea moved out a year later, several months before her lease was up. Kushner Companies bought Dutch Village more than two years later. In December 2012, JK2 Westminster filed suit in Baltimore County District Court against Beverly, seeking $3,810.16 — several months of rent it said it was owed, plus about $1,000 in repair costs, including $10 for “failure to return laundry room card.”

That February, Lennettea filed a written court notice explaining that her mother, who was dying of pancreatic cancer, was “in terminal hospice care and is not eligible to work.” She added by way of supporting evidence a letter from the hospice provider to Joan Beverly’s bank, explaining her and her husband’s late mortgage payments on their home: “There has been added financial stress because Mrs. Beverly is very ill at this time.” But JK2 Westminster persisted in seeking a hearing on the suit. In March, a district court judge found in favor of the company — a total judgment against Joan of more than $5,500.

Joan died two weeks later. Her husband, Tyrone Beverly, a retired longshoreman, requested that the judgment against his deceased wife be removed but was denied. The case remains open in the court database. Tyrone, who was married to Joan for 32 years, told me that he had assumed the judgment had been dismissed and was unaware that it was still listed as awaiting payment. “They just didn’t treat us fair,” he said.

The sweeping nature of the company’s pursuit of tenants was most evident when those tenants were, in fact, prepared to defend themselves. Shawanda Hough moved out of her unit in the Carriage Hill complex in the northwestern Baltimore suburb of Randallstown in early 2012 after black mold worsened her son’s asthma, landing him in the hospital twice. After the maintenance crew tried and failed to fix the problem, she got the rental office’s written permission to move out in advance of her lease. But then Kushner Companies bought Carriage Hill, and a year and a half later, in August 2013, JK2 Westminster filed a lawsuit against Hough, seeking $4,068.53.

Hough fought back. In a court filing, she said that she had kept all of her documentation, and that the company had assured her that it had not lost a dime in rent; she had gone so far as to coordinate the time of her departure with the arrival of a new tenant. JK2 Westminster went ahead with a hearing before a judge a month later, but the judge ultimately found for Hough.

Cases like Hough’s, however, were the exception rather than the rule. Over all, about nine out of every 10 cases brought by JK2 Westminster that I surveyed resulted in judgments against the defendants, who often did not appear in person for the hearings — and if they did, almost never had legal representation. How could it possibly be worth Kushner Companies’ while to pursue hundreds of people so aggressively over a few thousand dollars here and there? After all, the pursuit itself cost money. And it wasn’t happening just in Baltimore — Doug Wilkins, a lawyer in Toledo who has represented some of the complexes bought there by Kushner, told me the company is seeking far more monetary judgments than did previous owners.

When I presented JK2 Westminster’s record of litigation to Matthew Cypher, a Georgetown University business professor who used to work for the real estate giant Invesco, he said it was highly unusual to put so much effort into pursuing former tenants in court. “These people fade into the shadows of the night,” he said. “It’s amazing to me that there’s that much to go after.” Brian Pendergraft, an attorney in Greenbelt, Md., who works on both sides of landlord-tenant litigation, told me he had heard of large property-management companies pursuing former tenants for unpaid rent but not going so far as to pursue tenants who predated the company’s ownership of a complex. “I guess you can do it,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s cool.”

But Matthew Hertz, whose Bethesda, Md., firm represents landlords and tenants in similar cases, explained to me that there is a logic behind such aggressive tactics. The costs of the pursuit are not as high as you might imagine, he said — people are not that hard to find in the age of cellphones and easily accessible databases. “If I give my process server a name and phone number, it’s generally enough to trace you,” he said. “If I have a date of birth and Social Security number, it’s even easier.” The legal costs can be billed to the defendant as attorney’s fees, if the terms of the lease allow. And garnishing wages is relatively easy to do by court order, assuming the defendant has wages to garnish.

As for pursuing former tenants from years before the new company’s ownership of a complex, Hertz said it was hardly different from an investor’s buying a portfolio of mortgages: It’s debt to be collected on. “If you buy someone’s properties, you’re buying their debts, not just their assets. You take the good with the bad, and try to collect on the bad. Even if you only get back 5 percent, you’re making something,” he said. “It’s, ‘I’m buying up this property and if I can collect anything, it’s gravy on top.’ ”

There was, Hertz added, an ancillary benefit to such relentless pursuit: sending a message to current tenants. One way to make sure that tenants are paying their rent and to keep them from breaking leases early — which brings with it the costs and hassles of having to clean apartments and find new tenants — is to instill a sense of fear about violating a lease. “Any landlord takes that into account,” Hertz said. “They know tenants are going to talk to each other. If they say, ‘He’s going to come after you,’ it’s deterrence.”

