A Man for All Seasons

What’s not to like. A young man, born into real estate wealth. A close-knit family where investments and business are shared decisions. A Harvard grad. Millionaire many times over. Married to the beautiful daughter of a sitting president of the United States. Entrusted by the President himself as a close advisor, personal representative to the Middle East of the President himself and architect of the ultimate solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Also the architect of immigration and prison reform. The wondrous and obviously deeply talented, educated and business savvy, Jared Kushner.

So let’s start with his illustrious and very wealthy family,blessed with a litany of questionable business practices that seemed to exemplified by the pinnacle of scandalous achievement, the arrest and conviction of the family patriarch, “Charles Kusher, [who in 2005] was jailed for tax evasion and witness tampering, among other crimes [spending 18 months in federal prison]. The press has also kept a close watch on the Kushners’ company, sounding the alarm on any possible conflicts of interest for Jared…

“Kushner Companies describes itself as a ‘diversified real estate organization.’ Kushner senior built up most of his wealth in New Jersey, but when Jared took control of the company, he sold off most of those holdings to buy 666 Fifth Avenue, an office tower in Manhattan, for a record-setting $1.8 billion. According to kushner.com, ‘[the company's] national reach consists of more than 20,000 multifamily apartments, as well as 13 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Illinois.’ Notable properties include the historic Puck Building, a late 19th-century landmark in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan, and the famed Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower building in Brooklyn.

“But the 666 building has since become a lightning rod for controversy. The company struggled to find tenants for the space and pay off their debt on the structure, and in 2016, began seeking investors for a bold new plan: to raze the existing building, and replace it with a new $7.5 one. Kushner Companies was nearing a deal with Chinese company Anbag and Hamad Jassim Al-Thani, a billionaire and former Qatar Prime Minister when the plan fell through amid criticism of Jared Kushner’s potential conflicts of interest, per the New York Times. In August of 2018, Kushner Companies announced that Brookfield Asset Management had taken a 99-year lease on 666.

“The organization has also been subject to multiple investigations. In 2018, Kushner Companies confirmed that the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn had subpoenaed information regarding its involvement in a program that allowed foreigners to invest $500,000 in exchange for fast-track U.S. residency and possible citizenship.” TownandCountryMag.com, July 25th. Slumlords selling U.S. citizenship?

Yet prison as a family legacy is hardly relegated to the patriarch. According to the March 9, 2017, theCrimson.com (Harvard), which examined available records, “Richard Stadtmauer, Jared Kushner’s uncle and the only other vice president of these corporations listed in publicly available documents, was convicted of felony tax fraud in 2009 and sentenced to 38 months in prison.” The Kushner family harbored serious animus against the federal prosecutors, a reality not lost on the President, years later.

But young Jared surely rose above those nasties, finding admission to Harvard University based on his excellence alone, right? Daniel Golden, author of the 2006 book, The Price of Admission, reveals otherwise. Writing for the November 18, 2016 theGuardian.com, Golden reminds us that his book “reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5m to Harvard University not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, which at the time accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of 20.)

“I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less-than-stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision… ‘There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,’ a former official at the Frisch school in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. ‘His GPA [grade point average] did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.’’’

Nevertheless, surely Jared redeemed himself as he toured the Middle East on behalf of the President, embracing the move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, abandonment of the long-held US policy of a two state solution, all as he cozied up to family friend, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (recently indicted in Israel for corruption), and buddied up with effective chief of state, Saudi Crown Prince Salman (accused by US and highly credible international agencies of orchestrating the murder of US-based Saudi journalist critic, Jamal Khashoggi). 

Jared’s Middle East proposal, which the Trump administration touted as the greatest and total solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict, was to pledge future money to placate the Palestinians with investment support. Money would buy their silence, cooperation, he was sure, and giving up freedom, autonomy and the right to be treated as a full citizen was something that Palestinians should easily embrace, right? The proposal was so absurd that as its principles were leaked, given the uniform and immediate global backlash, the total rejection by the Palestinian community, Kushner quietly pulled his proposal, scheduled for formal presentation to the world, and placed it into the “do not open… ever” bin. Dead on arrival. Kushner’s notion that he and the United States could function as the mediator to that festering Israel-Palestinian debacle was also completely rejected by the Palestinian leadership. His attempts to transform the U.S. immigration and prison systems have met with equal waves of accomplishment.

With so much success, it is little wonder that the President believes that Jared is the right man for his next appointment. Nick Visser, writing for the November 25th Huffington Post, explains: “President Donald Trump has made Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, the point person on issues related to the long-promised wall along the southern border with Mexico, giving him wide authority to convene meetings and allocate resources in order to get swaths of the structure built by the next election, The Washington Post reported Monday.

“The Trump administration has pledged to build 450 miles of new wall along the border before the end of next year in hopes of galvanizing the president’s base. The wall has become a signature focus of Trump’s tenure in the White House and a common rallying cry at his campaign events, but it’s also one of the most controversial issues. About 83 miles of border barrier has been built since his election in 2016, but almost all of that has been replacements of sections that had already been built. Construction on the first new section of wall got underway in Texas just last month.

“Kushner, one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, has come on board to make the president’s promises a reality and deliver where others have largely failed. The Post reports he now holds regular meetings with Cabinet-level officials and has pressed those within U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers to determine how they can move forward more quickly with the plans.

“But Kushner has already butted heads with some senior officials who say he doesn’t understand how difficult it is to build a structure that stretches nearly the entire length of the country’s southern border. The Post notes that much of the barrier that the administration has its eyes on will need to be built on private land, resulting in more than 800 filings to seize the property through eminent domain.” The only consolation for Mr. Kushner is that he is probably better qualified to do this job than other remaining Trump cabinet-level appointee. Too much good stuff! Well, the good news is: with Jared at the helm, those who oppose the wall are likely to get their way!

              I’m Peter Dekom, and the Trump administration has elevated cronyism and nepotism of the unqualified to a level never before witnessed in the entire, scandal-laden history of the United States.