Revelation Watch V

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," and one of Donald Trump's closest advisors, even more so than Trump's four adult children. 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.

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. 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." 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."

Senior Advisor to the President

Kushner during the April 2017

Syrian missile strike operation

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

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. His wife sat in on a meeting between her father, then-president-elect Donald Trump, and Japan's prime minister, Shinzō Abe.

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", where Kushner reportedly has been focusing on improving governmental efforts with regard to Veterans Affairs, information-technology contracting, and the opioid crisis. 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.

Kushner's business activities in China have drawn scrutiny for mixing government with business. Kushner's investments in real estate and financial services have also drawn controversy for conflicts of interest. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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." In the interview, Kushner spoke of his own family's immigration history: "It's a great reminder of how great this country is." 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)

Controversies

Allegations of nepotism

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. The law was passed in response to President John F Kennedy's decision to appoint his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general in 1961. 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, after Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick claimed the 1967 law does not apply to the White House because it is not an 'agency'. Kushner was sworn in on January 22, 2017 and was given the office which is physically the closest to the Oval Office.

His security clearance

Kushner and Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Iraqi Defence Minister Erfan al-Hiyali in Baghdad on April 3, 2017On January 18, 2017, immediately after his appointment as senior advisor to President Trump, Kushner requested Top Secret security clearance, using "Standard Form 86 (SF86): Questionnaire for National Security Positions". The request omitted dozens of pertinent contacts with foreign officials, including the meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov. Failure to disclose pertinent contacts can cause security clearances to be declined or revoked, and an intentional failure to disclose can result in imprisonment. Kushner's lawyers said that the omissions were "an oversight", and that "a member of [Kushner's] staff had prematurely hit the 'send' button" before the form was completed.

By July 2017, Kushner had resubmitted his SF86, this time disclosing contacts with foreign nationals. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

Kushner finally received permanent Top Secret security clearance on May 23, 2018. In January 2019, Trump told The New York Times that he had not intervened to grant Kushner's security clearances. On February 8, 2019, Kushner's wife Ivanka also denied that Trump had intervened to grant her or Kushner's security clearances. 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.

Kushner purchase and financing (1.8 billion) or 18 divided by 3x3 = 666

Front of 666 Fifth Avenue

In January 2007, Tishman Speyer, along with the German investment firm TMW, announced the sale of the building to Kushner Properties for $1.8 billion (about $2.2 billion in 2018), at the time the highest price ever paid for an individual building in Manhattan. The sale was the third blockbuster deal involving Tishman in two years. In 2005 Tishman bought the MetLife Building for $1.72 billion (about $2.2 billion in 2018), setting the previous record. A month before the 666 sale, Tishman bought Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion, which was the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history.

The sale was unusual for several reasons. First, the Kushner Companies had traditionally focused on smaller multi-family residential properties in New Jersey and their only other Manhattan holding was the Puck Building, purchased in the 1990s. However, after Charles Kushner was jailed in 2005 for 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, Jared Kushner took over the family company at just 26 years old and sought to make a bigger name for himself by expanding into Manhattan. In a symbol of the company's shift in focus, Jared Kushner moved its headquarters into the building from Florham Park, New Jersey. Second, the building had no official ask price and was never officially marketed for sale but instead Rob Speyer personally called potential suitors to let them know the building might be up for grabs.

Third, this was an unconventional price for such a short building by New York standards; standing at just 483 ft (147 m), 666 Fifth is not among the top 150 tallest buildings in New York City. But, after getting beat out on the $1.5 billion purchase of 1211 Avenue of the Americas by Beacon Capital Partners in 2006, Jared Kushner was adamant about not losing out on 666 Fifth Avenue and so offered an unprompted $1.8 billion in order to guarantee the success of his company's bid. Fourth, the majority of the deal was put together in less than a week, an unprecedentedly short time frame to conduct the necessary due diligence for such a major deal. Finally, Kushner put down just $50 million in equity and borrowed the remaining $1.75 billion from a consortium of lenders.

In order to pay for the building, Kushner secured a $1.215 billion CMBS senior loan from Barclays and UBS that was split into six different pari passu notes securitized by GE Capital and Wachovia. The loan had a term of 10 years and was interest-only for the entire term, meaning that Kushner would only have to pay the 6.353% interest rate. Additionally, Kushner obtained $535 million in mezzanine financing, split into a $335 million senior tranche and a $200 million junior tranche. Backing up the financing, Kushner obtained an appraisal valuing the property at nearly $3 billion, 75% more than the company had paid for the property just months earlier. According to New York real estate magazine The Real Deal, such a big gap between a building's purchase price and appraisal value is unheard of and the values are generally within 10% of each other, even during the commercial real estate bubble of 2005-2007.

The banks also expected Kushner to be able to more than double the building's office rents from $53.5 million per year to $118.6 million. Such aggressive values were necessary in order to keep the building's loan-to-value ratio (LTV) in a reasonable range since based on the purchase price of $1.8 billion, the $1.215 billion senior loan represented a 67.5% LTV. However, using the appraised value reduced the LTV to a more conservative 60.75%, making the CMBS seem safer to credit rating agencies. More worryingly, the building's in-place rents yielded a debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) of just 0.65x, meaning that the building's net cash flows could only pay for 65% of the senior loan's interest payments, before paying for the mezzanine loans, the senior loan's principal, or any returns to Kushner. If Kushner was unable to raise rents to the levels anticipated, the building would lose millions of dollars a year just in interest payments on the senior loan.