When Kushner Companies finally responded to my questions about the cases, they essentially affirmed Hertz’s reasoning. As manager for the Baltimore complexes, the company had a “fiduciary obligation” to its ownership partners to collect as much revenue as it could, said Kushner Companies’ chief financial officer, Jennifer McLean, in a written response. She said the company’s legal costs have been “minimal” compared with what it seeks to recover.

McLean declined to comment on several cases, including Kamiia Warren’s. But she said the pursuit of Joan Beverly, the woman dying of cancer, was justified. “This tenant owned the landlord $3,819.16,” she said in the written statement. “As property manager, it’s our job to collect rent payments.”

In general, “Westminster Management only takes legal action against a tenant when absolutely necessary,” McLean said. “If legal action is pursued, however, the company follows guidelines consistent with industry standards.” She added: “While taking a tenant to court is far from an ideal outcome, that option — and clear rules governing it — must exist as a last resort.”

The Highland Village complex, along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, is one of Kushner Companies’ largest, a vast maze of lanes and courts lined with rows of short brick-and-siding-fronted homes. Like the other Kushner complexes I visited in Baltimore’s southern and eastern suburbs, it is situated in what was once a predominantly white working-class community, within reasonable commuting distance of the harbor and industrial plants, now defunct, like Bethlehem Steel. In recent decades, many black transplants from the city and Hispanic immigrants have arrived as well, and Highland Village is an unusually integrated place.

The complex, like the others I saw, seemed designed to preclude neighborliness — most of the townhouses lack even the barest stoop to sit out on, and at least one complex has signs forbidding ball-playing (“violators will be prosecuted”). At another complex, kids had drawn a rectangle on the side of a storage shed in lieu of a hoop for their basketball game. The only meeting points at many of the complexes are the metal mailbox stands, the Dumpsters and the laundry room. And the only thing that united many of the residents I spoke to, it seemed, was resentment of their landlord.

They complained about Westminster Management’s aggressive rent-collection practices, which many told me exceeded what they had experienced under the previous owners. Rent is marked officially late, they said, if it arrives after 4:30 p.m. on the fifth day of the month. But Westminster recently made paying the rent much more of a challenge. Last fall, it sent notice to residents saying that they could no longer pay by money order (on which many residents, who lack checking accounts, had relied) at the complex’s rental office and would instead need to go to a Walmart or Ace Cash Express and use an assigned “WIPS card” — a plastic card linked to the resident’s account — to pay their rent there. That method carries a $3.50 fee for every payment, and getting to the Walmart or Ace is difficult for the many residents without cars.

Tenants who pay after the 5th are hit with late fees that start around $40 to $50 and escalate from there, with court fees usually added on as well. What upsets residents most, though, are not the fees themselves but that the property managers, instead of putting pink or yellow late notices and court summonses discreetly in mailboxes or under doors, post them in public — on the front doors of townhouse units or on lobby walls or lobby doors of apartment buildings. This bothered even tenants who said they always paid their rent on time. “The whole neighborhood knows,” said Marquita Parmely, a truck driver who pays $1,010 a month to rent a townhouse at Essex Park, near Cove Village. Dareck Cromwell, a retiree living at Carriage Hill, told me: “They put them in the windows for everybody to see, to see your business. That’s not right. You don’t put people’s business out like that.”

Compounding these grievances was Westminster’s maintenance of the properties — or lack thereof. Their complexes comprise hundreds of units, but typically have only four or so workers looking after them. Alishia Jamesson, a 30-year-old Highland Village resident, invited me into the small living room of the $842-a-month townhouse she and her fiancé share with her two children. The room was cluttered with bags from Walmart and Dollar Tree, ketchup packets and supplies for the work Jamesson took up after she lost her cashier’s job at Walmart for missing too many shifts for parenting duties: making personalized tote bags and gift baskets for weddings.

Jamesson showed me three large holes in the walls of the townhouse, which Westminster charged her and her fiancé, Keith Riggs, $150 to fix in October but had not yet repaired. “Every time I ask about drywall they say, ‘Oh, well, we only have one drywall person,’ ” Riggs told me. There was also black mold spreading around the bathtub, a large brown stain and crack on the wall adjacent to the stove and a gap in the bathroom skylight that allowed in rain and snow. Jamesson told me that the refrigerator hadn’t worked for more than a month before being replaced; her family had lived on canned food and boxed milk.

