“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Trump Hardcover – March 19, 2019
Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition.
Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of
Jared Kushner and Ivanka
Trump Hardcover – March 19, 2019
· Hardcover: 304 pages
· Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 19, 2019)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 1250185947
· ISBN-13: 978-1250185945
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class
Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
Trump Friends and Family Cleared for Millions in Small
Business Bailout
Beneficiaries of the PPP included a lettuce farming venture
backed by Trump’s son, Kushner companies, and a dentist who golfs with the
president. The figures were released after a lawsuit by several news
organizations, including ProPublica.
by Jack Gillum, Isaac Arnsdorf, Jake Pearson and Mike Spies
July 6, 8:35 p.m. EDT
President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump taking
questions about the Paycheck Protection Program with Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin on April 28. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses
of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Update, July 7, 2020: This story has been updated to include
a statement from Peter Febo, chief operating officer of Kushner Companies.
Businesses tied to President Donald Trump’s family and
associates stand to receive as much as $21 million in government loans designed
to shore up payroll expenses for companies struggling amid the coronavirus
pandemic, according to federal data released Monday.
A hydroponic lettuce farm backed by Trump’s
eldest son, Donald Jr., applied for at least $150,000 in Small Business
Administration funding. Albert Hazzouri, a dentist frequently spotted at Mar-a-Lago, asked for a
similar amount. A hospital run by Maria Ryan, a close associate of Trump lawyer
and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, requested more than $5 million. Several companies connected to the president’s son-in-law
and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, could get upward of $6 million.
There’s no ban on businesses connected to Trump’s orbit
receiving money. Democrats added a provision to the CARES Act excluding
government officials and their family members from receiving some bailout
funds, but not those from the PPP.
The firms sought funding under the Paycheck Protection
Program, one of the Trump administration’s sweeping pandemic relief efforts.
Created in late March by the CARES Act, it allowed small businesses —
generally, those with fewer than 500 employees — to apply for loans of up to
$10 million. The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll, rent, mortgage
interest or utilities.
The program paid out $521 billion to almost 4.9 million companies
in an effort to provide relief for small businesses and their workers amid the
sudden economic shock brought on by the pandemic. As applications slowed after
the initial rush, $132 billion remained unspent, and Congress voted to extend
the program.
After resisting releasing the names, the government bowed to
pressure from critics and watchdog groups. On Monday, the administration
disclosed only those entities that were approved by banks for loans over
$150,000. A consortium of news organizations, including ProPublica, has sued
the administration under the Freedom of Information Act to release the full
list of recipients and loan details.
The program has been criticized for including some loan
recipients, particularly large, publicly traded companies, and for favoring
wealthier businesses that had existing relationships with banks. In some cases
customers could essentially skip the line. Overall, however, many economists
praise the PPP for having gotten billions to companies relatively quickly.
The New York Observer, the news website that Kushner ran
before entering the White House and is still owned by his brother-in-law’s
investment firm, was approved for between $350,000 and $1 million, data shows.
A company called Princeton Forrestal LLC that is at least 40 percent owned by
Kushner family members, according to a 2018 securities filing, was approved for
$1 million to $2 million. Esplanade Livingston LLC, whose address is the same
as that of the Kushner Companies real estate development business, was approved
for $350,000 to $1 million. The company’s Chief Operating Officer, Peter Febo,
responded, “Several of our hotels have applied for federal loans, in accordance
with all guidelines, with a vast majority of funds going to furloughed
employees.” The loans to Kushner-related companies were first reported by The
Daily Beast.
In addition, up to $2 million was approved for the Joseph
Kushner Hebrew Academy, a nonprofit religious school in Livingston, N.J.,
that’s named for Jared Kushner’s grandfather and supported by the family.
In April, a bank approved a loan of between $150,000 and
$350,000 for the Pennsylvania dental practice of Albert Hazzouri, who golfs
with Trump and frequents Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Palm
Beach, Florida. In 2017, Hazzouri used his access to the president to pass him
a policy proposal on club stationery on behalf of the American Dental
Association. He addressed the note to Trump “Dear King.”
Hazzouri also leaned on his relationship with Trump in an unsuccessful
bid to obtain a dentistry license to expand his business in Florida. Hazzouri
didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment Monday.
