THINGS ALWAYS GO WELL FOR THE TRUMP – KUSHNER CRIME FAMILY OF
LOOTERS, LIARS AND CHEATS.
She compared the situation to press reports that
businesses and associates connected to Jared Kushner and his family were
approved to receive millions from the Paycheck Protection Program.
U.S. taxpayers could be responsible for paying back much of the nearly $850 million in Freddie Mac financing if Kushner Companies defaults and its properties drop significantly in value
The Kushners’ Freddie Mac Loan Wasn’t Just Massive. It Came
With Unusually Good Terms, Too.
Despite a history of underperforming properties, Kushner
Companies received a near-record sum from a government-backed lender. Should it
default, taxpayers could be forced to foot much of the bill. The agency says
politics played no role.
by Heather Vogell
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses
of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
After the news broke in May of last year that
government-sponsored lending agency Freddie Mac had agreed to back $786 million
in loans to the Kushner Companies, political opponents asked whether the family
real estate firm formerly led by the president’s son-in-law and top adviser,
Jared Kushner, had received special treatment.
“We are especially concerned about this transaction because
of Kushner Companies’ history of seeking to engage in deals that raise
conflicts of interest issues with Mr. Kushner,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren,
D-Mass., and Tom Carper, D-Del., wrote to Freddie Mac’s CEO in June 2019.
The loans helped Kushner Companies scoop up thousands of
apartments in Maryland and Virginia, the business’s biggest purchase in a
decade. The deal, first reported by Bloomberg, also ranked among Freddie Mac’s
largest ever. At the time, the details of its terms weren’t disclosed. Freddie
Mac officials didn’t comment publicly then. Kushner’s lawyer said Jared was no
longer involved in decision-making at the company. (He does continue to receive
millions from the family business, according to his financial disclosures,
including from some properties with Freddie Mac-backed loans.)
Freddie Mac packaged the 16 loans into bonds in August 2019
and sold them to investors. But Kushner Companies hadn’t finished its buying
spree. Within the next two months, records show, Freddie Mac backed another two
loans to the Kushners for an additional $63.5 million, allowing the company to
add two more apartment complexes to its portfolio.
A new analysis by ProPublica shows Kushner Companies received
unusually favorable loan terms for the 18 mortgages it obtained with Freddie
Mac’s backing. The loans allowed the Kushner family company to make lower
monthly payments and borrow more money than was typical for similar loans, 2019
Freddie Mac data shows. The terms increase the risk to the agency and to
investors who buy bonds with the Kushner mortgages in them.
Listen to the Episode
Moreover, Freddie Mac’s estimates of the Kushner properties’
profitability — a core element of any decision to back a loan — have already
proven to be overly optimistic. All 16 properties in the firm’s biggest loan
package delivered smaller profits in 2019 than Freddie Mac expected, despite
the then-booming economy. The loan for the largest property lagged Freddie
Mac’s profit prediction by 31% last year.
U.S. taxpayers could be responsible for paying back much of
the nearly $850 million in Freddie Mac financing if Kushner Companies defaults
and its properties drop significantly in value. Freddie Mac said that’s unlikely.
But during the last real estate crash, taxpayers had to bail out the agency and
its larger sibling, Fannie Mae, to the tune of $190 billion as the agencies
plunged into the government equivalent of bankruptcy. (The agencies ultimately
repaid the money and more.)
The involvement of Jared’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer adds
to questions about whether the family sought to exploit its political
influence. Meyer, who shares her brother’s slight build, porcelain features and
dark chestnut hair, lobbied Freddie Mac in person on behalf of Kushner
Companies in February last year, a timeline of the deal obtained by ProPublica
shows. She has previously drawn criticism for invoking her brother’s name while
doing Kushner Companies’ business.
In a statement, Freddie Mac said it does “not consider the
political affiliations of borrowers or their family members.” It called
ProPublica’s analysis “random, arbitrary and incomplete” and asserted that the
Kushner loans “fit squarely within our publicly-available credit and
underwriting standards. The terms and performance of every one of these loans
is transparent and available on our website, and all the loans are current and
have been consistently paid.”
A spokesperson for Kushner Companies did not respond to calls
and emails seeking comment. Emails to the White House seeking Jared Kushner’s
comment were not returned.
There’s no evidence the Trump administration played a role in
any of the decisions, and Freddie Mac operates independently. But Freddie Mac
embarked on approving the loans at the moment that its government overseer, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, was changing from leadership by an
Obama administration appointee to one from the Trump administration, Mark
Calabria, Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief economist. Calabria, who was
confirmed in April 2019, has called for an end to the “conservatorship,” the
close financial control that his agency has exerted over Freddie Mac and Fannie
Mae since the 2008 crisis.