Complaints about poor upkeep abounded at the other complexes too. At Highland Village, there was the matter of the vacant unit that burned down one night a couple of months ago: its shell was still standing, attended by nothing but plywood and a tarp. At Essex Park, east of the city, Marquita Parmely, the truck driver, told me she had a mouse infestation that was severe enough that her 12-year-old daughter recently found one in her bed. Parmely also has a 2-year-old with asthma, which is aggravated by allergens in mice droppings. She moved her own bed and other furniture away from the walls to dissuade mice, kept the family’s laundry in tote bags after mice started appearing in the hamper and vacuumed twice a day. Her neighbor told me it took weeks for staff members to replace a rear window that had been shot out by kids with a BB gun.

At the Carroll Park complex in Middle River, Md., Jen Jackson showed me a ceiling leak that was causing a mold problem. At the Whispering Woods townhouses nearby, a resident named Nicole, who asked that I not use her last name, told me she had filed unheeded complaints about loose plastic shutters, one of which finally fell off and hit her in the head. (When I visited Nicole again a few weeks later, she told me that Westminster staff had scolded her for speaking with me and told her not to do so again. A large black pickup followed me and a photographer as we walked through the complex until we left.) In the same complex, Renee Cook showed me the large swath of her downstairs ceiling that had collapsed and the mold and mildew beneath the carpet, each resulting from a leak from her neighbor’s (illicit) washer-dryer.

Asked about such conditions, Kushner Companies said it follows industry standards for maintenance staffing and exterminator visits, and that it and its partners had spent $10 million on upgrades across the complexes. “Despite those improvements, issues still arise, given the age of the properties,” said McLean, the chief financial officer. Shortly after I put questions to the company about specific tenants’ complaints, Cook’s ceiling was repaired.

The worst troubles may have been those described in a 2013 court case involving Jasmine Cox’s unit at Cove Village. They began with the bedroom ceiling, which started leaking one day. Then maggots started coming out of the living-room carpet. Then raw sewage started flowing out of the kitchen sink. “It sounded like someone turned a pool upside down,” Cox told me. “I heard the water hitting the floor and I panicked. I got out of bed and the sink is black and gray, it’s pooling out of the sink and the house smells terrible.”

Cox stopped cooking for herself and her son, not wanting food near the sink. A judge allowed her reduced rent for one month. When she moved out soon afterward, Westminster Management sent her a $600 invoice for a new carpet and other repairs. Cox, who is now working as a battery-test engineer and about to buy her first home, was unaware who was behind the company that had put her through such an ordeal. When I told her of Kushner’s involvement, there was a silence as she took it in.

“Get that [expletive] out of here,” she said.

Very few of the complex residents I met, even ones who had been pursued at length in court by JK2 Westminster, had any idea that their rent and late fees were going to the family company of the president’s son-in-law. “That Jared Kushner?” Danny Jackson, a plumber in his 15th year living at Harbor Point Estates, exclaimed. “Oh, my God. And I thought he was the good one.”

Jackson said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Many of the others I spoke with had not voted — in that or any other election. “I’m not a big political person, so I feel like I don’t think I should vote on something I know nothing about,” Alishia Jamesson told me. But eastern Baltimore County was a Trump stronghold, a formerly staunch Democratic territory with many downwardly mobile white voters — and Kushner’s complexes were no exception.

East of the city, I met Chris Freimiller, a 38-year-old resident of the company’s Morningside Park complex, who was smoking Newports in his car before heading to work at a Rite Aid distribution center. Freimiller complained to me about the persistent leaks from the toilet and the ceiling damage it had caused, and about being hit repeatedly with late fees. He told me he voted for president for the first time ever last year — for Donald Trump. His vote, he said, was motivated by “the racial and police issues. How bad it got with Obama and how he seemed to promote the cop-bashing and the racial divide.” Did knowing that he was sending his late fees to Trump’s son-in-law change anything? “Yeah, actually,” he said. “As if they need any more money.”

At the Carroll Park complex, I met Mike McHargue, a private investigator, and his girlfriend, Patricia Howell. “They’re nothing but slumlords,” Howell told me of Westminster Management. “They take everyone’s money.” When I asked if they knew who was behind the company, they said they did not. “Oh, really?” Howell said when I mentioned Kushner’s name. “Oh, really. And I’m a Trump supporter.”

