The entire Trump administration has operated under a cloud of scandal for essentially its entire existence, with the focus varying between the president and some of his closest advisers, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner’s position in the White House recently took yet another turn for the worse when, in the midst of scrutiny over how the clearances are granted, he lost his top secret security clearance and thus had his access to information key to his work restricted.
Besides that issue, his family business has also faced rounds and rounds of scrutiny. Some of the most recent scrutiny is over whether or not meetings that Kushner had last year with the heads of a pair of financial firms broke federal regulations. Those firms loaned a combined total of over half a billion dollars to Kushner Companies after their leaders met with Kushner, and they’re hardly the only source of concern when it comes to the family business’ activities.
During an interview with The New York Times, Kushner’s father Charles insisted that his family has done nothing wrong, the publication reports.
He commented:
‘Go knock yourselves out for the next 10 years. We didn’t do anything wrong.’
Whether or not Charles Kushner can be considered credible when it comes to the question of whether or not his family did anything wrong is certainly an open question. He pleaded guilty back in 2004 to 18 counts of witness retaliation, tax violations, and false statements to the Federal Election Commission. The “witness retaliation” comes from the fact that he employed a prostitute as a part of “a scheme to entrap and retaliate against his brother-in-law,” as The Times puts it, over his brother-in-law’s cooperation with a federal investigation into his businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cVUzdA4J9k
In other words, the elder Kushner would fit in Trump World nicely.
The Times reports that Charles Kushner was allegedly fond of the idea of being the recipient of a presidential pardon thanks to his son’s proximity to the commander-in-chief, but that hasn’t happened. Now, he says that he would “prefer not to have a pardon” because of the possibility of being dragged further into the limelight because of it.
What has taken place in Kushner World in the absence of a pardon for Charles is the advent of an array of inquiries into the family’s finances. For instance, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are reported to be investigating the terms on which the German Deutsche Bank refinanced a Kushner-owned property in Times Square in 2016. Those same prosecutors have been looking into whether or not any laws were broken when Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jared’s brother, seemingly used her brother’s position in the White House as leverage while seeking Chinese investors for the family business.
Concurrent to these issues, the Kushner family business is facing its own array of problems, such as what’s so far an inability to find funding to keep their 666 Fifth Avenue building afloat.
The Kushners are hardly alone in facing ethical questions while being in the president’s orbit. For instance, on a slightly different level, VA Secretary David Shulkin was recently pushed out after it came out that he’d been milking his position for personal benefits.
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