Firms tied to the president’s children also stand to benefit
from the program. A small indoor lettuce farming business applied for funds
between $150,000 and $350,000, SBA data show. Trump Jr. had invested in Eden
Green Technology, a vertical farming company just south of Dallas, whose
co-chair, Gentry Beach, was a Trump campaign fundraiser.
Trump Jr. purchased his shares as Beach sought Trump
administration funding for his other global business interests, ProPublica
first reported in December 2018.
The company has said Trump Jr. played no role in running Eden
Green and was brought in during “U.S. friends and family fundraising efforts.”
A spokesman, Trevor Moore, said that the company “followed the standard
procedure” in applying for the PPP loan and that “receiving it has provided for
the preservation of 18 jobs.” It’s not clear how much Trump Jr. invested or whether
he’s been paid any dividends since purchasing his shares. Neither Trump Jr. nor
a spokesman returned a message seeking comment.
CORONAVIRUShttps://www.propublica.org/article/rent-is-still-due-in-kushnerville?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=feature
Government stimulus checks and a temporary ban on evictions are
tiding over the suddenly jobless residents of housing complexes owned by Jared
Kushner’s company. But what will happen when both soon run out?
May 21, 12:10 p.m. EDT
Whispering Woods, a housing complex near Baltimore owned by
the Kushner Companies. (J.M. Giordano for ProPublica)
·
SERIES:CORONAVIRUS
The U.S. Response to COVID-19
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom
that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
It was the day after April rent was officially due — April 6 —
and Kevin Maddox was officially late. The week before, he had lost both of his
jobs within a few days of each other. Both were at food-service warehouses. “My
job is to get the food to the restaurants, and if no one’s going to the
restaurants, then I’m out of a job,” Maddox said. So he filed for unemployment
and now stood outside his small rental row house just beyond the Baltimore city
line watching his young daughter as she rode around in her plastic car.
His spirits were relatively high, all things considered. Both
employers told him they’d take him back, as soon as things opened back up. That
maybe helped explain why he still wore the cap from one of the warehouses:
Maines Paper & Food Service Inc.
“This is tough,” he said. “It’s tough. But I’m hoping it’ll be
over in a month. They say it’s supposed to be over in a month.”
More than a month later, it is not over. And there have been few better places to track the economic unraveling and social stress of the pandemic lockdowns than the large housing complex where Maddox lives, Dutch Village, and a handful of other complexes in the Baltimore area owned by the same company. That’s partly because these complexes are home to exactly the sort of workers who have been most affected by the crisis: both those whose jobs are likeliest to have been eliminated — casino workers, food-service workers, hotel housekeepers — and those whose jobs are likeliest to have been plunged into at-risk overdrive — Amazon warehouse workers, delivery drivers, nursing home aides, cleaners.
Here, there is nary a telecommuting professional to be found.
Here, there is no escaping the upheaval. The need in the complexes is so great
that one of them, Cove Village, has become a main distribution spot for free
food from the Baltimore County school department: Every Monday through
Thursday, a truck arrives at Cove Village and parks on Driftwood Court from 11
a.m. to 1 p.m. Families line up for a breakfast, lunch and snack, with an extra
set given out on Thursday to tide kids over on Friday.
There is another reason to track the
upheaval in these complexes. It happens that they are owned by the company led
until not long ago by the person now tasked with overseeing the federal
government’s response to the crisis: Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President
Donald Trump. The Kushner Companies, in which Jared still holds a large
financial stake, has come under scrutiny in recent years for its litigious pursuit of tenants who
allegedly owed back rent or broke leases, and for the poor conditions of many
of the units. It was even the subject of a Netflix television documentary that aired just as the lockdowns first went into effect.
But the pandemic has now thrust
Kushnerville, which consists of nine complexes in inner-suburban Baltimore
County, some with as many as 1,000 units each, into unfamiliar territory. For
years, tenants have learned to dread the aggressive tactics of their landlord:
late-payment notices and court summons slapped on their doors, late fees and
“court costs” and attorney fees added to bills, and, in some cases, even threats of jail time. Disclosure of those tactics led to a class-action lawsuit and a lawsuit by the state attorney general. The Kushner entities have denied wrongdoing. (A judge this
year denied the plaintiffs’ bid to form a class, which is on appeal;
the attorney general’s suit is ongoing.)
