Tag: Prince Jared

I haven’t seen Jared Soninlaw Kushner in action before. It’s not an edifying spectacle.

Jared Kushner deflects when asked if he disapproves of Donald Trump's promotion of birtherism, saying he wasn't involved with it. @dctvny @hbodocs pic.twitter.com/D2wINVHLIx

— Axios (@axios) June 2, 2019

Have you seen Trump do or say anything racist, Mister Soninlaw?

Absolutely not. You can’t not be a racist for 69 years n then run for president and be a racist –

Let me stop you right there, Mister Soninlaw. Trump was not not a racist for 69 years. He very much was a racist during that time frame. He was raised racist by a racist landlord father who excluded black people from his rental properties. He said many racist things over those 69 years. He spent his own money to try to get the Central Park Five executed for a crime they had nothing to do with. He pretended to think Obama was born in Kenya. He wasn’t just a racist, he was a vocal, public, proud, frothing racist.

Was birtherism racist?

Look, I wasn’t involved in that.

I know you weren’t. Was it racist?

I wasn’t involved in that.

I know you weren’t. Was it racist?

Etc.

Any surprises? Is he smarter than we thought? Is there a moral core?

Nope nope and nope.

The Times on Prince Jared’s awesome scam to avoid paying federal income tax:

Over the past decade, Jared Kushner’s family company has spent billions of dollars buying real estate. His personal stock investments have soared. His net worth has quintupled to almost $324 million.

And yet, for several years running, Mr. Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser — appears to have paid almost no federal income taxes, according to confidential financial documents reviewed by The New York Times.

How? Via deduction for “depreciation.”

But the losses were only on paper — Mr. Kushner and his company did not appear to actually lose any money. The losses were driven by depreciation, a tax benefit that lets real estate investors deduct a portion of the cost of their buildings from their taxable income every year.

Every year? No matter what? But real estate values are going up in most places, not down.

In theory, the depreciation provision is supposed to shield real estate developers from having their investments whittled away by wear and tear on their buildings.

Excuse me??

Why? Why do we do that? Most of us don’t get to deduct anything for “wear and tear” so why do real estate developers?

I suppose the short yet complete answer is lobbying.

The law assumes that buildings’ values decline every year when, in reality, they often gain value. Its enormous flexibility allows real estate investors to determine their own tax bills.

And then use the money they save on taxes to buy the presidency and destroy everything.

The White House last year championed a sweeping revision of the nation’s tax laws that expanded many of the benefits enjoyed by real estate investors, allowing them to reap even larger deductions.

“The Trump administration was in a position to clean up the tax code and promised to get rid of some of the complexity that certain taxpayers use to their advantage,” said Victor Fleischer, a tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “Instead, they doubled down on those provisions, particularly the ones they have familiarity with to benefit themselves.”

Of course they did. There’s probably a deduction for eating two scoops of ice cream.

Don told Jared to fix up that whole Middle East peace thing, so Jared went to visit the Saudi “crown prince” aka hereditary future dictator Mohammed bin Salman aka MBS. You’ll never guess what he did when he got there.

When Kushner, Trump’s senior aide, made an unannounced trip to Riyadh last year, the Intercept — citing three sources — reported Wednesday, MBS told confidants after the meeting that Kushner had discussed Saudi leaders who are disloyal to the crown prince.

One person “who talks frequently to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati rulers” told the Intercept that MBS bragged to United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed that Kushner was “in his pocket.”

The Intercept also reported that Kushner’s information on Saudi royals not loyal to MBS was contained in the President’s Daily Brief, a document presented to the President every morning. Kushner lost his access to the document earlier this year when new security clearance rules were instituted.

So if I’m reading that correctly Kushner shared classified intelligence with MBS about people perceived to be “disloyal” to that same MBS.

And did MBS act on this shared intel? Why yes, yes he did.

Eager to consolidate power and rein in the sprawling orbit of the Saudi royal family and aristocratic class, Prince bin Salman listened intently and a week later cracked down on corruption in the country by imprisoning more than 200 members of the country’s ruling class inside the confines of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, charging each with corruption.

Hereditary corrupt real estate wheeler-dealer gets classified intelligence via his hereditary corrupt real estate wheeler-dealer daddy-in-law and shares it with hereditary ruthless future dictator who uses it to imprison more than 200 relatives.

Awesome. It just couldn’t get any better than that.

A spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer says “Some questions by the media are so obviously false and ridiculous that they merit no response. This is one.” So he’s not responding. Very lawyerly.

The Kushner Company is in the spotlight.

