Jared, Ivanka To Skate While GOP Leaders Go After Shadows
The party now in power in the House is the party that was in power when the Senate refused to convict trump not once but two times after he was impeached for trying to strongarm Ukraine and for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol.
So, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that the Republicans will now go after trump, trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, or trump’s daughter, Ivanka, even though the evidence of huge corruption for all of them is as clear as trump’s comb over. Instead, Republicans will concentrate their sanctimonious ire and spend millions of dollars in public money to investigate President Biden’s son, Hunter, whose troubled past is hardly proof of corruption.
The Republicans have not hidden their plans to stop at nothing to go after Biden. Before the November 2022 election, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said his use of investigations could be a factor in making Biden not seek re-election in 2024.
“Well, I think that there are a lot of factors that are going to prevent Joe Biden from running. His age, the results of the midterm elections in two weeks. But also his son. Look, this Biden family investigation’s only going to ramp up in a Republican majority,” said Comer.
The House Oversight Committee, formerly led by Democratic chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., was hot on Jared Kushner’s trail after the son-in-law made billions through use of his government position. But after the Republicans took back the majority in the House, the oversight committee got a new leader. That would be first term, Rep. James Comer Jr., R-Ky., and the chances that Comer will lead a probe into Kushner, trump’s daughter and trump are about as likely as George Santos winning the heavyweight boxing championship.
The day after the Republicans won a House majority, Comer and Jordan held a news conference to announce to nobody’s surprise that their top priority for 2023 was the investigation of the Biden family.
“The man likely to lead these Trump-style, divisive, politically-motivated investigations to attack President Biden, his family, and cabinet at any and all costs, is James Comer, a relatively unknown Congressman from Kentucky slated to chair the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform,” said a report by the non-profit Congressional Integrity Project.
The Congressional Integrity Project reported that Comer repeated false accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. After the election, Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, requested the House hold hearings on the “integrity” of the election and examining bogus allegations of “irregularities and improprieties.” Jordan is now the chair of the powerful, House Judiciary Committee.
After the Jan. 6 insurrection by trump followers , Comer said Trump was speaking “figuratively” at the rally that helped incite the violence. Comer voted against creation of the bipartisan House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attacks and called the probe a “political stunt,” “a big show” and “illegitimate.”
Comer fed the conspiracy theory that a “deep state” within government was out to get trump. When the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for classified information that the ex-president essentially stole, Comer said, “The deep state is alive and real, and it’s going to be left up to Republicans, hopefully in a majority, starting in January to try to end this and get us back on the path to where we have confidence in our intelligence communities.”
The changing of the politics in Washington, however, should not deter investigators from rooting out crime, regardless of the politics. And I do believe in Santa and the tooth fairy and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
It remains to be determined if Hunter Biden broke any laws. But there seems no doubt that Jared Kushner skirted the laws and made billions in the process.
One issue that may never be exposed involves Jared Kushner, who was trump’s senior advisor. In December 2022, the House Oversight and Senate Finance Committees sought documents from the state and defense departments on Kushner’s alleged conflicts of interest by using improper influence on U.S. foreign policy. At the time the committee made public new information that showed the bailout of troubled Kushner real estate property by the Qatari government came at the same time the Qatari government sought to influence trump policies.
In August 2018, Brookfield Asset Management bailed out Kushner real estate when it paid Kushner Companies $1.1 billion using funding from a subsidiary backed by the Government of Qatar to sign a 99-year lease on the Kushners’ 666 Fifth Avenue property. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund was the second largest investor in Brookfield Property Partners — the entity used to acquire the property.
The House Oversight Committee cited new documents that show Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner’s father, engaged in discussions to bail out the property with Brookfield on Feb. 14, 2018, shortly before the trump administration announced its support for ending the Saudi Arabian–Emirati blockade against Qatar.
The committee was “probing whether Jared Kushner advised former President Donald Trump to support a blockade against Qatar while Kushner Companies was seeking a billion-dollar bailout from Qatar and whether Brookfield’s bailout of 666 Fifth Avenue was intended to improperly influence U.S. foreign policy.”
