Jared Kushner

Kushner was a real-estate investor, and increased Kushner Companies' presence in the New York City real-estate market.[20]

Kushner Companies purchased 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007 for $1.8 billion, the most expensive single property purchase in US history at the time.[21]

Kushner Companies purchased the office building at 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007, for a then-record price of $1.8 billion, most of it borrowed.[21] He assumed the role of CEO in 2008.[22] Following the property crash that year, the cash flow generated by the property was insufficient to cover its debt service, and the Kushners were forced to sell the retail footage to Stanley Chera[23] and bring in Vornado Realty Trust as a 50% equity partner in the ownership of the building.[24] By that time, Kushner Companies had lost more than $90 million on its investment.[25] He was the face of the deal but his father Charles Kushner pushed him to do the deal.[26]

On August 18, 2014, Kushner acquired a three-building apartment portfolio in Middle River, Maryland, for $38 million with Aion Partners. In 2013–2014, he and his company acquired more than 11,000 units throughout New York, New Jersey, and the Baltimore area.[27] In May 2015, he purchased 50.1% of the Times Square Building from Africa Israel Investments Ltd. for $295 million.[28]

In May 2015, Kushner purchased a majority stake of One Times Square for $295 million.[28]

In 2014, Kushner, with his brother Joshua and Ryan Williams, co-founded Cadre (now RealCadre LLC), an online real-estate investment platform. His business partners included Goldman Sachs and billionaire George Soros, a top Democratic Party donor.[29][30][31] In early 2015, Soros Fund Management financed the startup with a $250 million credit line.[29][32] Kushner did not identify these business relationships in his January 2017 government financial-disclosure form.[29][33]

In March 2020, an episode of Netflix's docuseries Dirty Money labelled Kushner a 'tier-one predator' in an episode titled “Slumlord Millionaire”. One of the predatory strategies adopted by Kushner is referred to in the program as “construction harassment.”[34] His rental companies initiated "unnecessary large-scale renovations intended to make life so miserable that tenants flee their homes, thus allowing rents to then be jacked up to unaffordable levels."[35][36] Another strategy involved pursuing tenants who had previously lived in one of his company's apartments claiming they had not paid rent since they left - in one particular case, up to three years earlier.[37] In 2019, Maryland Attorney General, Brian Frosh, filed a lawsuit accusing the Kushner company of failing to take action on apartments with rodent infestations and forcing tenants to pay illegitimate fees. Court records show properties owned by Kushner are continuing aggressive eviction practices and debt collection lawsuits against tenants who are waiting for government relief due to the COVID-19 crisis.[38]

Kushner (right) with The New York Observer's then editor-in-chief Peter W. Kaplan, September 2008.

In 2006, Kushner purchased The New York Observer, a weekly New York City newspaper, for $10 million,[39] using money he says he earned during his college years by closing deals on residential buildings in Somerville, Massachusetts,[40] with family members providing the backing for his investments.[41]

After purchasing the Observer, Kushner published it in tabloid format.[42] Since then, he has been credited with increasing the Observer's online presence and expanding the Observer Media Group.[43][44] With no substantial experience in journalism, Kushner could not establish a good relationship with the newspaper's veteran editor-in-chief, Peter W. Kaplan.[45] "This guy doesn't know what he doesn't know", Kaplan remarked about Kushner, to colleagues, at the time.[45] As a result of his differences with Kushner, Kaplan quit his position. Kaplan was followed by a series of short-lived successors until Kushner hired Elizabeth Spiers in 2011.[46] It has been alleged that Kushner used the Observer as propaganda against rivals in real estate.[46][47] Spiers left the newspaper in 2012. In January 2013, Kushner hired a new editor-in-chief, Ken Kurson. Kurson had been a consultant to Republican political candidates in New Jersey.[46]

According to Vanity Fair, under Kushner, the "Observer has lost virtually all of its cultural currency among New York's elite, but the paper is now profitable and reporting traffic growth ... [it] boasts 6 million unique visitors per month, up from 1.3 million in January 2013".[48] In April 2016, the New York Observer became one of only a handful of newspapers to officially endorse United States presidential candidate Donald Trump in the Republican primary, but the paper ended the campaign period by choosing not to back any presidential candidate at all.[49][50]

