Entitled assholes every one

 

He needs to be recalled.  Of course he won't be.

Latest Third World style administration nominations

Ivanka's father-in-law and convicted criminal (including tax evasion and witness tampering), Charles Kushner, for ambassador to France.

Tiffany's father-in-law, billionaire* Massad Boulos, for senior adviser on Arab & Middle Eastern affairs (Jared didn't want the job?).

Kash Patel, MAGA radical conspiracy theorist who wants to shut down the FBI, and who kisses Trump's ass maybe hardest of anyone, for - wait for it - FBI director.

I think Trump plans to fire most of them.

Trump may simply be counting on appointing all "acting" directors to positions where his choice is not confirmed.  And all acting directors report and answer directly to Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/02/2024:

UPDATE 12/02/2024:

*UPDATE 12/12/2024:  Not so much...

Trump has nominated Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law Massad Boulos as his special advisor to the Middle East, despite no government or foreign policy experience. To justify it, Trump said he was a successful billionaire who founded a multinational corporation. But the NYT reports his company sells trucks and machinery in Nigeria, made a profit of just $66,000 last year, and his stake in the company is valued at virtually nothing. The entire company is worth less than a million dollars.

  Meidas Touch

The pardonpalooza continues

This Christmas Trump is pardoning the criminals...at least the ones in his sphere.

It's a crooks' holiday...26 more pardons today.

And when Trump is gone, Jared and his father will have matching pardons. Isn't that special.  

Merry Christmas, Mr. Mueller.  Of course he doesn't deserve all the blame.  There plenty for congressional Republicans.  But they're getting their penalty from Trump himself.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

The disgraceful pardons that didn't make headlines.

UPDATE:

Can't confirm, but I'll pass it on and see if anything comes of it

From last night:













Sketchy.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Could it be .... money laundering?

[P]roperty transactions totaling more than $150 million [on the banks of a toxic Brooklyn canal that triggered a series of real estate deals] began in late 2014 and early 2015 and included sales prices well above the assessed value of the parcels, as well as high-risk loans that experts said raise red flags. At the center of each deal is either Jared Kushner or Michael Cohen, whose business dealings have attracted close scrutiny from prosecutors and regulators since Trump’s election.

The transactions were financed through Signature Bank, one of three banks whose ties to Kushner have been widely reported to be under review by New York banking regulators. The bank’s board members have included Ivanka Trump and former Republican U.S. senator Al D’Amato.

[...]

USA TODAY asked six real estate, finance, and tax law experts to review aspects of the real estate deals and mortgages. Each cautioned that the deals could be perfectly legal, but they said the timing of the transactions and the fact that so many related parties were involved make them highly unusual and raise red flags about the rapid inflation of property values.

[...]

Signature Bank spokeswoman Susan Lewis said in response to questions about the bank’s relationship with Cohen that “the bank’s senior management did not have any knowledge of him or who he was until he started appearing in the newspapers in the last year.”

  USA Today

We'll see.

In October 2014, a joint venture led by Kushner Companies paid $72.5 million for three lots of land along the polluted waterway to a company owned by New York developer Herbert Chaves.

[...]

The purchase price in the Kushner deal far exceeded the assessed market value, which was $3 million at the time of the sale, according to city records.

[...]

Chaves' firms used the cash from Kushner to buy apartments from Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Chaves paid $32 million for four apartments that Cohen bought one to three years prior for $11.4 million.

The collective market value of the four properties at the time of the sale Dec. 10, 2014, was a total of $6.6 million, according to New York City property assessment records — roughly one-fifth of the purchase price.

Chaves did not take out any mortgages for his purchase of the four properties.

Not at all suspect. Not at all.

Cohen, in turn, immediately reinvested his new $32 million in a [deal] of his own — part of which involved Chaves.

[...]

The 3.2-acre canal-front property, used as a parking lot for utility service vehicles, features views of a waterway that on a recent day was strewn with debris, including a sideways shopping cart and overturned stroller. Former tenants — including a wagon painter, blacksmith, auto wrecking facility and gas station — left volatile organic compounds in the property’s soil and groundwater.