Now, though, that whole apparatus of intimidation has been
disabled by the temporary ban on evictions. Without that final stage of the
process for forcing payment, the rest of the apparatus has fallen away. There
are, for the time being, no late fees, no “court costs,” no summonses on doors.
And even without that threat, many tenants are managing to make their rent, for
now, thanks partly to enhanced unemployment benefits and the cash payments in
the CARES Act.
Instead, everyone is waiting for the next phase, when the
safety-net payments ebb, when the evictions resume and when the jobs do or do
not come back, while contending with the eternal problems at Kushnerville:
maintenance breakdowns, mice infestations and water leaks. And bringing this
waiting into particularly stark relief here is the fact that whatever comes
next — the strength of the nation’s recovery — will depend partly on what can
be accomplished by Jared Kushner himself, in his new role, 40 miles down the
road.
The same week as Kevin Maddox was watching his daughter play
outside, another young man was out walking at another Kushner-owned complex 15
miles to the east, Whispering Woods. The man, who did not want his name used,
was heading to the unit where he lives with his fiancée and their child, from
the one where her mother and father live, up the block. Both units were late on
April rent. His fiancée’s father was supposed to go back to work on a crew that
repaves city roads, but then the pandemic came and shut the work down. He and
his fiancée, meanwhile, both had to give up their jobs in the food-service
department of a nursing home 20 miles away. The local bus system was cut back
so far that they couldn’t get there anymore, and the day care for their child
had also shut down.
They had received the same form letter from the Kushner
Companies’ property management arm, Westminster Management, that other tenants
in the complexes had gotten. It stated that rent was still due on the 5th of
every month, but that there would be no late fees for the time being. The
company, which declined to comment (or to respond to a list of tenant
complaints cited in this article), would also no longer charge an extra fee for
paying rent online.
The young man regarded the promised leniency warily. “They act
like they care about us so much, but they really don’t,” he said. “They still
want the money.” Not that he had any particular animus against the complex’s
owner. He did not even know who that was. “Who Jared Kushner?” he said.
Nearby, Steve Williams was walking his dog. He and his wife, who
had lived there for two years, had also been unable to pay on time because he
hadn’t been working after having a couple of heart attacks and her hours
working as a file clerk had just been cut way back as a result of the pandemic.
He had also gotten the letters promising leniency from the management office
and was also wary of how much stock to put in them, given management’s record.
“I’ve been a renter for 20 years, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.
“I’ve never seen someone get put out so fast as around here. Thirty days, and
you’re gone.” With evictions on hold for the time being, though, he was more
worried about an immediate concern: bedbugs. They had been getting worse of
late, he said.
The more time one spent at the
complexes, the more it seemed as if every other person you talked to had lost
their job or had their hours greatly reduced. And that was representative of
broader trends. The Wall Street Journal reported that nearly 40% of households earning less than $40,000 a
year — a category that many in Kushnerville fall into — experienced at least
one job loss in March, double the rate in households earning between $40,000
and $100,000 and triple that of those earning more than $100,000.
A few at Kushnerville that week were feeling more secure. Siera
Ford was moving mattresses into her family’s new unit at another Kushner-owned
complex, Harbor Point Estates. She was moving into a new unit because a ceiling
pipe had burst at her family’s former unit at Harbor Point, destroying many of
their belongings. This was the second time this had happened in their five
years there, but, she said, at least the managers moved fairly quickly to get
them into a new unit. “They do accommodate,” she said.
Ford had already paid her April rent and was confident of being
able to pay on time in future months, as well, given her in-demand work as a
delivery driver. “My job is secure,” she said. “I’m Amazon.”
For one Kushnerville family, the bar on evictions had not come
in time, and their plight would only worsen as the economic downturn
accelerated. Jennifer and Bob Scrimger had been living at Whispering Woods
since 2015 with four children. She worked as a waitress at Chili’s and he did
freelance computer-repair work. As time went on, they said, they started having
more maintenance problems in their unit, especially water leaks, mold and mice.