Kushner stepped down from his newspaper role in January 2017 to pursue a role in President Donald Trump's administration. He was replaced by his brother-in-law, Joseph Meyer.[51]

Jared Kushner had been a lifelong Democrat prior to his father-in-law Donald Trump entering politics.[52] He had donated over $10,000 to Democratic campaigns[53] starting at the age of 11. In 2008 he donated to the campaign for Hillary Clinton and his newspaper the New York Observer endorsed Barack Obama over John McCain in the US presidential election.[54] After expressing disappointment with Obama, however, he endorsed Republican U.S. presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 via the New York Observer.[55] In 2014 he continued to donate to Democratic groups,[54] but he then continued his "ideological conversion" by joining his father-in-law Donald Trump's nascent US presidential campaign in the field of the Republican candidates in 2015.[60] Kushner had no prior involvement in campaign politics or in government before Trump's campaign.[61]

Kushner and the Trump family, pictured at a campaign victory party in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 1, 2016

From the outset of the presidential campaign of his father-in-law Donald Trump, Kushner was the architect of Trump's digital, online, and social media campaigns, enlisting talent from Silicon Valley to run a 100-person social-media team dubbed "Project Alamo."[62] Kushner, together with Paul Manafort and Brad Parscale, hired Steve Bannon's firm Cambridge Analytica to support the Trump campaign.[63] Kushner has also helped as a speechwriter, and was tasked with working to establish a plan for Trump's White House transition team.[64] He was for a time seen as Trump's de facto campaign manager, succeeding Corey Lewandowski, who was fired in part on Kushner's recommendation in June 2016.[65] He had been intimately involved with campaign strategy, coordinating Trump's visit in late August to Mexico, and he is believed to be responsible for the choice of Mike Pence as Trump's running mate.[62][66] Kushner's "sprawling digital fundraising database and social media campaign" has been described as "the locus of his father-in-law's presidential bid."[67]

According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who worked on technology for Hillary Clinton's campaign), Kushner's role in the 2016 election was its biggest surprise. Schmidt told Forbes, "Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources."[68] Federal Election Commission filings indicate the Trump campaign spent $343 million, about 59 percent as much as the Clinton campaign.[69]

On July 5, 2016, Kushner wrote an open letter in the New York Observer addressing the controversy around a tweet from the Trump campaign containing allegedly anti-Semitic imagery. He was responding to his own paper's editorial by Dana Schwartz criticizing Kushner's involvement with the Trump campaign.[70] In the letter, Kushner wrote, "In my opinion, accusations like 'racist' and 'anti-Semite' are being thrown around with a carelessness that risks rendering these words meaningless."[71]

Japanese PM Shinzō Abe meets with Ivanka, president-elect Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner, November 2016

During the presidential transition, Kushner was said to be his father-in-law's "confidant,"[72] and one of Donald Trump's closest advisors, even more so than Trump's four adult children.[73] Trump was reported to have requested the top-secret security clearance for him to attend the presidential daily intelligence briefings as his staff-level companion, along with General Mike Flynn, who already had the clearance prior to his resignation.[74]

Kushner was reportedly an influential factor behind the firing of New Jersey governor Chris Christie as head of the transition team, as well as the dismissal from the Donald Trump transition team of anyone connected to Christie.[75][76] An anonymous source familiar with the transition told Politico, "Jared doesn't like Christie... He's always held [the prosecution of his father] against Christie."[77] Kushner told Forbes that the reports that he was involved in Christie's dismissal were false: "Six months ago, Governor Christie and I decided this election was much bigger than any differences we may have had in the past, and we worked very well together... I was not behind pushing out him or his people."[78]

Kushner during the April 2017 Syrian missile strike operation

On January 9, 2017, Kushner was named Senior Advisor to the President[79] (formally, "Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor"[80]). He consequently resigned as CEO of Kushner Companies, and as publisher of the Observer.[81]

After Donald Trump became President-elect, Kushner and his wife met with the Japanese Prime Minister and other Japanese officials, while his wife was conducting a licensing deal between her namesake clothing brand and a Japanese government-owned company.[82] His wife sat in on a meeting between her father, then-president-elect Donald Trump, and Japan's prime minister, Shinzō Abe.[83]