In addition, the property was not zoned for residential development, limiting what could be done with the land, absent an approved zoning change.

[...]

The property’s environmental issues made it a risky proposition for any bank looking to back a development venture. If the site couldn’t be decontaminated, the property was never going to be much more than it was — an eyesore where Verizon parked vehicles.

The transaction in October 2014 was backed by a $40 million mortgage from Signature Bank. Ivanka Trump was a member of Signature Bank’s board of directors from 2011 to 2013.

[...]

At the time of the deal, Signature Bank’s board included former senator D’Amato.

[...]

Catherine Ghiglieri, a former banking commissioner of Texas and co-author of two books on banking, said banks have policies and procedures that are used to make loans, and if there is toxic waste on a site with no cleanup underway, the “bank will not loan money unless there is some mitigating circumstances.”

“They are lending other people's money,” she said. “They are not venture capitalists. They assess risk based on the loans. I would not see that kind of loan being made by a bank.”

Depends on the bank, doesn't it?

Kushner’s company applied in 2015 to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Brownfield Cleanup Program for funding to remove contaminants from the land, and it was approved later that year. The state installed monitoring wells to investigate contamination on the site, and an investigation report is being finalized.

New York City lobbying records show the Kushner joint venture poured $180,000 in 2015 and 2016 into an effort to lobby city officials to rezone the land.

Any money spent on actually cleaning it up?

New York City Councilman Brad Lander, who was among the lobbied officials, said he began to have serious issues with the Kushner group after the presidential election when Kushner became a senior adviser in the White House.

Lander said he became concerned that the White House, which controls the Superfund cleanup programs, could somehow retaliate against the district and not allow the cleanup to continue if the city didn’t go along with the team’s demands. On the other hand, if he and the city voted in favor of the Kushner team, it would look like he and his colleagues were looking to help Kushner, who clearly held a financial stake in the project.

Ultimately, the Kushner joint venture sold the land in April 2018.

[...]

The Kushner group’s profit was substantial: The property purchased for $72.5 million in late 2014 was sold to the international property firm RFR Holding for $115 million.

Lander said he’s not sure if zoning issues prompted the team to eventually sell “or if it has something to do with the Kushner family’s well-publicized need for cash.” The property remains a parking lot for service vehicles.

[...]

[T]hose corporations are being offered as collateral for a loan against the equity in the apartment building, according to experts who reviewed the records.

It is unclear how much was extracted from the loan or how any funds drawn from the financing were used.

New York real estate attorney Michael Zuckerman of the firm Warshaw Burstein, who specializes in complex real estate finance, said it is possible the financing statement indicates a loan was taken out to aid other business ventures.

Or maybe clean up some money?

“It’s going to be very hard to figure out what [Cohen] did with the money,” Zuckerman said.

[...]

Signature Bank was one of three banks that received requests early this year from the New York State Department of Financial Services for records of its interactions with Kushner. The department did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview with the New York-focused real estate publication The Real Deal published early this month, Kushner’s father, Charles, called the request “nonsense.”

“Let them look. We welcome them to look,” he said. “What do they want from our files? What do they want from the bank’s files? All of our banks have … called us and said, ‘Give them whatever you have because it’s stupid.’ ”

A witch hunt?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Leaky, Leaky

Please slow down. I cannot keep up.

The Kushners’ purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue for a record-breaking $1.8 billion in 2007 was a capstone to an era marked by high prices and reckless amounts of debt. The Kushners invested $500 million in the building, and took out debt to cover the rest. But even at the height of a bubbling New York real estate market, there were clear signs that the price was too high and the debt was too much. The Kushners paid $1,200 a square foot, twice the previous per square foot record of $600, while records show that even with the building initially almost fully rented out, revenue only covered about two-thirds of the family’s debt costs.

[...]

The $1.2 billion interest-only mortgage is due in February 2019. The office space is worth less than its mortgage and “there is no equity value” left in the office section of the building.

