Charles Kushner, the New York real estate mogul and father of White House Advisor Jared, granted the Washington Post a rare interview Monday as the family business he started finds itself under law enforcement’s spyglass.
According to the Post:
Charles Kushner, who founded Kushner Cos. and now works without a title, talks with his son every day. But until now he has remained publicly silent as questions have been raised about Jared Kusnher and whether the company, a property development business, benefited from his powerful job.
The elder Kushner founded the Kushner Companies real estate empire and was once one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party and its candidates in the country. His rapid fall from grace was punctuated by his 2005 18 count guilty plea on tax evasion, witness tampering, and campaign finance violations. Kushner served only 14 months in prison, but his reputation was forever besotted by the details of the case, which included his hiring of a prostitute to seduce and discredit his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with authorities.
Jared Kushner took his father’s place at the helm of the Kushner Companies in 2008 and led the group until he joined his father-in-law Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Since Jared entered the White House, however, his family’s business has repeatedly found itself under scrutiny.
After it became clear promotional materials and presentations pushing a major Kushner Companies project in New Jersey to Chinese investors were touting “Mr. Perfect” Jared’s connections to the administration, federal prosecutors in New York reportedly issued subpoenas over a central part of those presentations, the controversial EB-5 Visa program by which investors can secure green cards for $500,000 investments.
Further subpoenas to Deutsche Bank, a financier of Kushner projects, added to the companies’ concerns, but Charles Kushner dismissed these concerns. “All I know is that we are not at all concerned, and we are cooperating,” he told the Post. “And they can knock themselves out for the next ten years reading those papers as far as I’m concerned.”
Charles Kushner further denied he or his businesses have received any scrutiny from Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his “Russia investigation.”
The elder Kushner was unequivocal in his faith in his son Jared’s ability to bring peace to the Middle East. Asked how, given Jared’s total lack of diplomatic experience, he came to this conclusion, Charles Kushner pointed to the fact he gave his children a “lot of responsibility at young ages.”
“We didn’t raise our children as typical children,” he told the Post. “They were taught if you have wealth, it is not something to be spoiled about, it is a lot of responsibility, which requires you to do more, better than if you didn’t have the money. So my children, they are more mature than their years and they were raised that way.”