The Kushner company is being squeezed to death by scion Jared Kushner’s $1.8 billion dollar gamble on what has turned out to be real estate’s greatest white elephant. And just as his Atlantic City bankruptcy forced Donald Trump to seek creative financing when the banks shut him out, the Kushner Company has been courting potential moneymen from China to … Qatar.
Jared Kushner’s father met with Qatar’s finance minister three months after President Trump’s inauguration, a New York City session at which funding for a financially troubled real estate project was discussed, the company acknowledged Sunday.
Jared’s dad would be Charles Kushner, who’s back to the family business after a relaxing 14-month stint at a federal prison in Alabama.
[Jared Kushner] stood by his father during the investigation, however, and afterwards when Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 counts of making illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. The last charge involved a particularly nasty incident where Charles Kushner send his sister Esther a tape showing her husband William Schulder with a prostitute hired by Kushner to discredit his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities.
It’s an all-around charming family. So of course, they agreed to meet with Qatar, even though accepting huge amounts of financing from a country embroiled in Middle East unrest would be more than a little problematic. But Charles Kushner says he understood that going in.
“I was invited to a meeting,” he said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Before the meeting, Kushner Companies had decided that it was not going to accept sovereign wealth fund investments. We informed the Qatar representatives of our decision and they agreed. Even if they were there ready to wire the money, we would not have taken it.”
Kushner Companies had a meeting with Qatar finance minister, just to be polite, and wouldn’t have accepted money if he offered. That was in April 2017. So then what happened?
There’s something of a problem with the story of the Kushners’ position that they went to the meeting intending to turn down any offer of cash.
The meeting between Charles Kushner and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif al-Emadi was reported earlier this month by the online publication the Intercept. It said the meeting had been requested by Kushner.
The initial response to the story by the Kushner Companies was to lie about it. They denied meeting with anyone from the Qatari government. But now they’ve admitted to meeting with Qatari officials, but denied they meant to solicit funds.
So why did the Kushner Company ask for the meeting? They have a $1.2 billion loan that comes due in less than a year, and no one lined up to pay for it. Unless … they made other arrangements.
At the time of the meeting between the Kushner Companies and the finance minister of Qatar, Jared Kushner was already prepping to go with Trump on a Middle East trip. On that trip, Trump coordinated with Saudi Arabia and gave his tacit go-ahead to a blockade of Qatar.
Days after the summit, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, with Trump’s public support, revived their long-standing charges that Qatar was funding international terrorism, broke relations with the neighboring country and instituted an economic boycott.
And Jared also did some socializing while in Riyadh …
... Jared Kushner solidified his relationship with Salman’s son and heir apparent, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
This wasn’t Jared’s only trip to visit with bin Salman. He was back two months later on his own. Then, again in October, Jared Kushner went winging back to Saudi Arabia on an unannounced visit.
Kushner left Washington, D.C., via commercial airline on Wednesday for the trip, which was not announced to the public, a White House official told POLITICO. …
The White House official would not say who Kushner met with in Saudi Arabia. But he has cultivated a relationship with the crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, who, like Kushner, is in his 30s. Kushner arrived back in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night in time for a surprise birthday dinner for his wife, Ivanka Trump, at the Trump International Hotel.
And tomorrow, bin Salman pays a return visit.
There is, however, one area where Kushner has scored a win, which is placing a big bet on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, who only four years ago was an obscure Saudi prince and today is running the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Part of that “win” was the way that the United States stayed completely hands off both as the Saudis and the UAE closed down Qatari ports, and as bin Salman turned his relatives from princes to prisoners.
Two months ago, authorities arrested dozens of royals, businessmen and senior government officials as a part of a corruption crackdown. Those detained included the former head of the royal court, Khaled Al-Tuwaijri, and Saudi media mogul Waleed Al-Ibrahim.
The investigation is being overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was appointed head of a new anti-corruption committee hours before the arrests began November 4.
Trump and the Saudis bonded over their joint enemy: the free press.
It was hardly an accident that just days after Trump's triumphal trip, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began the blockade of their neighbor, the gas-rich kingdom of Qatar. The Saudis and Emirati ruling families loath Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV news channel.
While Jared and bin Salman bonded over … what, exactly? Had Jared obtained money from the finance minister of Qatar, then sat down to dine with the prince who was about to take over Saudi Arabia and lead it in a not-quite-cold war against it’s much smaller neighbor, it could have been awkward.
But as it turns out, the original report from The Intercept indicates that the Qataris were not interesting in putting their dollars behind Kushner’s crumbling company.
The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatar’s neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushner’s backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff.
There’s nothing like using U.S. foreign policy as an instrument of personal vengeance—and an object lesson.
Don’t be surprised if Jared Kushner finds that financing, either from bin Salman … or from the next country that understands that paying Jared Kushner is the price of peace.