Technically, it could not be correct to say that actually the entire funding cash that’s been flowing to Jared Kushner since he left the White Home has come from international sources, such because the governments he labored with whereas serving former President Donald Trump. The precise determine, as reported by The New York Instances on Tuesday, is “simply” 99 %, the overwhelming majority of the $3 billion raised to this point coming from authoritarian governments.
It’s an association – Kushner cashing in on relationships cast whereas his father-in-law was the president – that on the very least constitutes an look of impropriety. It is usually removed from the norm, consultants say.
In 2022, simply six months after leaving the White Home, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Kushner’s newly fashioned non-public fairness agency, regardless of misgivings among the many fund’s employees that Trump’s son-in-law had little related expertise. Kushner has additionally accepted investments from state-managed funds in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Kushner, who gained’t rule out serving in a second Trump administration, has in flip invested a few of that cash in a international mission, final month saying a $500 million actual property mission in Serbia on the similar website the place Trump himself had beforehand sought to construct a luxurious lodge.
J. Robinson West, a former Reagan administration official who spoke to the Instances, stated there have been plenty of “uncommon” issues about Kushner’s post-White Home enterprise dealing.
“Lots of people depart authorities and develop into lobbyists or they begin consulting corporations,” he stated. However nobody that he recalled had ever acquired a lot cash, so quick, from international governments – particularly not ones they labored with whereas working for a president.
“I feel it’s honest to say that the spirit of public service and George Marshall and Robert Lovett — these days are previous,” he stated.
Steve Rattner, an financial analyst who himself leads an funding agency, commented that he is by no means seen a U.S. non-public fairness agency so depending on international money. “That is extraordinary — unprecedented — I’ve by no means seen something prefer it,” he informed MSNBC.