The potential for improper influence exists even if the Trump
administration didn’t advocate for the Kushners, said Kathleen Clark, a law
professor at Washington University specializing in government and legal ethics.
She compared the situation to press reports that businesses and associates
connected to Jared Kushner and his family were approved to receive millions
from the Paycheck Protection Program. Officials could have acted because they
were seeking to curry favor with the Kushners or feared retribution if they
didn’t, according to Clark. And if Kushner Companies had wanted to avoid any
appearance of undue influence, she added, it should have sent only nonfamily
executives to meet with Freddie Mac. “I’d leave it to the professionals,” Clark
said. “I’d keep family members away from it.”
The Freddie Mac data shows that Kushner
Companies secured advantageous terms on multiple points. All 18 loans, for
example, allow Kushner Companies to pay only interest for the full 10-year
term, thus deferring all principal payments to a balloon payment at the end.
That lowers the monthly payments but increases the possibility that the balance
won’t be paid back in full.
“That’s as risky as you get,” said Ryan Ledwith, a professor
at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, of 10-year
interest-only loans. “It’s a long period of time, and you’re not getting any
amortization to reduce your risk over time. You’re betting the market is going
to get better all by itself 10 years from now.”
Interest-only mortgages, which notoriously helped fuel the
2008 economic crisis, represent a small percentage of Freddie Mac loans. Only
6% of the 3,600 loans funded by the agency last year were interest-only for a
decade or more, according to a database of its core mortgage transactions.
Kushner Companies also loaded more debt on the properties
than is usual for similar loans, with the loan value for the 16-loan deal
climbing to 69% of the properties’ worth. That compares with an average 59%,
according to data for loans with similar terms and property types that Freddie
Mac sold to investors in 2019, and is just below the 70% debt-to-value ceiling
Freddie Mac sets for loans in its category. “What we generally have seen from
Freddie and Fannie,” said Andrew Little, a principal with real estate
investment bank John B. Levy & Company, “is they will do 10 years of
interest-only on lower-leveraged deals.”
Loans right at the ceiling are “not very common,” Little
said, adding that “you don’t see deals this size that commonly.”
Meanwhile Freddie Mac and its lending partner overestimated
the profits for the buildings in the Kushners’ 16-loan package by 12% during
the underwriting process, according to the agency’s data. Such analysis is
supposed to provide a conservative, accurate picture of revenue and expenses,
which should be relatively predictable in the case of an apartment building.
But the level of income anticipated failed to materialize in
2019, financial reports show. The most dramatic overstatement came with the
largest loan in the deal, $120 million for Bonnie Ridge Apartments, a
960-apartment complex in a suburban part of Baltimore. In that case, realized
profits last year were 31% below what Freddie Mac had expected.
“That’s definitely a significant amount,” said John Griffin,
a University of Texas professor who specializes in forensic finance and has
studied mortgage underwriting. He co-authored a recent paper highlighting as
worrisome loans in which projected profits exceeded actual profits by 5%. “It’s
a problem when underwritten income is inflated or overstated,” he said. “That
is a key metric that determines the safety of the loan.”
Griffin’s paper found that 28% of all loans examined had
projected profits that were 5% or more greater than what the properties
actually earned in their first year. Some instances of underperformance could
be caused by bad luck, the paper acknowledged, but “such situations should be
relatively rare.” Yet in the case of Freddie Mac’s estimates in the Kushner
deal, 13 of the original 16 loans met or exceeded the 5% threshold — many by a
considerable amount.
Freddie Mac’s Profit Projections for Kushner Properties
Turned Out to Be Optimistic
The agency’s underwriting analysis, central to any decision
to back a loan, is meant to be conservative. But Freddie Mac’s expectations for
the Kushner properties’ 2019 profits ended up being 12% too high. Individual
loans whose underwritten profits were at least 5% higher than actual profits —
the threshold University of Texas professor John Griffin deemed “material,” or
significant, in a paper he co-authored — are highlighted in red.
Source: Freddie Mac data. Note: Realized profits are for
2019.
Freddie Mac said it followed normal underwriting guidelines
in assessing the Kushner buildings, including securing an independent appraisal
and looking at historical property performance. It said investors who examined
the riskiest portion of the debt also expressed no concerns.
If the underwriting had been on target, and reflected lower
expectations, the loans would still have been within Freddie Mac’s credit
parameters, data shows. But the resulting analysis would have suggested the
Kushner Companies has a smaller cushion to sustain its loan payments. It could
also have affected the interest rate the company pays. Thinner margins
accompanied by relatively high rates of debt provide less wiggle room if the
properties, or the economy, run into trouble. As Kushner Companies has seen
before, that wiggle room can disappear quickly.
________________________________________
Freddie Mac’s main business has historically been buying
bundles of home loans from the lenders that originated them, then selling them
to investors as securities. The arrangement takes the debt off banks’ balance
sheets, freeing them to make more loans. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are
privately owned, but they have been financially backstopped by the federal
government and are required to meet goals for lending on affordable housing.