Kushner with President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March 2017

In late March 2017, Kushner was also given the new role of leading the "White House Office of American Innovation",[84][85] where Kushner reportedly has been focusing on improving governmental efforts with regard to Veterans Affairs, information-technology contracting, and the opioid crisis.[86] Kushner was involved in the sale of $100+ billion of arms to Saudi Arabia, and during a meeting with Saudi officials at the White House, he called Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson to ask for a lower price on a radar system to detect ballistic missiles.[87]

Kushner's business activities in China have drawn scrutiny for mixing government with business.[88][89][90] Kushner's investments in real estate and financial services have also drawn controversy for conflicts of interest.[91][92] In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that he had failed to disclose all required financial information in his security clearance applications, including that he owes $1 billion in loans.[33][93] During 2017, Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump made $82 million in outside income at the same time that they served as senior White House advisors.[94] In March 2020, the Associated Press reported that Kushner had sold stakes in a firm that had benefitted from the same Opportunity Zone tax breaks that Kushner pushed for as a senior White House advisor.[95]

In a statement, Abbe Lowell, Kushner's lawyer, admitted that Kushner used private e-mail for official White House business. No classified or privileged information was used on this account. During the campaign for the 2016 presidential election, Trump repeatedly criticized his opponent Hillary Clinton for her personal e-mail usage in her role as Secretary of State.[96]

In an HBO/Axios interview released in June 2019, Kushner denied that President Trump was a racist. When asked whether birther conspiracy theories about President Obama (which Trump pushed extensively for a number of years) were racist, Kushner did not answer, saying instead twice, "Look, I wasn’t really involved in that."[97][98] In the interview, Kushner spoke of his own family's immigration history: "It's a great reminder of how great this country is."[98] In the same interview, he defended the Trump administration's decision to drastically reduce the number of refugees accepted by the United States (the lowest level in 40 years).[99]

Dedication ceremony of the Embassy of the United States in Jerusalem, May 2018

Kushner was a strong supporter within the Trump administration for the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act (FIRST STEP ACT, H.R. 5682) which President Trump signed into law in December 2018.[100][101][102][103]

Trump put Kushner in charge of brokering peace in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that Kushner had no foreign experience or experience in the Middle East.[104][105][106] On August 24, 2017, Kushner traveled to Israel to talk to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu[107] (with whom Kushner has longstanding personal links and family ties, causing Palestinians to distrust him[108][109]). He then traveled to Palestine to meet President Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to restart a peace process in the Middle East.[107]

Donald Trump formally unveiled a plan authored by Kushner in a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 28, 2020; Palestinian representatives were not invited.[110] In an interview, Kushner said he had "been studying this now for three years", and that he had "read 25 books on it, I've spoken to every leader in the region, I've spoken to everyone who's been involved in this."[111] The plan has been characterized as requiring too few concessions from the Israelis and imposing too harsh requirements on the Palestinians.[112] Both the West Bank settlers' Yesha Council[113] and the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan: the former because it envisaged a Palestinian state,[113] the latter arguing it is too biased in favor of Israel.[114]

Kushner, Vice President Mike Pence and Peter Navarro during a coronavirus update briefing on April 2, 2020

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Kushner was an influential advisor to President Trump, and shaped the administration's actions.[115][116][117][118] Early on during the outbreak, Kushner advised Trump that the media was exaggerating the dangers of the coronavirus outbreak; at the time, Trump downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus.[119] Kushner helped write the Oval Office address that President Trump gave to the nation on 11 March 2020, along with Trump's far-right advisor Stephen Miller.[120] The Washington Post wrote that the address that Kushner, who had "zero expertise in infectious diseases and little experience marshaling the full bureaucracy behind a cause", helped write was "widely panned".[116] During the address, Trump inaccurately said "all travel from Europe" would be prohibited, and that the travel prohibitions would apply to goods.[121] The speech caused markets to plunge, as White House aides had to clarify what the actual policy was. European leaders said they were blindsided by the address.[121] The speech set off panic among Americans abroad who had to scramble to learn whether they could return back to the United States and under what circumstances; this created chaos at airports in Europe and the United States.[122] In the address, Trump blamed Europeans and the Chinese for the virus, describing the virus as a "foreign virus".[123]