Jared Kushner stepped down as chief executive of Kushner Companies in January. But he remains a stakeholder in the company — his share of company-related trusts is estimated to be worth at least $600 million — and the company says it has no intention of selling off its multifamily holdings. (JK2 Westminster was formally dissolved in December, but Kushner Companies still owns the complexes through other entities; lawsuits against tenants are now typically filed in the names of the complexes themselves.) Because Kushner retains his interest in the complexes, the White House told The Baltimore Sun in February that he would recuse himself from any policy decisions about Section 8 funding, as many of his tenants rely on it for their rent. But even as Kushner now busies himself with his ever-expanding White House portfolio, his company is carrying on its vigorous efforts in court.

On April 17, three cases were being held consecutively in Baltimore’s District Court involving tenants of the Dutch Village complex. One was against Catherine Silver, a Morgan State University student who had given notice that she was moving at the end of March — she was fed up with lousy maintenance (among other things, a perpetually clogged toilet and a ceiling leak in her closet). But when Silver went to Walmart to pay her March rent with her WIPS card, the money mistakenly ended up not in the account for Dutch Village but the one for Kushner Companies’ adjacent complex, Pleasantview.

Westminster Management started eviction proceedings. On March 23, a sheriff’s deputy changed the locks on the unit. Silver was traveling at the time — it was spring break — and it was not until March 31 that she was able to explain to a judge what happened and get her keys back. By that point, it was too late to get her possessions into the moving truck she’d rented, and classes had resumed. She stayed in the unit, in which Westminster had turned off the heat and hot water, trying again to plan her departure. But Westminster was now after her for April’s rent, despite the fact that the company had literally barred her from being able to move before April, as she had intended. On April 25, a judge ruled that she needed to pay half of April’s rent, plus court costs: $471.

Westminster had a lawyer from Tapper’s firm, Andrew Rabinowitz, at the April 25 hearing, which lasted more than three hours — all over less than $500. The next day Rabinowitz was back to defend Westminster against Silver’s criminal complaint over the unfounded eviction. This time, he was more accommodating, perhaps because he realized a reporter was present. After conferring with Dutch Village’s property manager, who was also in attendance, Rabinowitz agreed to let Silver have until the end of May to move out, rent-free, as long as she paid for April. Silver asked if she could have her hot water turned back on. He said he would look into it. But when I visited Silver two weeks later, the hot water was still off. The stove was covered with the pots she was using to boil water for bathing.

On May 10 at the Highland Village complex, a woman was distributing the yellow “failure to pay rent” notices filed with the District Court to tenants who were behind on their May rent. One went up on the door of a man who introduced himself to me as Tommy, a recently divorced house painter with two children, who was at that moment sitting in his pickup truck reading Psalm 91 to gird himself for a visit to traffic court. He said he didn’t know why he kept being hit with late fees and court fees at Highland Village because he was up to date on the rent itself.

Over at Carroll Park, Mike McHargue, the private investigator, had also received a yellow notice and was trying to find out when he needed to come up with money to avoid eviction. So was Chris Freimiller, the Rite Aid worker. He had missed a couple weeks of work with back pain related to a metal bar in his leg from an earlier car accident, and Westminster Management had moved quickly to file for eviction over $722.09 in missing rent, plus $66 in fees. When I arrived, Freimiller was sleeping on the couch after a night shift, and his wife, Jaclyn Meador, was trying to get an eviction date from the constable while their 11-year-old son, Ethan, looked on.

One more yellow notice was affixed at the Highland Park home of Alishia Jamesson, the wedding-basket maker. Her fiancé had left his job as a casino housekeeper to take a job handling Amazon packages near the airport, but his first check hadn’t come through yet. Jamesson was working at Walmart again. The couple’s car tags had expired, so both were enduring long public-transit commutes. No one had come from maintenance. There were still three holes in the wall.

The article is quite long but a really good read. 

[onekidanddone]

Ivanka's father and grandfather are slumlords seems right on track that her husband would be as well. 

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

That article on Jared the Slumlord Millionaire is depressing  No wonder he gets along so well with Trumpy.  How do they live with themselves? 