Single-home loans are still Freddie Mac’s primary business,
but since the 2008 economic crisis, the agency has greatly expanded its
financing of apartment complexes.
Apartment complexes have been the specialty of the Kushner
family, whose real estate holdings have spanned the mid-Atlantic and Midwest in
recent years, with thousands of units scattered across suburbia. The company
sold off 17,500 apartments in 2007, after the family’s patriarch, Jared’s
father, Charles Kushner, returned from prison for convictions on illegal
campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering.
After Jared became CEO in 2008, the company turned its
ambitions to high-profile commercial properties in New York City, a foray that
turned sour. In 2018, the company gave up control of its marquee $1.8 billion
building and headquarters, 666 Fifth Avenue, after being unable to keep up with
its loans. Another piece of prime Kushner Companies Manhattan real estate,
retail space in the old New York Times building near Times Square, was headed
for a potential default in 2019, and foreclosure. (The New York Times reported
in August that the foreclosure action was put off at the last minute, so
negotiations with a lender could continue.)
Kushner Companies eventually resumed its residential focus
and began bulking up its apartment portfolio. In the eight years before Trump
entered the White House, the company and its partners secured a total of $581
million in Freddie Mac financing, according to data from the firm Real Capital
Analytics first published by Bloomberg. By the end of 2018, Kushner Companies
had amassed 21,000 apartment units.
Some of those loans didn’t fare well. They included a series
of supplemental loans, or second mortgages, taken out on properties in Maryland
that Kushner Companies owned in partnership with others (the size of the
Kushner share was not clear). Landlords often use such second loans as a way to
extract large amounts of cash from their holdings.
A lender had originated 10 such loans to Kushner Companies
and its partners in 2015, and Freddie Mac planned to sell them to investors, or
securitize them, once the properties demonstrated income consistently high
enough to cover the debt payments. For four of the properties, however, profits
dipped in 2016, and two more were in little better shape. Freddie Mac still
hadn’t securitized the six loans, for $40 million, by inauguration day in 2017.
Mortgage industry experts say poor profits at underlying
properties can lead Freddie Mac to delay selling off the loans as bonds,
fearing they will be rejected by investors. By the time Freddie Mac offloaded
the last of Kushner’s second mortgages in April 2017, they had racked up
above-average lag times between their origination and securitization, compared
with other loans in their debt packages, data shows. (Freddie Mac said the wait
time was normal.)
Within 10 months of the sale of the loans to investors, one
of the complexes landed on the servicer’s watchlist for mortgages at a
heightened risk for default. Another soon followed, and another the year after
that. All 10 complexes, which were built in the early 1970s or earlier,
exhibited upkeep issues alarming enough to earn a flag in Freddie Mac data for
“deferred maintenance” problems. (A Freddie Mac spokesman said the issues
identified were almost all related to exterior asphalt and concrete, with one
instance of an exterior drainage system in need of repair.)
Read More
The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’
Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes
complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair,
humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out.
Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.
Rent Is Still Due in Kushnerville
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?
At one property, a representative of Kushner Companies and
its partners blamed residents of the nearby neighborhoods, who are primarily
Black and low-income, for its declining profits and a rash of evictions: “The
main driver is the client base in the area,” the servicer reported the borrower
as saying, Freddie Mac records show.
Kushner Companies had other problems, too. In
2017, ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis documented the company’s practice of
charging aggressive, and what some tenants’ lawyers called illegal, fees to
occupants of some of those complexes. Tenants also claimed Kushner Companies’
property management arm, Westminster Properties, at times neglected basic
repairs and allowed the property condition to deteriorate, including raw sewage
flowing out of one kitchen sink.
The complaints spurred a lawsuit filed in October 2019 by the
attorney general of Maryland, Brian Frosh. Frosh accused the management company
and its partners of charging “illegitimate fees” and having “rented apartments
and townhomes to consumers that are distressed, shoddily maintained, and have
conditions that can adversely impact consumers’ health and well being.”
(Westminster has defended its conduct in legal filings for the suit, which
remains active.)
________________________________________
Kushner Companies first approached Freddie Mac in August 2018
through Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, then abandoned its application without
explanation in mid-October of that year. Berkadia did not return messages
seeking comment.
In February 2019, Berkadia approached Freddie Mac again and
informed the agency that Kushner Companies wanted to move forward. It’s not
clear what explains the renewed interest. But two things had changed in the
interim. The rates on 10-year Treasury bonds had dropped, a circumstance that
typically fuels borrowing and the securitized lending that Freddie provides.
And the Obama appointee in charge of the FHFA was gone, leaving an interim
Trump appointee in place.