The committee said it was seeking “to understand Mr. (Jared) Kushner’s influence on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and a wide range of matters directly affecting Brookfield while his father Charles Kushner was negotiating a major transaction with the firm.” Federal criminal conflict of interest laws prohibit senior White House officials from participating in matters directly affecting their own financial interest.
As a top trump aide, Jared Kushner built a relationship with the Saudi crown prince while in office, including while working on the Abraham Accords that led to four Arab states establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
In June 2022, the House Oversight Committee opened another investigation into Jared Kushner, after his investment firm, Affinity Partners, received a $2 billion investment through Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The investment is expected to fuel $25 million in annual management fees.
At the time, U.S. intelligence determined that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the 2018 operation that resulted in the death and alleged bone-saw dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump condemned the murder but said the U.S.-Saudi relationship was too important to jeopardize by breaking with the prince.
The investment appeared to be payback because Kushner had been a staunch defender of the crown prince while at the White House. The Oversight Committee was looking into whether Kushner had traded on his government position to get the deal.
The Saudi government approved the deal shortly after trump left office, despite a Saudi Public Investment Fund review panel’s concerns about “inexperience” and a due diligence review that was “unsatisfactory in all aspects,” according to minutes of a June meeting reported by the New York Times.
Jared Kushner’s firm, which he created in 2021, received commitments of more than $3 billion by the end of 2021 to invest in American and Israeli companies that are expanding in India, Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Investors include the $2 billion from the Saudi public investment fund. Kushner said the was hopeful that the Saudi involvement would open an “investment corridor between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
Maloney, chair of the congressional oversight committee, was critical of Jared Kushner’s involvement with Saudi Arabia.
“Your support for Saudi interests was unwavering, even as Congress and the rest of the world closely scrutinized the country’s human rights abuses in Yemen, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi assassins tied to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on political dissidents at home,” Maloney wrote.
Maloney also wrote Jared Kushner that the committee is concerned with Kushner’s decision “to solicit billions of dollars from the Saudi government immediately following your significant involvement in shaping U.S.-Saudi relations.” Maloney said the Saudi government’s funding “create the appearance of a quid pro quo for your foreign policy work during the Trump Administration.”
And then there were the 41 trademarks that China awarded to companies linked to Ivanka trump in April 2019. Author Dan Alexander wrote that the approvals came about 40 percent faster than those that Ivanka trump had requested before her dad was president.
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka trump, was named an official adviser to the president, joining her husband Jared Kushner. The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the Chinese government.
Critics have said the trademark approvals may be linked to a decision in early May 2018 when ZTE, a Chinese electronics maker, halted “major operating activities” after being penalized by the U.S. Department of Commerce for breaking sanctions and selling electronics to Iran and North Korea.
That month, trump said he would reconsider the punishment and vowed to work with Chinese President Xi Jinping to prevent the collapse of the ZTE, which employs 75,000 people. That same month, tense trade negotiations continued between China and the U.S. and China approved seven Ivanka trademarks.
Over a span of two months in late 2018, the Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to trump and his daughter. The Associated Press reported that in October alone, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering child care centers, wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.
“Ivanka receives preliminary approval for these new Chinese trademarks while her father continues to wage a trade war with China. Since she has retained her foreign trademarks, the public will continue to have to ask whether President Trump has made foreign policy decisions in the interest of his and his family’s businesses,” wrote government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
As far as making money from his connections, nobody it seemed tops trump. During his four years in office, Trump reported making between $1.6 billion and $1.79 billion, with some $620 million coming from the Mar-a-Lago resort, his hotel in the nation’s capital, and three of his golf courses in the United States, according to an Insider investigation. Meanwhile, Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes for his first year in office.
Trump paid $5.3 million in federal taxes in 2018 but his vaunted, 2017 tax law gave tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans, including trump, who are mostly real estate developers and millionaires. Trump claimed many of those tax breaks throughout his presidency.
And Donald trump Jr. also merits attention. In February 2018, he went to India to sell more than $1 billion worth of luxury residential units built there by the Trump Organization and its partners. The New York Times reported that advertisements announcing Donald Jr.’s visit read: “Trump has arrived. Have you?”