Troubles came to a head late last summer and fall, when water, apparently from
the outdoor HVAC unit, began flowing into the downstairs, ruining the carpet
and threatening the furniture. The Scrimgers put the furniture outside to
protect it and management threatened to fine them for doing so. The mold
worsened throughout the house, as did the mice, who were getting in through a
hole under the kitchen sink.
All the troubles started taking a toll on Jennifer’s mental
health. She started having panic attacks and stuttering, something she’d never
done before, and she wondered whether the conditions in the house had a role in
her getting bacterial infections on her feet. Her performance at Chili’s
started to decline; she had always ranked high in the customer ratings, which
were posted on a big board for all to see, but she now fell to second from
last. She eventually contacted a Baltimore County inspection officer, who
produced a list of needed repairs for Westminster Management, among them
repairing a hole in the living room ceiling, replacing the water-damaged
kitchen cabinet, remediating mold in a bedroom and addressing the mice
infestation.
But by that point, the company had already begun eviction
proceedings. The Scrimgers had been paying their rent — $917, plus about $50 in
monthly water fees — but the eviction letter from the company’s law firm
accused them of violating their lease by not letting a workman into the house,
for not keeping the house in “neat, clean, good and sanitary condition,” and
for having people in the house who weren’t on the lease. Jennifer Scrimger
disputed the first claim. She took great offense at the second. “They kept
telling me it was my dirt,” she said. “I can’t make black dirt form on the
ceiling. I don’t have that capability.” And she said that management had full
documentation on which kids lived in the house. More likely, she said, the
family was being punished for complaining about the house’s problems.
Regardless, on Jan. 15 the Scrimgers were out for good, trailed
by a nearly $2,000 bill of repair charges that Westminster said they owed. And
for lack of alternative solutions, they settled on a less-than-ideal fallback:
moving in with Bob’s ex-girlfriend, the mother of three of his children, in her
trailer in a mobile-home park near Whispering Woods, hard by the Washington-New
York Amtrak line. They paid the ex-girlfriend, who works the early-morning
shift at a convenience store, $800 per month to have them. It was a very
crowded fit: four kids and four adults, including the ex-girlfriend’s infirm
and elderly father. The Scrimgers had talked about saving up to buy their own
trailer in the mobile-home park, since this arrangement was clearly not
sustainable. “It’s a double-wide, but yeah, it is tight,” Bob said.
And then came the shutdowns, which
put the home-buying dreams on hold. On March 15, Jennifer worked her last shift
at Chili’s, which switched to takeout only. Bob’s computer-repair work grew
scarce. Jennifer filed for unemployment benefits, but Maryland’s online
application system buckled under the heavy demand. To try to get through, Jennifer would call on the phone, early
on Sunday mornings. Their $1,200-per-person CARES Act payment never arrived,
they said; $1,450 was claimed to cover Bob’s child-support debts for another
child, and the rest became hung up in bureaucratic limbo.
Meanwhile, Whispering Woods still remains very present in the
family’s life. They are in close touch with their friends there, and Jennifer
still keeps the binders in which she had kept all of her many communications
with Westminster Management and the county inspector, to defend herself against
a Kushner claim for the alleged back charges or perhaps provide evidence for
her own legal claim against the company.
One evening in mid-April, they sat out in front of the trailer,
as Jennifer flipped through the binders. Her daughter, Lilly, who has since
turned 5, came outside to ask what she was doing, and she told her she was
talking about their house.
“About what house?” Lilly said.
“The house we used to live in, Boo-Boo.”
“When are we going to live there?”
“We’re not going to move back.”
“Into a new house?”
“We’re working on it.”
Two weeks later, on April 29, Jared
Kushner praised the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic as a “great success story” on “Fox and Friends.” “The federal government rose to the
challenge and this is a great success story and I think that that’s really what
needs to be told,” he said. Kushner predicted a swift economic comeback. “May
will be a transition month. ... I think you will see by June, a lot of the
country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country is
really rocking again,” he said.
The next day, April would conclude with more than 20 million
lost jobs and the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The day
before that interview, the country had topped 1 million in confirmed
coronavirus cases.
On April 28, another tenant stood outside her unit at Whispering
Woods worrying how she was going to make May rent in a few days. The tenant, a
woman in her 30s who also didn’t want her name used, had seen her hours at a
medical billing company cut in half. She was one of the many to suffer from the
ills of the health care industry, which despite the surge in demand for
COVID-19 treatment was seeing virtually all of its other business fall away.