Kushner also helped put together a 13 March Rose Garden event where Trump falsely claimed that Google was "quickly developing" a website that could help test people for coronavirus.[116][118] Trump also overstated a project intended to set up testing sites across parking lots across the United States, taking the state and federal health care workers who oversee the project by surprise.[116] On 30 March 2020, The Atlantic reported that a website that Trump had said would help Americans to diagnose themselves and direct them to a nearby coronavirus testing site in a 13 March press conference had been a project between the government and Oscar Health, a company that Kushner had ties with. Kushner's brother, Joshua, co-founded and owns Oscar Health, and Kushner himself was a partial owner of the firm before joining the White House. The website was quickly scrapped.[124]

According to The Washington Post, numerous rudimentary initiatives proposed by Kushner interrupted the work of other government officials who were seeking to manage the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic.[115] The New York Times reported that one way that Kushner was seeking advice on how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak was to ask his brother's father-in-law, a physician, for recommendations. The physician then proceeded to crowdsource advice on a Facebook group for physicians.[117]

In April 2020, Kushner made a rare public appearance, when he in the White House briefing room defended the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic.[127] In response to requests by state and local governments that the federal government distribute medical supplies to the states, Kushner said, "The notion of the federal stockpile is that it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use."[127] The Strategic National Stockpile page on the Public Health Emergency website was retconned on the same day to reflect this new interpretation of its mission.[128]

Kushner's appointment as Trump's senior advisor in the White House in January 2017 was questioned on the basis of a 1967 anti-nepotism law which forbids public officials from hiring family members, and explicitly one's son-in-law, in agencies or offices they oversee.[129] The law was passed in response to President John F Kennedy's decision to appoint his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general in 1961.[130] However, on January 20, 2017, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion stating the anti-nepotism law does apply to appointments within the White House,[131][132] after Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick claimed the 1967 law does not apply to the White House because it is not an 'agency'.[133] Kushner was sworn in on January 22, 2017[134] and was given the office which is physically the closest to the Oval Office.[135]

Kushner and Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Iraqi Defence Minister Erfan al-Hiyali in Baghdad on April 3, 2017

On January 18, 2017, immediately after his appointment as senior advisor to President Trump, Kushner requested Top Secret security clearance,[136] using "Standard Form 86 (SF86): Questionnaire for National Security Positions".[137][138] The request omitted dozens of pertinent contacts with foreign officials, including the meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov.[136] Failure to disclose pertinent contacts can cause security clearances to be declined or revoked, and an intentional failure to disclose can result in imprisonment.[139] Kushner's lawyers said that the omissions were "an oversight",[140] and that "a member of [Kushner's] staff had prematurely hit the 'send' button" before the form was completed.[137]

By July 2017, Kushner had resubmitted his SF86, this time disclosing contacts with foreign nationals.[139] This was the first time that government officials were made aware of the June 2016 Trump campaign–Russian meeting and Kushner's role in it.[139]

On September 15, 2017, Carl Kline, the director of the personnel security office within the Executive Office of President Trump, recorded Kushner as having an interim Top Secret/SCI security clearance.[141] Kushner and his wife were among at least 48 officials granted interim clearance giving them access to sensitive compartmented information (SCI): detailed accounts of intelligence sources and methods.[142][143]

On February 27, 2018, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly downgraded Kushner's interim security clearance to "secret" status, along with other White House staffers working with interim security clearances.[144][145][146] White House sources said that part of the reason Kushner had not yet been granted permanent security clearance was that he was under investigation by Robert Mueller.[147]

Kushner finally received permanent Top Secret security clearance on May 23, 2018.[148][149] In January 2019, Trump told The New York Times that he had not intervened to grant Kushner's security clearances.[141][150] On February 8, 2019, Kushner's wife Ivanka also denied that Trump had intervened to grant her or Kushner's security clearances.[150][151][152] However, on February 28, 2019, CNN (citing three anonymous sources) and The New York Times (citing four anonymous sources) reported that in May 2018 Trump ordered Kelly to grant Kushner a top-secret clearance, which Kelly contemporaneously documented in an internal memo. Reportedly, this is the first time a U.S. President has intervened in such a way.[147]