The New York City Council and a local tenants rights group announced on Monday that they would launch a joint investigation into the real estate company formerly headed by Jared Kushner, a top aide to President Donald Trump, over alleged falsification of building permits.

The group and a city councilman said at a press conference that they had uncovered evidence that Kushner Companies, the developer headed by Kushner until early last year, had falsified more than 80 work permits involving 34 buildings in New York.

…

Aaron Carr, executive director of Housing Rights Initiative, said the company failed to disclose the existence of rent-stabilized units in buildings, a move that allowed it to skirt tighter oversight during renovations and harass tenants.

For what? For More Money. For the lofty goal of getting rid of non-rich people and replacing them with rich people in order to make Lots More Money. For the one and only goal the Trump-Kushner axis seems to have, which is piling up the millions.

That’s all this is about. It’s about Kushner-Trump’s taste for expensive real estate and concomitant distaste for everything and everyone below that level. Money is their only value, their only morality. People who don’t have massive amounts of it are Losers.

Following the news of the announcement, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said Kushner should step down from his White House role as senior adviser.

“This is fraud,” Lieu tweeted Monday. “Jared Kushner was head of Kushner Cos at the time. Kushner should have his downgraded security clearance stripped right now until investigation completed. He should be nowhere near the White House.”

…

Ritchie Torres, who chairs a city council committee on public housing, said at the press conference that there was a direct link between the falsification of permits and the decline in affordable housing in New York.

The rich get richer and the poor get evictions.

Kushner sleaze unveiled:

When the Kushner Cos. bought three apartment buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood of Queens in 2015, most of the tenants were protected by special rules that prevent developers from pushing them out, raising rents and turning a tidy profit.

But that’s exactly what the company then run by Jared Kushner did, and with remarkable speed. Two years later, it sold all three buildings for $60 million, nearly 50 percent more than it paid.

Now a clue has emerged as to how President Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s firm was able to move so fast: The Kushner Cos. routinely filed false paperwork with the city declaring it had zero rent-regulated tenants in dozens of buildings it owned across the city when, in fact, it had hundreds.

Of course it did. Isn’t that just Trumpworld all over – fuck the underlings who aren’t rich enough to buy Luxury Condos™, we’re here to make even more millions so we’ll lie to the city and get them all bounced out. They can live ten to a room like the good old days.

“It’s bare-faced greed,” said Aaron Carr, founder of Housing Rights Initiative, a tenants’ rights watchdog that compiled the work permit application documents and shared them with The Associated Press. “The fact that the company was falsifying all these applications with the government shows a sordid attempt to avert accountability and get a rapid return on its investment.”

And to do it by shafting hundreds of people.

In all, Housing Rights Initiative found the Kushner Cos. filed at least 80 false applications for construction permits in 34 buildings across New York City from 2013 to 2016, all of them indicating there were no rent-regulated tenants. Instead, tax documents show there were more than 300 rent-regulated units. Nearly all the permit applications were signed by a Kushner employee, including sometimes the chief operating officer.

Ticking that box left them free to hassle sitting tenants out.

“It was noisy, there were complaints, I got mice,” said mailman Rudolph Romano, adding that the Kushner Cos. tried to increase his rent by 60 percent. “They cleaned the place out. I watched the whole building leave.”

Mailman, you see. Prince Jared doesn’t trouble himself about people like mail carriers and their need for somewhere to live.

Another tightening of the noose:

Federal investigators are scrutinizing whether any of Jared Kushner’s business discussions with foreigners during the presidential transition later shaped White House policies in ways designed to either benefit or retaliate against those he spoke with, according to witnesses and other people familiar with the investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has asked witnesses about Kushner’s efforts to secure financing for his family’s real estate properties, focusing specifically on his discussions during the transition with individuals from Qatar and Turkey, as well as Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates, according to witnesses who have been interviewed as part of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 election.

They’re talking to some Turkish nationals. Also…

Qatari government officials visiting the U.S. in late January and early February considered turning over to Mueller what they believe is evidence of efforts by their country’s Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country, four people familiar with the matter said. The Qatari officials decided against cooperating with Mueller for now out of fear it would further strain the country’s relations with the White House, these people said.

Kushner Companies repeatedly tried to get Qatar to “invest” in 666 Fifth Avenue, with no luck. Prince Jared had a meeting with a former prime minister of Qatar, who had also been in talks with Kushner Companies about 666 about “investing” in 666, which also fell through. Then…

In the weeks after Kushner Companies’ talks with the Qatari government and HBJ collapsed, the White House strongly backed an economically punishing blockade against Qatar, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing the country’s support for terrorism as the impetus. Kushner, who is both President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key adviser, has played a major role in Trump’s Middle East policy and has developed close relationships with the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

That look horrendous even if there is in fact no connection. How does it look if there is a connection? I’m not sure we have the vocabulary for it.