“They can’t fire me, because they still need me, but they can’t afford me, so
we’re stuck,” she said. Her Honda Civic had recently been repossessed, so to
get to the office she took Ubers or caught rides with friends. She had started
applying for a second job: Walmart, Amazon, Domino’s. She, too, had gotten the
leniency letters, but she was worried how long that would last. “We don’t got a
voice here,” she said. “It’s Trump’s son-in-law that takes care of everything,
so no matter you do, you’re going to get to get beat out in court.”
There were some signs that the company’s forbearance was wearing
thin. A few days earlier, a management-office employee had marched down to the
home of the asphalt-crew worker to ask when they were going to pay their $1,200
April rent. His wife told the management employee that they were paying it week
by week, a few hundred dollars at a time, just like they always did, even
though doing so had incurred late fees before the crisis. And, as she later
recounted, she demanded to know what would come after the eviction ban was
lifted. “When I give you all this money, are you going to turn around and put
me out?’ That’s what I asked her. ‘When all of this lifts up, are you going to
be trying to put people out?’ If you’re going to hound us like that, you don’t
want us here.”
The management office had also been clashing with Alejandra
Polanco, 44, who had decided to move out after eight years in the complex
because she was tired of all the leaks and other maintenance troubles in her
unit. After she had informed them of her plan to leave, she said, the
management office had retroactively charged her $200 more rent for each of the
three past months, saying that her prior year’s lease had expired. It was tough
for her to make the extra payments, since the seafood restaurant she worked at
was now takeout only, but she was planning on paying them. “I don’t want to
hurt my credit,” she said.
Also scrambling for their next rent payment, $950, were the two
young men who now lived in the Scrimgers’ former unit. They had been in the
same job-training class at Goodwill the year before. One, Corey Demery, 27, had
stayed on for a job there, driving a forklift at $11 per hour, but had lost the
job as result of the crisis. The other, Delvonte Warren, 26, had a job tryout
just before the crisis hit at a Floor & Décor warehouse, but nothing came
of it. He was thinking of getting a job at Taco Bell. His girlfriend, who also
lived with them, was due with their first child in two months. “It’s a hard
time for it to happen,” he said.
Around the country, the vast
majority of tenants in complexes like Kushnerville were managing to get their
April rent paid as the month neared its close. The National Multifamily Housing
Council reported that as of April 26, 91.5% of renters in professionally
managed buildings had made at least partial payments of that month’s rent, down
only slightly from 95.6% in the same month the year before. The CARES cash and
unemployment benefits, which the federal government had enhanced by $600 per
week, had served their purpose, at least for those who had made it through the
balky application system for the latter.
It was hard to see, though, how the
rent-payment rates would hold up in months to come. For many residents of
Kushnerville, the CARES money was already out the door. The enhanced
unemployment benefits were due to expire at the end of July. And in Maryland,
the bar on eviction was due to be lifted once the governor declared an end to
the coronavirus state of emergency. (There is also a separate federal ban on
evictions in buildings backed by federally financed mortgages, which applies to many Kushner complexes. That ban lasts until July 25.)
Among those left grappling with the
new eviction calculus as the calendar rolled into May was Shayla Milton. She
had given birth to her second child a few weeks earlier, was on maternity leave
from her job at one of the two big local Amazon warehouses and was trying to
decide whether to go back when the leave ended in a few weeks. Her husband
worked for Amazon, too, at the other warehouse, but he had stopped going to
work because he was so worried about the risk of catching the coronavirus —
there had been several cases at his warehouse. Amazon had for a while allowed
workers to skip work without penalty, but that policy had ended May 1. Milton had, while on maternity leave, started driving for Uber
and was considering sticking with that for now. It seemed somehow easier to
control her exposure to the coronavirus there, with the windows open and
constant sanitizing of her car, than in the high-pressure whirlwind of the
warehouse.
Looking around her, Milton wondered what would become of her
neighbors after the crisis passed. “Once that eviction ban is lifted,” she
said, “I really think they’re going to kick everyone out that hasn’t been
paying their rent.”