Six days after rekindling its interest, Nicole Kushner Meyer
and two Kushner Companies executives, President Laurent Morali and Chief
Operating Officer Peter Febo, met with Freddie Mac officials, along with
representatives of Berkadia and an advisory firm, documents show. The records
don’t say which Freddie Mac officials attended. The meeting covered the
“business plan for assets, track record and general overview of the Kushner
Companies.” Meyer followed up, documents say, sending multiple emails to a
senior Freddie Mac official, who was not identified.
Meyer has been serving as a principal at Kushner Companies
since 2015, according to her LinkedIn profile. She caused a stir in 2017, when
she invoked her brother on a trip to China to pitch potential investors for a
Kushner Companies development in Jersey City, New Jersey. The company was
seeking investors to participate in a government program known as EB-5, which
grants visas to foreigners who make high-dollar investments intended to create
jobs in struggling areas.
Freddie Mac said Meyer did not mention Kushner by name during
the meeting. The agency also said no one connected to the White House asked
that the deal be done.
But the political sensitivity was obvious to Freddie Mac,
whose officials emailed each other in the weeks after the meeting, expressing a
desire to minimize press coverage of the deal, according to a person with
knowledge of the situation. They also took the unusual step of notifying FHFA,
their regulator, of the transaction, the timeline shows. Freddie Mac and FHFA
both declined to say why Freddie made the notification except to say that it
was necessary as part of the agency’s conservatorship. (One source suggested
deals above a certain dollar amount require such notification.)
In March, Kushner Companies was able to move fast to lock in
a favorable interest rate, documents show. It submitted a financing
application, which is needed to request a lock on a component of its interest
rate. Freddie Mac’s website says that single loans are eligible for such a
procedure, but that groups of loans must obtain additional approval. The day
after Kushner Companies submitted its application, documents show, Freddie
locked the rate for all 16 mortgages.
Through a spokesman, Freddie Mac said that such locks are an
important part of its business model, and that timing is at the borrower’s
discretion.
Kushner Companies’ full-term interest-only loan proved
exceptional in another way: Freddie Mac had granted Lone Star Funds, a private
equity firm managing $85 billion in global investments, interest-only terms for
only the first three years of its seven-year mortgages when it had acquired the
same apartment complexes in 2015. As a result, Lone Star had been able to
borrow more money. But it soon faced a sharp hike in its monthly payments, when
it added principal to interest.
(Freddie Mac said full-term, interest-only loans are more
common when the pool of mortgages examined is restricted to larger,
conventional loans. Nonpublic data shows they made up roughly 20% of such loans
over the last three years, the agency said.)
Freddie Mac completed its due diligence for the Kushner
Companies deal and on May 22 of last year, Kushner Companies and its partner,
Torchlight Investors, took ownership of the 16 properties, with $785,803,000 in
loans pledged. Torchlight did not respond to questions.
The properties were largely in the Washington, D.C., and
Baltimore suburbs. Their average construction date was 1980, almost a decade
older than the other properties Freddie approved for similar loans in 2019.
From a profit standpoint, the 16 properties were a mixed bag.
Appraisers pegged their value as having increased 2% overall in the previous
four years. Four of the properties lost value, according to the analysis.
The Kushners also benefited from another provision that
increased the deal’s risk. Groups of loans are often cross-collateralized,
meaning that if one defaults, the lender can seek to seize others to recoup
their losses. The strategy provides an extra hedge against risk for the lender.
The Lone Star properties were cross-collateralized under their previous loan.
But not those for Kushner Companies. (A Freddie Mac spokesman said
cross-collateralization is not required and each of the company’s loans met
credit parameters without it.)
Another curious phenomenon emerged in the disclosures for the
new loans: The reported profits for seven of the Kushner buildings in 2017 were
higher than those listed for the same buildings and same year in prior loan
documents. For some properties, the difference was slight. But for others, it
was more substantial. At one Kushner complex, for example, the Apartments at
Cambridge Court in suburban Baltimore, the 2017 net operating income was nearly
6% higher in the new loan filing than it had been for the same year in an old
disclosure.
In May, ProPublica reported a pattern of similar
discrepancies in bonds that hold mortgages across the commercial real estate
industry. And the paper by Griffin, the University of Texas finance professor,
and his colleague Alex Priest also found a pattern of such profit alterations,
suggesting multiple institutions are manipulating historical financials to
downplay risk and bolster more aggressive lending.
Financial data on how the 18 Kushner properties are faring in
this year’s economic slump is not yet available.
“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,”
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)
·
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·
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SERIES:CORONAVIRUS
The U.S. Response to COVID-19
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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.”
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CDC has more information on what to do if you are sick.
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?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-phony-trump-slush-fund-will-it-put.html
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!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/10/coulter-all-hail-president-javanka/
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.
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.
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
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.
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