[...]

Not long before a major crisis ripped through the Middle East, pitting the United States and a bloc of Gulf countries against Qatar, Jared Kushner’s real estate company had unsuccessfully sought a critical half-billion-dollar investment from one of the richest and most influential men in the tiny nation, according to three well-placed sources with knowledge of the near transaction.

Kushner is a senior adviser to President Trump, and also his son-in-law, and also the scion of a New York real estate empire that faces an extreme risk from [the investment] at 666 Fifth Avenue, where the family is now severely underwater.

Qatar is facing an ongoing blockade led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and joined by Egypt and Bahrain, which President Trump has taken credit for sparking. Kushner, meanwhile, has reportedly played a key behind-the-scenes role in hardening the U.S. posture toward the embattled nation.

[...]

Trump himself has unsuccessfully sought financing in recent years from the Qataris, but it is difficult to overstate just how important the investment at 666 Fifth Avenue is for Kushner, his company, and his family’s legacy in real estate.

[...]

After the election, Kushner Companies found many more suitors interested in doing business, one of the sources, who is U.S.-based, said. One of the investors taking the deal more seriously in late 2016 and early 2017, the U.S. source said, was “Hamid bin what’s-his-name,” referring to [Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, known as HBJ]. Top executives at Kushner Companies, the source said, “are dumb enough to not know that why they want to deal with them has nothing to do with the real estate. Around the New Year they were like, ‘LPs” — industry slang for limited partners, or investors — “are engaging more!’ It’s like, I wonder why?”

Or, perhaps, they know quite well what’s going on.

  The Intercept

The Qatari loan deal fizzled when a potential investor, Anbang, pulled out.

Only a handful of companies in the real estate business, such as Blackstone and Brookfield, are big enough to secure a loan of that size, and to date they appear unwilling to take on the level of scrutiny the deal would bring, never mind offer terms as favorable as Anbang’s. Additionally, any borrower would have to get their loan from somewhere, and one dynamic stymying the deal may be that any bank that underwrote such a loan would face just as much scrutiny for their financial and political judgment as the investor they gave it to.

Anbang pulled out after the deal was criticized as a conflict of interest, given Kushner’s role in the White House.

Thus foiling the Qatari promise of investment to match up to $500 million in investment in the deal, and earning Qatar the wrath of Trump.

That chain of events was disputed by a source who said the deal between HBJ and the Kushners wasn’t dead, but on hold as the deal’s mix of loans and equity was reconsidered.

The revelation of the half-billion-dollar deal raises thorny and unprecedented ethical questions. If the deal is not entirely dead, that means Jared Kushner is on the one hand pushing to use the power of American diplomacy to pummel a small nation, while on the other his firm is hoping to extract an extraordinary amount of capital from there for a failing investment. If, however, the deal is entirely dead, the pummeling may be seen as intimidating to other investors on the end of a Kushner Companies pitch.

Trump family sleaze threatens this country's - and perhaps the world's - national security.

On June 9, after Saudi Arabia and the UAE had begun to blockade Qatar, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sought to calm nerves, calling for mediation and an immediate end to the blockade.

Within hours, Trump, at a White House ceremony, contradicted Tillerson, slamming Qatar again and claiming it had “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”

Trump’s White House remarks, Tillerson came to believe, had been written by UAE Ambassador Yousef Al-Otaiba and delivered to Trump by Jared Kushner.

[...]

Had the Qataris known where things were heading diplomatically, said the source in the region, they’d have happily ponied up the money, even knowing that it was a losing investment. “It would have been much cheaper,” he said.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8/30:  Scathing article on Otaiba.

UPDATE 5/16/18:

And perhaps the Qataris would NOT have ponied up.

Same Old Story

New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said in an email Thursday that “the allegation” that Charles Kushner’s gift to Harvard was related to Jared’s admission “is and always has been false.”

  ProPublica

Of course. And I imagine Harvard keeps track of uber wealthy families with children who are about to graduate high school for its donation drive purposes.  The old two-way street.  This will never change.