Some top Qatari government officials believe the White House’s position on the blockade may have been a form of retaliation driven by Kushner who was sour about the failed deal, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Saudi Arabia and UAE have long had a rivalry with Qatar.

The White House, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have said the blockade against Qatar is in retaliation for their government’s support for terrorism.

Well they’re not going to say it’s because of that non-forthcoming loan, now are they.

While Qatari officials were in Washington last month, they came armed with materials they said showed the UAE has worked against their government, including information involving Kushner, people familiar with the matter said. They debated for days whether to turn it over to Mueller but felt their meetings with U.S. officials had been productive and so decided against it, these people said.

Kushner Companies’ discussions with the Qatari government about funding did not advance, the people familiar with the matter said. After the company’s pitch during a meeting in April 2017, the government decided not to invest. The Intercept first reported Friday that Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, had held the meeting with the Qataris.

Oh him – the convicted felon. So that’s reassuring.

During the transition Kushner had been negotiating with Chinese investors to secure needed financing for the Fifth Avenue building, including at least one meeting with the chairman of Anbang Insurance Group, but Anbang later said publicly that it would not invest in the building.

Nothing at all corrupt about that, no indeed.

Kushner could face legal exposure if Mueller’s team determines he is “making decisions in the White House that ultimately have an impact on his own financial position,” said Ron Hosko, who retired in 2014 as head of the FBI’s criminal division.

Under U.S. law, it is illegal to for any government employee, including someone being considered for an advisory role, to render advice based on financial interest.

Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about possible conflicts of interest in a December letter to Kushner, asking whether he used his upcoming position at the White House to secure financing for the indebted property.

This is so sickening.

The Times dropped this one late yesterday: Kushner’s Business Got Loans After White House Meetings.

Oh come ON, one wants to say. That obvious? That unabashed? That unsubtle? Just – hi guys, loan my company some money and I’ll make it worth your while?

Early last year, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House.

Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris.

The job never materialized, but in November, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.

Apollo doesn’t normally make such huge loans. That one is three times the size of their average loan.

It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.

That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Mr. Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, according to people briefed on the meeting. The two men talked about financial and trade policy and did not discuss Mr. Kushner’s family business, one person said.

And who are we to doubt it?

“This is exactly why senior government officials, for as long back as I have any experience, don’t maintain any active outside business interests,” said Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration and, before that, a lawyer for the Air Force and Navy during Republican and Democratic administrations. “The appearance of conflicts of interest is simply too great.”

The White House said talk to Kushner’s lawyer, the lawyer said talk to the spokes, the spokes said nothing happened it was all innocent go away.

Christine Taylor, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said Mr. Kushner’s White House role had not affected the company’s relationships with financial institutions. “Stories like these attempt to make insinuating connections that do not exist to disparage the financial institutions and companies involved,” she said.

Oh fuck off. Conflicts of interest are a real category, and the conflicts of interest that Trump and Kushner have are about the biggest anyone could have. They are in a position to grant favors to people who can reciprocate (Trump loves that word, remember), and that would be corrupt, so we don’t want them to be able to grant favors to people who can help their businesses make more $$$$. That’s standard operating procedure, it’s ethics 101.

Mr. Kushner’s tenure in the White House has been dogged by questions about conflicts of interest between his government work and his family business, in which he remains heavily invested. Mr. Kushner steers American policy in the Middle East, for example, but his family company continues to do deals with Israeli investors.

Thank god Trump is here to clean up, right?

Federal ethics regulations restrict government employees from participating in some matters that involve companies with which the official is seeking “a business, contractual or other financial relationship that involves other than a routine consumer transaction.”

Mr. Fox, the ethics expert, said Mr. Kushner risked violating the regulations in his meetings with Citigroup and Apollo executives.

“Why does Jared have to take the meeting?” he asked. “Is there not somebody else who doesn’t have these financial entanglements who can brainstorm freely with these folks?”

It’s not as if Jared is some irreplaceable genius, now is it.

All of the executives who met with Mr. Kushner have lots to gain or lose in Washington.

Apollo has sought ways to benefit from the White House’s possible infrastructure plan. And its executives, including Mr. Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in the tax overhaul that was making its way through Washington last year.

Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, is heavily regulated by federal agencies and, like other financial companies, is trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.

But that $325 million loan to Kushner Inc is pure coincidence and not a bribe sweetener at all.

Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that the White House championed. Mr. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.

PURE COINCIDENCE.

Updating to add:

Attention media friends: in covering the latest Kushner revelations, please make clear that he DID violate the conflicts rules. At a minimum, 5 CFR 2635.502– that is unquestionable, and would be a firing offense if his wife’s daddy were not POTUS. https://t.co/M7R7GePUlC

— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) March 1, 2018

Jennifer Rubin says Kushner should be anxious at the fact that Trump isn’t shielding him.

It was never clear why Kushner reportedly requested more access to intelligence materials than any other White House official outside the National Security Council, but whatever the reason, the power that comes with access to information has now been sharply curtailed. (“Friday’s downgrade represents a significant loss of access for Kushner, who routinely attended classified briefings, received access to the President’s Daily Brief intelligence report and issue[d] requests for information to the intelligence community.”) The move also raises questions as to why Kushner wasn’t granted a permanent clearance (Was it Russia? His ongoing financial woes? Omissions on his request for a top-secret clearance?).

The fact that he provided multiple opportunities for blackmail?

“The fact that a compromised individual who is a huge potential blackmail target had consistent access to our nation’s most closely held secrets for more than a year is just unconscionable,” Max Bergmann, a former State Department official now at the Center for American Progress, tells me. “If this was any other administration, Kushner would have been out long ago. Anyone else would not be allowed back in the White House.”

If it were any other administration he would never have been in in the first place. Seriously; he wouldn’t. Bill Clinton shouldn’t have given an important policy job to his wife, because nepotism, but she did at least have relevant credentials and education, and she did not have massive debts and complicated financial dealings in multiple foreign countries. Kushner is both unqualified and dirty.

Finally, once more we see the downside of Trump’s failure to abide by norms that have guided presidents of both parties (e.g., don’t hire unqualified* relatives for top posts). We also see the consequences of Republicans’ refusal to take their oversight responsibilities seriously with regard to massive conflicts of interest for the entire Trump clan. In the end, Republicans’ indulgence of Trump and his family may prove to be the president’s undoing. Had Trump at the outset been forced to separate himself from his financial holdings and require Kushner to do the same, Trump might have avoided what we now have — the appearance of a corrupt family more akin to a Third World autocracy than a democratic government.

*or qualified

Trump should have been told not to hire any relatives from the outset. That’s all the more true because they’re so corrupt plus unqualified, but it would be true anyway. Also what we have is not the appearance of a corrupt family but rather the reality.

Just in case Kushner’s day wasn’t already bad enough yesterday…there was the little matter of violating the Hatch Act. CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, issued a press release.

Presidential adviser Jared Kushner appears to have violated the Hatch Act, according to a complaint filed today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) with the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC).

Kushner likely violated the Hatch Act in a press release sent out by the Trump presidential campaign this morning. Kushner gave a quote about the the president’s reelection campaign and is identified as “Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President, and President Trump’s son-in-law.” The Hatch Act prohibits the use of official title for political purposes.

“The rules are clear that government officials aren’t allowed to use their positions for campaign activity,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. “He may have a close relationship with the president, but the rules still apply to Jared Kushner.”

The Trump administration has shown a pattern of Hatch Act violations. Following previous CREW complaints, both Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino Jr. were reprimanded for Hatch Act violations. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway also received ethics counseling following a CREW complaint over her violation of federal ethics regulations for using her official position to promote Ivanka Trump products.

“At this point, it is abundantly clear that there is a total disregard for ethics in this administration,” Bookbinder said. “There have been far too many violations, and this pattern cannot be allowed to continue.”

The entitled way they simply ignore all the rules gets on my nerves in a big way.

Well exactly; of course they have.

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties, and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Naturally; why wouldn’t they? This is one reason it’s such a baaaaaaaaad idea to put an ignorant property-haver like Jared Kushner in charge of foreign affairs simply because he’s married to Daddy’s princess. He’s corrupt, he’s having trouble making payments, he knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy – of course people are talking about manipulating him.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

No biggy. At least it wasn’t Monaco, right?

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

…

H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report. The issue of foreign officials talking about their meetings with Kushner and their perceptions of his vulnerabilities was a subject raised in McMaster’s daily intelligence briefings, according to the current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Oh good god.

Within the White House, Kushner’s lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him, the current and former officials said.

They could also have legal implications. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has asked people about the protocols Kushner used when he set up conversations with foreign leaders, according to a former U.S. official.

Officials in the White House were concerned that Kushner was “naive and being tricked” in conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel, said one former White House official.

I’m sure that’s only because they like his sweet little innocent face.