By Hunter

It's not just Donald Trump facing federal investigation over his actions in the White House; Trump White House everything-doer Jared Kushner's real estate business is attracting new attention from federal prosecutors as well.

Kushner Cos., the New York property development business owned by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, has been subpoenaed by New York federal prosecutors regarding its use of an investment-for-immigration program, according to people familiar with the matter.

The subpoena concerns at least one Jersey City, N.J., development financed in part by a federal visa program known as EB-5: twin, 66-floor commercial-and-residential towers called One Journal Square, said a person familiar with the subpoena.

Like Trump himself, Kushner ostensibly turned over the Kushner family business to other family members for the duration of his White House stay—while still keeping close to 90 percent of his original assets. Like Trump, he's expected to reclaim his leadership position in that business immediately after his White House exit. Both of those things mean that, like Trump, he has an ability to self-profit from his own White House actions simply by making administrative decisions that just happen to boost the prospects of those companies.

Prosecutors are apparently probing incidents in which Kushner's family members appeared to repeatedly suggest that they had an inside track to granting EB-5 visas for wealthy would-be Chinese immigrants that just happened to invest $500,000 in Kushner-run real estate projects, even though Kushner himself has supposedly recused himself from administrative decisions about the visa program.

This isn't the only federal investigation involving the intersection between Kushner's role as White House advisor and his business ties. Investigators are also puzzled by Kushner's contacts with the Putin-allied leader of a Russian bank; that bank had been placed under sanction by the United States government. If those contacts were, like the Trump Tower meeting between Kushner, Trump Jr., and Russian government-dispatched individuals, to discuss the sanctions against Russian businesses and the potential lifting of those sanctions, Kushner may have still more explaining to do. Oh, and investigators are also probing whether Kushner, as head of the Trump campaign's digital operations, "helped guide Russia's sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks."

It's not often that a White House figure finds themselves squarely in the middle of so many different federal law enforcement investigations. What can we say? In this, we have finally found something Jared Kushner appears to excel at.

(Published 2017/08/04 at 11:05 pm)