You know damn well the GOP is going to run Ivanka Trump for president in the near future.  And THEY'LL have the first woman president.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It Just Gets Better and Better

I'm a little late to this party, but what was Christie thinking?

July 13, 2016 at 5:37 PM, updated July 14, 2016 at 7:17 AM

TRENTON — While Gov. Chris Christie is among the final candidates Donald Trump is considering to be his running mate, the business mogul's son-in-law Jared Kushner opposes the idea of Christie on the ticket, CNN reported Wednesday.

  NJ.com

And why do you suppose that was?

And the bigger question: why did Christie even imagine he could be a part of a Trump administration, considering the fact that Christie as Jersey AG had prosecuted and sent Ivanka Trump's father-in-law to jail?

"It's obviously out there and it doesn't help. We're just not sure if it hurts," a source close to Christie told CNN.

Really? Perhaps they assumed Donald Trump was just your average billionaire for whom business is business and not also the vengeful megalomaniac he is. You'd think that would be obvious to anyone who's ever met him.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie enters the story [of Ivanka Trump's father-in-law Charles Kushner] in 2004. At the time, Christie was U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and going after Kushner was an early success story for him. Christie indicted Kushner on conspiracy, obstruction of justice and witness intimidation, notes Multi Family Executive.

That last charge stems from the fact that Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce William Schulder, his sister Esther Schulder’s husband, in an effort to get Esther to not cooperate with authorities.

[...]

Kushner agreed to plead guilty to felony counts of submitting false campaign finance reports and tax returns. He was sentenced to two years in prison, notes Politico.

  Heavy

From what I've gathered, Jared Kushner (Ivanka's husband) plays a major role in the Trump campaign organization. Is Christie that clueless?

Christie dropped out of the presidential race after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary [...]. He enthusiastically backed Trump in a surprise endorsement in Fort Worth  [...] .

[...]

“Gov. Chris Christie has made it abundantly clear that governing New Jersey is a distant second priority for him, far behind the demands of his personal ambition,” the Star-Ledger said. It called the Trump endorsement “craven” and the “moment when [Christie] lost any last shred of credibility.”

[...]

Hewlett Packard Enterprise chief executive Meg Whitman, one of Christie’s top supporters, issued a statement [...] blasting him for an “astonishing display of political opportunism” in endorsing Trump, whom Whitman labeled a “dishonest demagogue.”

[...]

In one prominent appearance [...] , Christie introduced “Mr. Trump” and then stood behind the mogul as he celebrated seven Super Tuesday primary victories that [...] put him on a path to be the Republican nominee [for president]. Christie’s expressions seemed pained, glassy and vacant, leading to mocking suggestions on social media and cable television shows that the governor looked like he was regretting his endorsement [of Trump's candidacy] or being held against his will.

[...]

“I was not sitting up there thinking, ‘Oh, my God, what have I done?’ ” Christie [said].

  WaPo

He sure looked like that's what he was thinking. Perhaps the Trump people had him drugged and stood up behind Trump as punishment for his conviction of Charles Kushner. Or, more likely, led him on to think Trump might actually consider him for VP just to stand him up and humiliate him, and this was the very moment Christie realized what had just happened.

Back to Kushner...

“[Being in jail] gave me an opportunity to learn a lot about myself,” Kushner told The Real Deal. “I learned a lot about other people. I learned a lot about different areas I’ve always had an interest to learn about, whether it be Jewish history or derivative financing. I didn’t waste my time in jail. I was able to read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day.”

Kushner also called the incident with his sister “a family tragedy” and he believed that God and his parents will forgive him in heaven. He did say that he didn’t think his parents would forgive his sister though for “instigating a criminal investigation and being cheerleaders for the government and putting their brother in jail because of jealousy, hatred and spite.”

Kushner also told The Real Deal that the one thing he would change if he had to start everything from the beginning was not include Marry as a business partner.

  Heavy

This stuff is great. If all presidential campaign seasons were as entertaining as this one, I wouldn't mind at all that they last so long.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.