Thread: Lawmakers ask whether looming debt left Jared Kushner vulnerable to Russian influence

Lawmakers ask whether looming debt left Jared Kushner vulnerable to Russian influence

• By BRIAN ROSS
• MATTHEW MOSK

Jun 2, 2017, 8:15 AM ET

Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

WATCH Russian banker could become key figure in Russia investigation

Congressional investigators are seeking to determine whether President Trump’s son-in-law was vulnerable to Russian influence during and after the campaign because of financial stress facing his family firm’s signature real estate holding – a Manhattan skyscraper purchased at the height of the real estate boom.

And they are focused, officials told ABC News, on a December meeting Jared Kushner held with executives from a Russian bank.

“It's very peculiar that of all the people he could be talking to in a transition period where you've got lots of balls in the air, that you end up talking to a Russian banker who is under sanction and who is related to Putin and has a KGB background,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “I think the question has to be asked, was this about you trying to get financing for your troubled real estate that you have in New York City?”

The timing of Kushner’s December meeting with executives from VneshEconomBank, or VEB, at the suggestion of the Russian ambassador, has also raised concerns from government watchdog groups across the political spectrum.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, (which was founded by Trump adviser Stephen Bannon and funded in part by a Trump mega-donor, Rebekah Mercer), said the meeting “had conflict of interest written all over it.”

“You worry about a quid pro quo, you worry about Kushner getting some financial arrangement from a Russian financial institution, and you worry about White House policy being shaped in a way that benefits either those banks or Russia at large,” Schweizer told ABC News. “That's the concern.”

On Good Morning America on Friday, ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos pressed Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to explain the nature of Kushner’s meeting with Gorkov, but she repeatedly refused to do so. “Jared has said that he’s willing to go and share whatever information he has,” Conway said. “He actually has made that clear for many months now, and he looks forward to doing that.”

Real estate analysts told ABC News that Jared Kushner’s first major acquisition, a Fifth Avenue office tower signifying his family’s move from New Jersey into Manhattan real estate, is shouldering a $1.3 billion in loans coming due in two years, and it is not bringing in sufficient rental income. An attempt by Kushner to broker a deal with a Chinese company to refinance and redevelop the building fell through shortly after the election.

Thomas Fink, a senior vice president at the firm Trepp, which analyzes commercial real estate, said the Kushner firm appears to be in a sizeable financial hole.

“I don't think they have a billion plus in the bank to just write a check to pay off the mortgage,” Fink said. “Potentially they could sell the building, but you know, what will someone pay for it-- that remains to be seen.”

Kushner, 36, who is married to Ivanka Trump, played a central role in his father-in-law's 2016 campaign and has since taken a job as one of President Trump's senior advisers. Kushner was already facing questions about a December meeting he held with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. when reports surfaced in March about a second contact. The White House confirmed that Kushner met in December with Sergei Gorkov of VEB Bank, but the substance of the previously undisclosed meeting remains something of a mystery.

A senior White House official said that the conversation was "general and inconsequential" and that Kushner took the meeting as part of his campaign role of interfacing with foreign dignitaries. The bank, however, described the discussion to ABC News as "negotiations" in which "the parties discussed the business practices applied by foreign development banks, as well as most promising business lines and sectors."

Gorkov brushed off an ABC News reporter Thursday at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, refusing to answer further questions about the meeting. A spokesman for Kushner referred reporters to a statement issued by White House officials in March, dismissing the meeting as unimportant.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News his panel intends to question Kushner about the meeting in detail.

“This bank is of particular concern, because of course it's the subject of sanctions, but also because Gorkov, the head of this bank, comes out of a school essentially for Russian spies,” Schiff told ABC News on Thursday. “He's someone that allegedly is very close to Putin, and I don't think if this was made at the suggestion as alleged by Ambassador Kislyak, I don't think the choice of Gorkov or this bank was any kind of coincidence.”

Patrick Reevell in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Alex Hosenball, Cho Park and Pete Madden in New York contributed to this report.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/lawma...ry?id=47780422

So what? Americans are free to be influenced by anything we want, whether Russian, Turkish, Mexican, Asian, Indian. French, British, Greek, Ukrainian, Cuba, Venezuelan or any other nationality.

We're free to meet and greet and discuss any damn thing we want to do without becoming targets of federal investigations. The banker had a right to be here to do his business, the Obama Administration gave him a visa to enter the United States, right? So what is the problem?

Kushner was a private citizen at the time and had every right to meet with the banker. He also had every right to discuss a loan in the future. They couldn't do a loan now even if they wanted to because of the sanctions and possibly other issues. Trump ran on the premise that we were going to improve our relationship with Russia, and won on that premise, it's a pledge he intends to work on and if anyone thinks he's backing off on that truly needs to get their heads out of their bums. There was no loan, no further pursuit of such, and we don't even know what was actually discussed. Kushner has offered to discuss this with any authority who would like to know what was discussed but apparently no one has contacted him for an interview.

These are truly Witch Hunts. Horrible. McCarthyism all over again.

Did Trump, Kushner, Sessions Have An Undisclosed Meeting With Russian?

Report: Jared Kushner Didn’t Disclose $1 Billion in Loans, Investment Ties to Goldman Sachs and George Soros

Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty

by BREITBART NEWS2 May 20175,552

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner didn’t disclose his part ownership of a real-estate finance startup known as Cadre, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Kushner’s securities and other filings.

The Journal notes that Kushner’s Cadre stake “means the senior White House official is currently a business partner of Goldman Sachs Group and billionaires including George Soros and Peter Thiel.” The Journal also reports that Kushner didn’t disclose a number of loans “totaling at least $1 billion, from more than 20 lenders,” on properties and companies he co-owns; and Kushner “has also provided personal guarantees on more than $300 million of the debt.” An analysis of the debt on these assets “found ties to a broad swath of U.S. and foreign banks, private-equity firms, real-estate companies and government-owned lenders.”

From Jean Eaglesham, Juliet Chung, and Lisa Schwartz reporting in the Wall Street Journal:

[Kushner’s lawyer Jamie] Gorelick said the Cadre stake is described in a revised version of [Kushner’s] financial-disclosure form that will be made public after it has been certified by ethics officials. She said Mr. Kushner has previously discussed his Cadre ownership with the Office of Government Ethics and that Mr. Kushner has “resigned from Cadre’s board, assigned his voting rights, and reduced his ownership share.” A spokesman for the Office of Government Ethics didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
…
Mr. Kushner co-founded Cadre in 2014 with his brother Joshua and Ryan Williams, a 29-year-old friend and former employee of Kushner Cos., the family-controlled business that Mr. Kushner ran until recently. Cadre markets properties to prospective investors, who can put their money into specific buildings or into an investment fund run by Cadre, which collects fees on each deal.

To get off the ground, Cadre turned to a Goldman Sachs fund and a number of high-profile investors. Among them were the venture-capital firms of Mr. Thiel, Silicon Valley’s most prominent supporter of Mr. Trump, and Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc., according to Cadre’s website. Other backers include Chinese entrepreneur David Yu, co-founder with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Jack Ma of a Shanghai-based private-equity firm, hedge-fund manager Daniel Och and real-estate magnate Barry Sternlicht, people close to Cadre said.

Cadre also secured a $250 million line of credit from the family office of George Soros, a top Democratic donor whom Mr. Trump criticized during his presidential campaign, the people close to the company said. Mr. Soros’s family office is also an investor in Cadre.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...-george-soros/

Russian banker Sergey Gorkov brushes off questions about meeting with Jared Kushner