[GreyhoundFan]

7 hours ago, PreciousPantsofDoom said:

That article on Jared the Slumlord Millionaire is depressing  No wonder he gets along so well with Trumpy.  How do they live with themselves? 

To people like Agent Orange and Kushner, getting every penny out of other people is more important than caring for fellow humans. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I caused widespread suffering, but it an indifference to others seems to be a requirement to be a member of the Drumpf and Kushner families.

[nvmbr02]

Jared Kushner Now Under FBI Scrutiny in Russia Probe, Say Officials

Quote

Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and one of his senior advisers, has come under FBI scrutiny in the Russia investigation, multiple U.S. officials told NBC News.

Investigators believe Kushner has significant information relevant to their inquiry, officials said. That does not mean they suspect him of a crime or intend to charge him.

The FBI's scrutiny of Kushner places the bureau's sprawling counterintelligence and criminal investigation not only on the doorstep of the White House, but in the Trump family circle. The Washington Post first reported last week that a senior White House official close to Trump was a "person of interest," but did not name the person. The term "person of interest" has no legal meaning.

 

I realize this isn't a big change, but perhaps the investigation is stepping up. I am not sure where Kushner fits in the big picture yet but he is about as shady as they come.

[onekidanddone]

Jared Kushner now a focus in Russia investigation

Quote

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 Washington Post reported last week that a senior White House official close to the president was a significant focus of the high-stakes investigation, though it did not name Kushner.

FBI agents also remain keenly interested in former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, but Kushner is the only current White House official known to be considered a key person in the probe.

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. “Target” is a word that generally refers to someone who is the main suspect of investigators’ attention, though prosecutors can and do bring charges against people who are not marked with that distinction.

Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry,” said Jamie Gorelick, one of his attorneys.

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.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said, “I can’t confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of investigations or subjects of investigations.” The FBI declined to comment.

At the time of the December meetings, Trump already had won the election. Contacts between people on the transition team and foreign governments can be routine, but the meetings and phone calls with the Russians were not made public at the time.

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. 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.

In addition to the December meetings, a former senior intelligence official said 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. Kushner and Kislyak — along with close Trump adviser and current attorney general Jeff Sessions — were present at an April 2016 event at the Mayflower where then-candidate Trump promised in a speech to seek better relations with Russia. It is unclear whether Kushner and Kislyak interacted there.

The New York Times reported that Kushner omitted from security-clearance forms his December meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov, though his attorney said that was mere error and he told the FBI soon after that he would amend the forms. The White House said that his meetings were normal and inconsequential.

Kushner has agreed to discuss his Russian contacts with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting one of several investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In many ways, Kushner is a unique figure inside the White House.

He is arguably the president’s most trusted adviser, and he is also a close member of the president’s family. His list of policy responsibilities is vast — his foreign policy portfolio alone includes Canada and Mexico, China, and peace in the Middle East — yet he rarely speaks publicly about any of them.

Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III is now leading the probe into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and he has set up shop in the Patrick Henry Building in downtown D.C. Even before he was picked by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to take over the case, investigators had been stepping up their efforts — issuing subpoenas and looking to conduct interviews, people familiar with the matter said.

A small group of lawmakers known as the Gang of Eight was recently notified of the change in tempo and focus in the investigation at a classified briefing.

It is unclear exactly how Mueller’s leadership will affect the direction of the probe. This week, Justice Department ethics experts cleared him to take over the case even though lawyers at his former firm, WilmerHale, represent several people who could be caught up in the matter, including Kushner, Manafort and Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is married to Kushner.

Mueller resigned from the firm to take over the investigation.

Investigators are continuing to look aggressively into the dealings of Flynn, and a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., recently issued a subpoenas for records related to Flynn’s businesses and finances, according to people familiar with the matter.

Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group, was paid more than $500,000 by a company owned by a Turkish American businessman close to top Turkish officials for research on Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who Turkey’s president claims was responsible for a coup attempt last summer. Flynn retroactively registered with the Justice Department in March as a paid foreign agent for Turkish interests.

Separately from the probe now run by Mueller, Flynn is being investigated by the Pentagon’s top watchdog for his foreign payments. Flynn also received $45,000 to appear in 2015 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a dinner for RT, a Kremlin-controlled media organization.

 

Who's next?

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Jared Kushner now a focus in Russia investigation

Who's next?

There are so many options. And I won't shed a single tear for any of them. I alternate who upsets me more. Right now, it's Sessions. I hope he goes down in flames, wearing an orange jumpsuit.