Kushner's contacts with Russian officials have come under scrutiny as part of the larger federal investigation into Russian interference in the election.[153] Kushner has said he had four meetings with Russians during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition, and that none of those Russian contacts were improper.[154]

In June 2016, an agent of Emin Agalarov reportedly offered Donald Trump Jr., Kushner's brother-in-law, compromising information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government if he met with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin.[155] A meeting took place on June 9, 2016, and included Kushner, Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort, who was then chairman of the presidential campaign, who met with Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower.[156] According to Rinat Akhmetshin, who was also present at the meeting, Veselnitskaya claimed to have evidence of "violations of Russian law by a Democratic donor", and that the "Russian lawyer described her findings at the meeting and left a document about them with Trump Jr. and the others".[157] The Democratic National Committee cyber attacks were revealed later that week.[155]

Between April and November 2016, Kushner had two undisclosed phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak.[158] (In May 2017, Kushner's attorney Jamie Gorelick told Reuters that Kushner had participated in "thousands of calls in this time period" and did not recall any with Kislyak.[158]) In December 2016, Kushner met with Kislyak.[136] That month, U.S. intelligence officials who were monitoring Kislyak reportedly overheard him relaying to Moscow a request from Kushner to establish a "secret and secure communications channel" with the Kremlin using Russian diplomatic facilities. Kislyak reportedly was "taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate – a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team".[159][160]

Also in December 2016, Kushner met with Sergey N. Gorkov, a trained Russian spy who then headed Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned bank.[136][161][162] Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that Kushner met with Gorkov briefly as part of his role in the transition, and as a diplomatic conduit to the State Department.[163] However, VEB has stated that Gorkov met with Kushner on a private matter concerning his family's real estate corporation, Kushner Companies, even though VEB has been under international sanctions since July 2014.[164]

In July 2017, Kushner appeared before both the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed session as part of their investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.[165] He also released a public statement.[166] In October 2017 the Senate Judiciary Committee requested numerous documents from Kushner. Kushner's attorneys gave the committee many documents on November 3, but the committee followed up on November 16 with a request for many additional documents it said had not been produced.[167]

In early November 2017, Kushner was interviewed by investigators from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office. Reportedly the interview focused on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.[168] On December 1, Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI, as part of a plea bargain. Bloomberg reported that Kushner is most likely the "senior member of the Trump transition team," mentioned in Flynn's plea documents, who is said to have ordered Flynn to contact Russia.[169]

President Trump, joined by Kushner and Netanyahu behind, signs the proclamation recognizing Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, March 2019

Mueller is investigating meetings between Trump associates including Kushner and George Nader, an emissary representing the crown princes of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. In August 2016, Nader offered help to the Trump presidential campaign.[170] In December 2016, Nader attended a New York meeting between the United Arab Emirates officials and Kushner, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.[171] Mueller is also investigating Kushner's possible ties to Qatar, Israel and China.[172]

The transcript of Kushner's interview with FBI investigators was not publicly released in January 2020 as ordered by a federal judge, as the Justice Department stated it required a security review by an unnamed intelligence agency.[173] The transcript was released on February 3, redacted nearly in its entirety.[174][175]

After his appointment as Senior Advisor to Donald Trump (in January of 2017), Kushner resigned as head of his family’s real-estate firm, Kushner Companies, and partially divested himself of some of its assets, including his stake in 666 Fifth Avenue. However, he didn't actually sell off his assets or set up a blind trust with outside management. Instead, he transferred ownership of some of his assets to his brother and to a trust overseen by his mother. The New York Times reported that Kushner managed to retain "the vast majority of his interest in Kushner Companies. His real estate holdings and other investments are worth as much as $761 million.”[176] Disclosures he was required to make show that Kushner still receives millions of dollars a year in income from rent collected by his assorted real estate portfolio.[177]

After her father was elected president, global sales of Ivanka Trump merchandise surged.[178] On April 6, 2017, the same day that Kushner and Ivanka dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife at a dinner hosted by the President at Mar-a-Lago, the Chinese government provisionally approved three new trademarks for the Ivanka Trump brand[179] giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s second-largest economy.[180]