But she and her family were soon going to move out of
Kushnerville, she hoped, to buy a small house. She had gotten tired of the
water leaking through the roof and the constant mice. “We’re supposed to leave
in a few months,” Milton said. “I can’t wait.”
Even a moment that should have offered
hope, or at least a respite — the first full day of a partial relaxation of
local stay-at-home orders on May 16 — only brought horror in Kushnerville.
Police responding to a nuisance call in Cove Village after a cook-out shot and
killed a 29-year-old local man with a gun. (The police portrayed it as
self-defense; one witness told The Baltimore Sun the man had dropped the gun and fled.)
Two days later, there were still traces of the violence along
the curb: disposable medical gloves and plastic wrappers for defibrillator
electrodes and bandages. Bullet holes were visible in one door frame.
Deja Byrd, who works in a warehouse for the spice manufacturer
McCormick’s, heard the shooting that night but thought at first that it was
firecrackers. When she learned later what had in fact happened, she was not
entirely surprised. “Their patience is wearing thin,” she said. Did she mean
the patience of the police or residents? “Everyone,” she said.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class
Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer
has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he
exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the
STOCK Act. In Extortion,
he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And
in Clinton Cash,
he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI
investigation.
Now he explains
how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever
before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into
multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank
opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family
members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America
can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of
American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald
Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey
transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made
by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and
lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of
the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and
profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because
people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively
new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent
political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies
public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more
accountable government.
Kushner, Inc.: Greed.
Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Hardcover – March 19,
2019
·
Hardcover: 304 pages
·
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
(March 19, 2019)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1250185947
·
ISBN-13: 978-1250185945
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the
self-styled Prince and Princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to
extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented and
dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward
digs beneath the myth the couple has created, depicting themselves as the
voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency, and reveals that Jared and
Ivanka are not just the President’s chief enablers: they, like him, appear
disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics. They are entitled inheritors of
the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance, and an insatiable
lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the
democracy of the United States.
Ward follows their
trajectory from New Jersey and New York City to the White House, where the
couple’s many forays into policy-making and national security have mocked
long-standing U.S. policy and protocol. They have pursued an agenda that could
increase their wealth while their actions have mostly gone unchecked. In Kushner,
Inc., Ward holds Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump accountable: she unveils
the couple’s self-serving transactional motivations and how those have
propelled them into the highest levels of the US government where no one, the
President included, has been able to stop them.
ANN COULTER - SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS
PARASITIC FAMILY
One cautionary example is
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard,
according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys
Its Way into Elite Colleges,
was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his
Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely
because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost
of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff?
Priceless.
THE TRUMP
FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE
REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in
penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other
charities.”
Coulter:
All Hail President Javanka!
ANN COULTER
10 Apr 2019111
2:52
While other
reporters waste their time examining Donald Trump’s public statements,
interviewing his high school classmates and poring over legal filings,
investigative reporter Vicky Ward has produced the definitive book on our
current president.
For example, did you know our president got breast implants in
high school (Ivanka claimed she was just “curvy”), bought his way into Harvard
(Jared is even dumber than you thought), and together have no books in their
New York apartment? (Some dispute that there are no books,
citing “a few art books” or “decorator-curated books.”)
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Trump’s loyal campaign manager had been with
him through the “Mexican rapists” speech, Macy’s dumping Trump’s ties, the
“McCain isn’t a war hero” controversy, the Muslim ban, the “hand size”
embarrassment, and on and on and on. But when all was said and done and Trump
was still cruising to victory, Jared and Ivanka walked in and delivered an
ultimatum to Trump: “It’s Corey or us.”
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
One
cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket
into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission:
How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his
father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard
degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his
daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a
brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff?
Priceless.
A VERY STABLE GENIUS
“This taut and terrifying
book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic
tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The
New York Times
Read
an excerpt:
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
THE BOOK
Washington
Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig
and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners,
provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency
with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I
alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July
21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland,
promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the
subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in
chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal,
investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake
Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were
patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the
Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president
himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power,
even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig
and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell
of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on
scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the
Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the
forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia
investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately
successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have
felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge
what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of
history.
This
peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished
and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a
reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic
nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled
to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart
as a nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment