Jared Kushner

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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 16, 2018 9:40 am

WSJ: US Warned Kushner That Wendi Murdoch May Be Boosting Chinese Gov’t
By Caitlin MacNeal | January 16, 2018 7:09 am
Image
Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
U.S. counterintelligence officials told White House senior adviser Jared Kushner in early 2017 that Wendi Murdoch may be leveraging her relationship with him to help advance the interests of the Chinese government, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday night, citing people familiar with the matter.

Officials were worried that Wendi Murdoch was lobbying for a Chinese garden at the National arboretum in Washington, D.C., according to the Wall Street Journal. The Obama administration originally backed the plans for the garden, but changed its stance over concerns that a tower planned for the garden could be used for surveillance, per the Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for Murdoch told the Wall Street Journal that she is unaware of the FBI having concerns about her and has no knowledge of the planned garden.

The officials who delivered the warned to Kushner did not give him details about their concerns about Murdoch, the Journal reported. Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, was not present for the warning, according to the Journal. A spokesman for Kushner and Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the warning about Murdoch came as part of a “routine senior staff security briefing.”

Kushner and Trump have been friends with Murdoch for years. Wendi Murdoch used to be married to Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp.

Read the Wall Street Journal’s full report here.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ ... doch-china


What You Need to Know About Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Wendi Deng Murdoch, and Chinese Spying

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that counterintelligence officials in early 2017 warned Jared Kushner that Wendi Deng Murdoch might be using her relationship with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to aid the Chinese government. Here’s what you need to know.

Who is Wendi Deng Murdoch?

Born Deng Wen Gi in 1968 in China, Chinese-American businesswoman Wendi Deng Murdoch studied in the U.S. and holds an MBA from Yale. She gained a green card through her first marriage to Jake Cherry. She later worked at a television station in Hong Kong where she met her second husband, media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The couple were married from 1999 to 2013, when he filed for divorce.

Her public life has been salacious and scandal-ridden, with particular attention on her relationships with men. Her first marriage reportedly broke up when her husband, who was 30 years her senior, found out she was seeing another man. When her marriage with Murdoch ended, there was speculation that the split was caused by Deng Murdoch’s alleged “crush” on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2016, there was speculation about a relationship between Deng Murdoch and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Why does the U.S. think she’s a foreign agent?

People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that Deng Murdoch could be using her relationship with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to push a Chinese agenda According to the Wall Street Journal, counterintelligence officials were especially concerned about a garden project at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC that they say Deng Murdoch has been lobbying for. Plans for the garden contain a tall tower, which officials say could be used for surveillance.

A spokesperson for Deng Murdoch said she had no knowledge of such a project. Kushner and Ms. Trump said the warning came during a routine briefing and was not based on any official accusation, going on to defend the couple’s relationship with Deng Murdoch.

Why does it matter?

In an administration that contains many staffers and advisers who are new to politics, foreign policy and diplomacy have been pursued in a sometimes-non-traditional manner, and members of the administration have sometimes been accused of misconduct in these matters. The administration is still trying to shake accusations of helping Russia meddle in the 2016 campaign, so any suspicion of further collusion with foreign agents is sure to be disruptive.

Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Deng Murdoch were not immediately available for comment outside of regular business hours.
http://fortune.com/2018/01/16/kushner-t ... china-spy/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Jan 19, 2018 6:08 pm

Ruh-roh. Where did the love go?

Deutsche Bank Investigating Jared Kushner, His Companies For Suspicious Money Transfers: Report
By Sundeep Kavanal Radesh On 01/19/18 AT 7:20 AM

According to an article in Manager Magazin — a German monthly business magazine — Deutsche Bank could have evidence about suspicious money transfers by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, along with his companies and the people working for him.

The information, considered suspicious by the bank, has been submitted to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority for Germany, BaFin. The magazine said that the information will be sent to U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller who heads the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

The bank reportedly received a subpoena from Mueller last year.

The case poses a risk to the leadership of chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, Paul Achleitner, and the bank’s CEO John Cryan, who have over the years sought to make the bank’s control systems better with regards to preventing suspicious monetary transactions, the report stated.

According to NY Daily News, while public discussion thus far has largely been centered around “contacts” between people associated with Trump and potential representatives of Moscow, more recent reports pointed toward the investigation including a focus on financial dealings.

Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” threw former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon back in the spotlight. The book quoted Bannon saying: “You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering.”

On Wednesday, CNN reported that Bannon had struck a deal with Mueller’s team and would be interviewed by prosecutors instead of testifying before the grand jury.

According to one of the sources in the report, Bannon is expected to cooperate with the special counsel.

Image White House senior advisor Jared Kushner participates in a prison reform roundtable with President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, on Jan. 11, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair was arrested on alleged charges of money laundering, with regards to his work in Ukraine.

According to Buzzfeed News, Mueller and his team are now investigating financial transactions between the Russian government and businesses or individuals inside the United States that they deem suspicious.

The transactions so far revealed that 10 days after Trump was elected, former Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak had received $120,000 in a transaction marked payroll. At the time, bankers flagged it to the U.S. government as suspicious as it did not fit previous pay patterns.

Bankers reported another transaction of the embassy’s bank account, regarding an attempt to withdraw $150,000 cash, five days after Trump’s inauguration. Here too, the attempted transaction was reported on account of the fact that it was an abnormal activity for that account.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment to Manager Magazin.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:27 pm

this is being compromised


Jared Kushner Is China’s Trump Card

How the President’s son-in-law, despite his inexperience in diplomacy, became Beijing’s primary point of interest.

Adam EntousJanuary 29, 2018 Issue

Since the election, Beijing intelligence has targeted Kushner as a key asset.
Illustration by Barry Blitt
In early 2017, shortly after Jared Kushner moved into his new office in the West Wing of the White House, he began receiving guests. One visitor who came more than once was Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, a veteran diplomat with a postgraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University. When, during previous Administrations, Cui had visited the White House, his hosts received him with a retinue of China specialists and note-takers. Kushner, President Trump’s thirty-seven-year-old son-in-law and one of his senior advisers, preferred smaller gatherings.
Three months earlier, Cui had been in near-despair. Like many observers, he had incorrectly predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election; his botched forecast, he told a friend, was precisely the kind of error that dooms the careers of ambassadors in the Chinese diplomatic system. To make matters worse, Cui knew almost nobody in the incoming Administration. Donald Trump had won the election in part by singling out China for “raping” the United States.
In Kushner, Cui found a confident, attentive, and inexperienced counterpart. The former head of his family’s real-estate empire, which is worth more than a billion dollars, Kushner was intent on bringing a businessman’s sensibility to matters of state. He believed that fresh, confidential relationships could overcome the frustrations of traditional diplomatic bureaucracy. Henry Kissinger, who, in his role as a high-priced international consultant, maintains close relationships in the Chinese hierarchy, had introduced Kushner to Cui during the campaign, and the two met three more times during the transition. In the months after Trump was sworn in, they met more often than Kushner could recall. “Jared became Mr. China,” Michael Pillsbury, a former Pentagon aide on Trump’s transition team, said.
But Cui’s frequent encounters with Kushner made some people in the U.S. government uncomfortable. On at least one occasion, they met alone, which counterintelligence officials considered risky. “There’s nobody else there in the room to verify what was said and what wasn’t, so the Chinese can go back and claim anything,” a former senior U.S. official who was briefed on the meetings said. “I’m sorry, Jared—do you think your background is going to allow you to be able to outsmart the Chinese Ambassador?” Kushner, the official added, “is actually pretty smart. He just has limited life experiences. He was acting with naïveté.”
By now, Americans are accustomed to reports of Russia’s efforts to influence American politics, but, in the intelligence community, China’s influence operations are a source of equal concern. In recent years, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. have dedicated increased resources to tracking efforts by the Chinese government to spy on or to enlist Western officials in pursuit of their policy goals. (The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. declined to comment on this.) “The Chinese influence operations are more long-term, broader in scope, and are generally designed to achieve a more diffuse goal than the Russians’ are,” Christopher Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst who specializes in China, said. “To be unkind to the Russians, you’d say they are more crass.”
Kushner often excluded the government’s top China specialists from his meetings with Cui, a slight that rankled and unnerved the bureaucracy. “He went in utterly unflanked by anyone who could find Beijing on a map,” a former member of the National Security Council said. Some officials who were not invited to Kushner’s sessions or briefed on the outcomes resorted to scouring American intelligence reports to see how Chinese diplomats described their dealings with Kushner. Other U.S. officials spoke to Cui directly about the meetings. Kushner was “their lucky charm,” the former N.S.C. member said. “It was a dream come true. They couldn’t believe he was so compliant.” (A spokesman for Kushner said that none of the China specialists told him that “he shouldn’t be doing it the way he was doing it at the time.”)
Kushner was still getting an education in the world of national security. His transition from business to public service had been abrupt; even as he took on the responsibilities of a statesman, with a portfolio that ranged from China to the Middle East to Mexico, he was waiting to receive a permanent security clearance. Shortly after Trump won the election, disagreements emerged inside the transition about whether to seek the type of clearances, overseen by the F.B.I. and other agencies, that would allow Kushner; his wife, Ivanka Trump; Donald Trump, Jr.; and Eric Trump to receive classified briefings. Some transition officials thought it was inappropriate to dispense such clearances until the Trump children’s roles in government became more defined. On November 16th, after multiple news organizations reported the impending requests, President-elect Trump disputed them in narrow terms, tweeting, “I am not trying to get ‘top level security clearance’ for my children. This was a typically false news story.” (A Kushner spokesman said that Kushner was unaware of any such requests made on his behalf.)
On January 9th, Trump announced that Kushner would join the Administration, and two days before Trump’s Inauguration an aide submitted Kushner’s request for a security clearance. The application was troubled from the start. After failing to list any contacts with foreign governments, among other incomplete sections, Kushner’s office filed a supplement the next day, citing numerous contacts and promising to assemble a complete list. (Kushner blamed a “miscommunication,” which caused the aide to file a “draft” prematurely.) In May, Kushner’s office sent another supplement, listing more than a hundred contacts from more than twenty countries.
Some of Kushner’s meetings during the campaign and the transition have caused problems for him. In June, 2016, he attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer, which Donald Trump, Jr., had arranged after he was told that she was aware of information, possessed by the Kremlin, that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton. (Kushner updated his security forms once more, in June, 2017, to include the meeting.) On December 1, 2016, at Trump Tower, Kushner and Michael Flynn, a retired general and Trump’s designated national-security adviser, met with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, who, according to Kushner, offered to deliver information about the war in Syria over a secure line. Kushner asked if the Russian Embassy had a communications channel that “we could use, where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.” (Members of Congress harshly criticized Kushner for suggesting the use of Russian channels.)
As months passed, some members of the White House received their permanent security clearances, but Kushner continued to wait. For high-level appointees, the process is normally “expedited,” a former senior U.S. official said. It can be completed in several months, unless “derogatory information” pops up during the review.
Kushner had an interim clearance that gave him access to intelligence. He was also added to a list of recipients of the President’s Daily Brief, or P.D.B., a top-secret digest of the U.S. government’s most closely held and compartmentalized intelligence reports. By the end of the Obama Administration, seven White House officials were authorized to receive the same version of the P.D.B. that appeared on the President’s iPad. The Trump Administration expanded the number to as many as fourteen people, including Kushner. A former senior official said, of the growing P.D.B. distribution list, “It got out of control. Everybody thought it was cool. They wanted to be cool.”
Some people in the office of the director of National Intelligence questioned the expansion, but officials who reported to Trump didn’t want to risk irritating him by trying to exclude his son-in-law and other new additions. David Priess, a former C.I.A. officer who delivered the P.D.B. during the George W. Bush Administration and is the author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” said that Kushner’s situation was unprecedented: “Having studied the President’s Daily Brief’s six-decade history, I have not come across another case of a White House official being a designated recipient of the P.D.B., for that length of time, without having a full security clearance.”
Among national-security specialists, Kushner’s difficulty obtaining a permanent security clearance has become a subject of fascination. Was it his early failure to disclose foreign contacts? Or did it have something to do with the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections? As the Administration finished its first year, some clues to Kushner’s security troubles have come into sharper focus, giving a new perspective on his encounters with China.
Before arriving in Washington and taking up his unusual role as son-in-law, confidant, and free-ranging foreign-affairs counsellor, Kushner had no particular familiarity with diplomacy. “My experience was in business, not politics, and it was not my initial intent to play a large role in my father-in-law’s campaign,” he said, in testimony before congressional committees last July, as part of the Russia investigations. Since 2008, he had served as the C.E.O. of the Kushner Companies, the family firm, which has an office in Florham Park, New Jersey. Its assets included commercial real estate and twenty-two thousand apartments from New Jersey to Maryland.
Through his work, Kushner had established links to China. A Kushner project in Jersey City, which opened in November, 2016, reportedly received about fifty million dollars, nearly a quarter of its financing, from Chinese investors who are not publicly named, through a U.S. immigration program known as EB-5, which allows wealthy foreigners to obtain visas by investing in American projects. Kushner was also an investor, alongside prominent Chinese and Hong Kong businessmen, in multiple companies. He and a brother, Joshua Kushner, co-founded Cadre, a real-estate investment firm, which received funding from Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba. (The scope of investors behind Kushner projects is unknown, because the company does not disclose the names.) Ivanka Trump has her own business endeavors in China, where some of her branded handbags, shoes, and clothes are manufactured.
During the campaign, Trump asked Kushner to be “a point of contact for foreign government officials.” Kushner, who was largely uninvolved with the transition team, devoted little attention to how he would handle those contacts in the event that Trump won.
Shortly before the election, aides prepared a memo for Chris Christie, at that time the head of the transition team, concerning the sensitive matter of conversations with foreign powers. “Because the current President is still in office, calls made during the transition period should be high level, non-substantive, and consist largely of diplomatic pleasantries,” they wrote. Trump would be “inundated with requests for thousands of calls from around the world,” they warned, through “campaign staff, outside advisers, and other third parties.” He must not accept them. Requests must be “methodically returned” in “a sequence of calls that will not create any diplomatic incidents or negative press stories.” The President-elect must have a classified intelligence briefing before conversations with foreign leaders, and then conduct the meetings only when a note-taker and a national-security aide are present. The aides suggested that Trump make five “waves” of calls over a number of days, starting with the United Kingdom and ending with Pakistan.
“Obviously, all that just got tossed aside,” a senior transition official recalled recently, because Trump was “excited that important people were calling him.” Trump spoke to more than two dozen heads of state before his campaign contacted the State Department. The freewheeling access extended to in-person meetings. On November 17th, Trump had his first meeting with a foreign leader, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. According to a transition official, the meeting had come about after Abe’s government contacted Ado Machida, a policy director for the Trump transition, whose father had served as one of Japan’s representatives to the United Nations. (Machida declined to comment.) In another break with protocol, Trump was accompanied to the meeting by his daughter and son-in-law, while they were still running their respective businesses.
During the transition, Kushner met with a range of foreign officials to discuss the incoming Administration. At the same time, as the head of his family’s business, he was urgently seeking an infusion of cash to repay a debt totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2007, the Kushner Companies had bought 666 Fifth Avenue, a forty-one-story office tower, for $1.8 billion, the highest price ever paid for a building in Manhattan at that time. The deal turned out to be a potential disaster for Kushner. Demand for office space had fallen short, and he was hunting for investors, in Asia and the Middle East, among other places, to shore up the building’s finances.
On November 16, 2016, Kushner had a private dinner with Wu Xiaohui, the chairman of China’s Anbang Insurance Group, to discuss Wu’s possible investment in 666 Fifth Avenue. Months later, when the meeting was revealed, and Bloomberg News reported that the Kushner family stood to make as much as four hundred million dollars from the agreement with Anbang, Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, criticized it as a possible conflict of interest. The companies abandoned the negotiations.
In some cases, it was unclear whether Kushner was representing the transition or his business. On December 13th, at the recommendation of Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, or V.E.B., a Russian state bank. Kushner and the White House have said that he was acting as a Trump adviser and did not discuss his business. But Representative Adam Schiff, of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has raised concerns that Kushner was discussing business while serving the transition. Schiff pointed to statements by V.E.B. and a spokesman for Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, which suggest that Kushner held the meeting in his capacity as head of the Kushner Companies. On January 9, 2017, shortly before beginning work at the White House, Kushner said that he was stepping down as C.E.O. He sold his stake in 666 Fifth Avenue to a family trust, while retaining ownership of many of his assets.
As Trump prepared to enter the White House, he took a sudden measure that unnerved officials in Beijing. On December 2nd, encouraged by the fiercest anti-China hawks among his advisers, including Steve Bannon, at that time his chief strategist, Trump took a telephone call from the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, breaking with nearly four decades of American diplomatic practice. The U.S. has friendly relations with Taiwan, but Presidents since Ronald Reagan have avoided speaking directly with Taiwan’s President, because, as part of its “One China” policy, the U.S. formally recognizes only the Beijing government. Then, in an interview, Trump mused about giving up the “One China” policy and recognizing Taiwan’s government, in Taipei.
Chinese officials turned to the man that Kissinger had recommended to them: Jared Kushner. Kushner later told others that he took on the China portfolio reluctantly, after “clamoring” Chinese officials called Trump Tower and asked for him by name.
On December 9th and 10th, Cui Tiankai and Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, visited Kushner at his office at 666 Fifth Avenue. Unlike officials from Japan and the United Arab Emirates, who were secretive about contacts with Trump’s transition team, the Chinese diplomats kept the Obama Administration informed. After visiting Trump’s transition team, Yang called the White House to report the encounter.
At times, Flynn and others joined the meetings. Laying out China’s hopes and ambitions for its relations, Cui urged the U.S. to expand military-to-military exchanges and to endorse the Belt and Road Initiative, a foreign infrastructure campaign intended to expand Chinese influence abroad. According to a participant in the discussions, Flynn welcomed the overture, praising the Belt and Road Initiative and saying that, although the U.S. had just one government at a time, he appreciated “beginning dialogue now.”
After Trump’s Inauguration, on January 20th, Kushner’s contacts with Cui intensified. They met again on February 1st, and, that day, Ivanka took her daughter, Arabella, to a lunar New Year celebration at the Chinese Embassy. Later that month, Kushner persuaded Trump to back off his threat to abandon the “One China” policy. Kushner also passed along proposals from Cui to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who made his first official trip to Beijing in March. During the visit, Tillerson startled China experts by adopting some of Beijing’s official phrases, including “mutual respect,” which is often interpreted as reinforcing China’s claims over disputed waters in Asia.
Kushner and Cui also met repeatedly to prepare for Trump’s first meeting with China’s President, Xi Jinping, on April 6th, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Daniel Russel, who, until last March, was the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and is now a diplomat-in-residence at the Asia Society, in New York, said, “It was clear that heated arguments were taking place among the President’s advisers.” On one side, hard-liners, including Bannon, who has said he believes that China is “bent on world domination,” advocated a confrontational stance on trade and other issues. On the other, according to Russel, “Jared Kushner was described as adamant that Mar-a-Lago should be exclusively about bonding.” Russel continued, “We were told that the theory was to first establish a warm family friendship, using meals and Trump’s personal charisma.”
In the event, China overwhelmingly achieved its objectives: a soft-focus summit with regal photo ops and little talk of trade and other touchy subjects. It was also an auspicious occasion for the Kushner family. While Xi met with Trump, Beijing regulators approved three trademark applications from Ivanka’s company, to sell bags, jewelry, and spa services. Ivanka is also an adviser to the President, and her deals with the Chinese were hardly unusual. Since Trump assumed office, the Chinese government has approved scores of trademark applications by the Trump Organization.
Kushner was proud of his role in the summit, telling a person close to him, “People say we ought to do things the way they always have been done, with the same approaches. Somebody with more experience, tied to the old ways, may not have necessarily been able to pull off the Mar-a-Lago summit like we did.” He added that the officials who have criticized his approach to foreign affairs “usually get pretty uncomfortable when they’re not in control of something and it doesn’t go the way they want.”
By the spring of 2017, investigators in charge of evaluating whether to give Kushner a permanent security clearance had new information to consider. U.S. intelligence agencies aggressively target Chinese government communications, including Cui’s reports to Beijing about his meetings in the United States.
According to current and former officials briefed on U.S. intelligence about Chinese communications, Chinese officials said that Cui and Kushner, in meetings to prepare for the summit at Mar-a-Lago, discussed Kushner’s business interests along with policy. Some intelligence officials became concerned that the Chinese government was seeking to use business inducements to influence Kushner’s views. The intelligence wasn’t conclusive, according to those briefed on the matter. “I never saw any indication that it was successful,” a former senior official said, of Chinese efforts to compromise Kushner. The Chinese could have mischaracterized their discussions with Kushner. But the intelligence reports triggered alarms that Chinese officials were attempting to exploit Kushner’s close relationship with the President, which could yield benefits over time. “They’re in it for the long haul,” the former official said. (A spokesman for Kushner said, “There was never a time—never—that Mr. Kushner spoke to any foreign officials, in the campaign, transition, and in the Administration, about any personal or family business. He was scrupulous in this regard.”)

In March, 2017, Bill Priestap, the F.B.I.’s chief of counterintelligence, visited the White House and briefed Kushner about the danger of foreign-influence operations, according to three officials familiar with the meeting. Priestap told Kushner that he was among the top intelligence targets worldwide, and was being targeted not only by China but by every other major intelligence service as well, including those of the Russians and the Israelis. Priestap said that foreign spy agencies could use diplomats and spies masquerading as students and journalists to collect information about him. (An F.B.I. spokesperson declined to comment.)
Priestap and Kushner discussed some of Kushner’s contacts, including Wendi Deng Murdoch, the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch. Kushner and Ivanka Trump had known her for about a decade, and she was a regular guest at their Washington home. U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have long speculated about Wendi Murdoch’s ties to the Chinese government. Internally, some Chinese officials spoke about her in ways that suggested they had influence over her, the former senior official, who was briefed on the intelligence, said. Other officials said that the intelligence was inconclusive.


The allegations against Wendi Murdoch are complicated by her divorce from Rupert Murdoch. On January 15th, some of the allegations were published in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. (A spokesperson for Wendi Murdoch said, “The idea that she is involved in anything covert is so absurd, it could only have come from an unnamed source.” A spokesperson for Rupert Murdoch said that Murdoch does not believe Wendi is a spy.)
When Kushner was briefed by the F.B.I., he saw little cause for alarm, according to a person close to Kushner. He had no doubt that China and other countries were trying to persuade him to do things or to provide information, but he was, despite his inexperience in diplomacy and intelligence, confident in his ability to navigate these situations. After all, he told others, New York real estate is not “a baby’s business.”
Largely away from view, the U.S. and China are engaged in a heightened competition to steal sensitive information from each other and to manipulate foreign officials. Since 2016, Chinese authorities have expanded public warnings about the threat posed by American espionage. (In November, the Chinese Society of Education issued a video quiz for primary-school students, which included the question “What number should you dial when you spot spying activities?”) China’s intelligence services have demonstrated greater sophistication in seeking to compromise foreign officials, sometimes by using hacked information. In 2014, Chinese hackers copied a vast database from the Office of Personnel Management. Officials said that Beijing appeared particularly interested in identifying Chinese-Americans who were working for the U.S. government, so that China could try to manipulate them into being of assistance.
For its 2017 budget, the Obama Administration requested nineteen billion dollars for cybersecurity, an increase of more than thirty-five per cent from the previous year. Earlier this month, the F.B.I. arrested Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former C.I.A. officer, and charged him with unlawful possession of defense information. In addition to countering classic espionage, the U.S. is considering new ways of managing how foreign powers lobby and seek to affect the American political system. A 2016 law has established an interagency unit to coördinate “counter-propaganda,” and bills proposed in October expand requirements of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which regulates foreign influence in Washington.
American intelligence officials describe their Chinese counterparts with grudging respect. At the end of the Obama Administration, Russia and China topped the White House’s list of counterintelligence threats, largely because of their proficiency in electronic surveillance—intercepting phone calls and e-mails. The Chinese were not yet on the level of the Russians in the area of “human intelligence,” or spies and informants, a senior Obama Administration official said, “but they’re certainly improving, and they’ve been quite aggressive in recent years.” Michael Bahar, a former staff director and general counsel for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “They are a professional service. They do their homework.”
In the months after Priestap briefed Kushner on the counterintelligence threat, Kushner and Ivanka Trump made some adjustments. In May, the Kushner Companies issued an apology after reporters observed Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jared Kushner’s sister, speaking about his White House position while promoting real estate to potential investors in China. In September, Kushner and Ivanka declined an invitation to visit China, amid criticism from some American scholars that they were ill-equipped to conduct diplomacy on behalf of the United States.
Other plans remained unchanged. In November, Kushner travelled to China as part of the President’s delegation for a summit with Xi Jinping. In Beijing, Kushner had lunch at the home of Wendi Murdoch, an occasion that went unmentioned in briefings and public schedules. (A White House spokesman said that Kushner attended the lunch “in a personal capacity,” after the President’s official business was complete.) Kushner saw no reason to curtail their friendship. In the seven months since Kushner’s meeting with Priestap, Wendi Murdoch had done nothing that raised his suspicions, according to a person close to Kushner. “Why do I have more of a risk of telling her state secrets than anyone else?” Kushner asked recently. “Either I’m qualified to handle state secrets or I’m not qualified to handle state secrets. I think I understand my responsibilities.”
In December, U.S. intelligence agencies briefed a wider circle of officials, saying that “a member of the president’s family” was being targeted by a Chinese influence operation, echoing earlier warnings. It was not clear if that family member was Kushner or someone else.
The President’s children resist the argument that their undivested assets, their behavior, and their willingness to mix government service and personal profit present a target to adversaries and allies alike. The senior transition official believes that’s a mistake. “They’re going to slowly, over time, get what they want out of him, and it’s not going to be obvious,” the official said. “Sure, you’ll take the meeting, but you’re giving them a real investment opportunity that’s ‘good for them,’ and ‘everyone wins.’ Meanwhile, they’re just trying to get their teeth into him.”
Kushner enters his second year in Washington facing increasing political and legal pressures. He has already testified before congressional committees about his meetings with the lawyer from Moscow, the Russian Ambassador, and the head of V.E.B. The F.B.I., too, is reportedly investigating Kushner’s Russian meetings. As details of his dealings with China come to light, they expose him to additional questions about the wisdom of his diplomatic efforts and the recurring risk that his work in government cannot be disentangled from his family’s business interests. This month, it emerged that the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York had issued subpoenas to the Kushner Companies, for details about its use of the EB-5 visa program.
Kushner’s once expansive role in the White House has narrowed, and he no longer meets frequently with Ambassador Cui. Still, by his own description, he is as confident as ever that his instincts, honed in the family business, can serve him, and the country, well. In the White House, he has a lofty but precarious status. Henry Kissinger, who had encouraged Kushner’s dialogue with Cui, described Kushner as occupying a “daunting role flying close to the sun.”
Recently, a former teaching fellow from Kushner’s undergraduate days at Harvard recalled that Kushner took a popular class on the American Presidency, taught by Roger Porter, who had advised Ronald Reagan when he was President. At the end of the semester, Porter read aloud from “The Inner Ring,” a 1944 oration by C. S. Lewis. It was Porter’s warning to his ambitious students about the temptations that haunt higher office, and the allure of favor-seekers. “You will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018 ... trump-card
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Feb 17, 2018 1:51 pm

John Kelly overhauls White House security clearances

It might have big implications for Jared Kushner.

Emily StewartFeb 17, 2018, 11:51am EST

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is overhauling the Trump administration’s security clearance process for staff. The decision comes in the wake of the Rob Porter scandal and amid reports that dozens of White House officials, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, still lack long-term security clearances even as Trump enters his second year in office.

Kelly, who has come under scrutiny for his handling of domestic abuse allegations against former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, laid out new rules and procedures for security clearance standards in the Trump administration in a memo first obtained by the Washington Post and later released by the White House.

The memo lands after revelations that Porter was allowed to remain on the job and had an interim security clearance despite knowledge of the allegations of physical and emotional abuse from two ex-wives and a former girlfriend.

“The events of the last ten days have focused immense attention on a clearance process that has been in place for multiple administrations. The American people deserve a White House staff that clearly meets the highest standards and that has been carefully vetted — especially those who work closely with the president or handle sensitive national security information,” the memo, which is addressed to White House counsel Don McGahn, National Security Adviser HR McMaster, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Joseph Hagin. “We should — and in the future, must — do better.”

Among the proposed changes is that the FBI, which conducts background checks for senior administration hires, hand-deliver checks upon completion and verbally brief the White House counsel on any “significantly derogatory” findings. It also seeks to reduce the “tie lag” between discovery of derogatory information to disclosure to the White House.

It also discontinues interim Top Secret or SCI-level (Sensitive Compartmented Information”) clearances that have been pending since before June 2017 and limits access to highly-classified information for individuals with interim clearance.

Kelly’s memo states he is creating a “working group” to “study the clearance process generally” and take action to “streamline, harmonize, and modernize standards” across the executive branch.

The memo is also copied to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

It’s not just Rob Porter whose interim security clearance is questionable

The allegations against Porter and the White House’s botched handling of them have brought to light a broader problem with security within the Trump administration: a lot of people still haven’t been cleared. According to reports from NBC News and CNN this week, about 100 White House administrations lacked long-term security clearances as of November 2017.

Among them: Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, both of whom reportedly have interim clearance for Top Secret and SCI clearance — exactly what Kelly’s memo revokes next week.

Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig, and Robert Costa at the Washington Post pointed out that the Kelly clearance overhaul could put a “bull’s eye” on Kushner. The 37-year-old investor and real estate developer in his role as a senior adviser to the president has been able to see some of the United States’ most sensitive secrets — even though his background check is not yet complete. He has access to the president’s daily brief, a daily digest of intelligence updates, and according to one person with knowledge of the situation issues more requests for information to the intelligence community than any White House employee apart from the National Security Counsel staff.

To be sure, there appear to be plenty of White House officials whose security clearance status remains in question. National Economic Council official George David Banks, who had served since February 2017, resigned this week after being informed he wouldn’t receive a permanent security clearance. He told Politico it was because of past marijuana use.

The Post quotes two US officials who say they don’t think Kushner will receive a permanent security clearance at least in the near future.

Kushner has repeatedly made amendments to forms detailing his contacts with foreign officials and financial assets and has often simply claimed to have forgotten vital information in his dealings with Congress and the ongoing Russia probe. Thus far, it doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ed-kushner
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:51 pm

Imagine a "conspiracy to defraud US" of proper foreign policy guidance because you were instead driving policy in ways to save 666?


Mueller's interest in Kushner grows to include foreign financing efforts

Sources: Mueller's interest in Kushner grows
Washington (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's interest in Jared Kushner has expanded beyond his contacts with Russia and now includes his efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

This is the first indication that Mueller is exploring Kushner's discussions with potential non-Russian foreign investors, including in China.

US officials briefed on the probe had told CNN in May that points of focus related to Kushner, the White House senior adviser and son-in-law of President Donald Trump, included the Trump campaign's 2016 data analytics operation, his relationship with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Kushner's own contacts with Russians.
Exclusive: A top Trump campaign adviser close to plea deal with Mueller
Mueller's investigators have been asking questions, including during interviews in January and February, about Kushner's conversations during the transition to shore up financing for 666 Fifth Avenue, a Kushner Companies-backed New York City office building reeling from financial troubles, according to people familiar with the special counsel investigation.

It's not clear what's behind Mueller's specific interest in the financing discussions. Mueller's team has not contacted Kushner Companies for information or requested interviews with its executives, according to a person familiar with the matter.

During the presidential transition, Kushner was a lead contact for foreign governments, speaking to "over fifty contacts with people from over fifteen countries," according to a statement he gave to congressional investigators.

Before joining the administration, Kushner was also working to divest his interests in Kushner Companies, the family company founded by his father. In early 2017, Kushner also divested from the 666 Fifth Avenue property that his family's company purchased in 2007 for $1.8 billion. The interests were sold to a family trust that Kushner does not benefit from, a spokesperson said at the time.
Kushner's contacts with Chinese investors


One line of questioning from Mueller's team involves discussions Kushner had with Chinese investors during the transition, according to the sources familiar with the inquiry.

A week after Trump's election, Kushner met with the chairman and other executives of Anbang Insurance, the Chinese conglomerate that also owns the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, according to The New York Times.
At the time, Kushner and Anbang's chairman, Wu Xiaohui, were close to finishing a deal for the Chinese insurer to invest in the flagship Kushner Companies property, 666 Fifth Avenue. Talks between the two companies collapsed in March, according to the Times.

Mueller's team has also asked about Kushner's dealings with a Qatari investor regarding the same property, according to one of the sources. Kushner and his company were negotiating for financing from a prominent Qatari investor, former prime minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, according to The Intercept. But as with Anbang, these efforts stalled.
Special counsel questioned Bannon this week
Kushner had bought the property in 2007 in a mostly debt deal valued at a record $1.8 billion. The building came under financial pressure during the housing crisis, and in 2011 Vornado Realty Trust stepped in with financing, taking on a 49.5% stake in the building. The office tower shoulders more than $1.4 billion in debt, according to a report Vornado released in March.

Vornado last week disclosed its intention to sell its stake in a regulatory filing, saying, "We do not intend to hold this asset on a long-term basis."

Representatives for Kushner and Anbang declined to comment. Al Thani could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Also during the transition, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, chairman of Russian state-run Vnesheconombank. Kushner testified on Capitol Hill that the meeting was for official US government purposes. But the Russian bank maintains that the sit-down in New York was part of their "roadshow of business meetings" and that Gorkov met Kushner because he ran Kushner Companies. The Washington Post reported that Mueller's investigators are scrutinizing this meeting.
Investigators' interest in Kushner


Last fall, Kushner turned over documents pertaining to the campaign and transition to both Mueller and congressional investigators, sources told CNN in November. Kushner spoke to investigators in November for less than two hours, and the dominant topic was Michael Flynn, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke to CNN at the time.
Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with the investigation, attended some of Kushner's meetings with foreign nationals. Under his plea deal, Flynn is obligated to tell Mueller's investigators everything he knows about these meetings.
Last year, Trump said he would view any investigation of his or his family's personal finances as a "violation" by Mueller that crosses a red line. A personal familiar with the investigation who supports Trump suggested that the expanded inquiry falls outside of Mueller's purview. Mueller is authorized to investigate links between Trump associates and Russia as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."
http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/ ... olitics=Tw
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:55 pm


Mueller Probe Heats Up: 13 Russians Indicted, Ex-Trump Aide to Plead Guilty, Focus on Kushner Grows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9-wfQzZ2HA
There have been a number of significant developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump administration. CNN is reporting Mueller is now investigating Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his attempts to secure financing for his family’s business while working on the president’s transition team. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times is reporting former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has agreed to plead guilty and testify against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Under the deal, Gates will plead guilty to money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying. These developments come just days after the Justice Department indicted 13 Russians and three companies in connection with efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election by orchestrating an online propaganda effort to undermine the U.S. election system. We speak to Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties. She runs the website EmptyWheel.net.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There have been a number of significant developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump administration. CNN is reporting Mueller is now investigating Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his attempts to secure financing for his family’s business while working on the president’s transition team. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times is reporting former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has agreed to plead guilty and to testify against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Under the deal, Gates will plead guilty to money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying.

AMY GOODMAN: These developments come just days after the Justice Department indicted 13 Russians and three companies in connection with efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election by orchestrating an online propaganda effort to undermine the U.S. election system. The indictment claims the Russians spread negative information online about Hillary Clinton, and support Donald Trump, as well as Bernie Sanders. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictments Friday.

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROD ROSENSTEIN: The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States’ political system, including the 2016 presidential election. The defendants allegedly conducted what they called “information warfare” against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Trump responded to the indictments on Twitter by lashing out at Democrats, the Mueller investigation, the Obama administration and the FBI. In one tweet, he wrote, quote, “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign–there is no collusion.”

AMY GOODMAN: Trump also criticized National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster, who said the indictments offer incontrovertible evidence that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election.

H.R. McMASTER: And as you can see with the FBI indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain, whereas in the past it was difficult to attribute, for a couple of reasons. First, technically, it was difficult, but then also you didn’t want divulge your intelligence capabilities. But now that this is in the arena of a law enforcement investigation, it’s going to be very apparent to everyone.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about these developments, we go to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to talk to Marcy Wheeler, independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties, runs the website EmptyWheel.net.

Marcy, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you lay out what came down on Friday and then the response of Trump? I mean, this is in the midst of the horror that took place in Florida, the 17 people killed in the massacre at the high school. The weekend, President Trump spends, in a massive tweetstorm around this, hardly mentioning the massacre.

MARCY WHEELER: Right. So, the indictment was for online trolling done by an organization called the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg. And it involves both Facebook ads, Facebook posts, Twitter accounts, Instagram—a range of social media activity that purported to be American, but in fact was Russians trying to gin up bad blood here in the United States and ultimately supporting Donald Trump. As Rosenstein said in the quote you had, it’s 13 Russians and a number of Russian businesses.

But what is interesting about the case, that the charges are conspiracy to defraud the United States—and I’ll come back to that—but then wire fraud and identity theft. So, there are real crimes here, the crimes that these trolls used to pretend to be American but weren’t really American. But what Mueller actually laid out in the indictment is that the problem with this is that in the United States it’s illegal to engage in certain kinds of activity without making it clear who’s behind the activity. And in this case, this is the activity tied to electing one or another presidential candidate. And that’s how he got to the conspiracy to defraud the United States charge, which is interesting because it’s the same primary charge that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates got charged with.

So you’re beginning to see where Mueller is going with the larger investigation. And as McMaster said, you’re seeing now real evidence tied to claims that Russia was behind this activity. And I think you’ll see more Republicans like him, and even Republicans who were involved. I mean, the indictment doesn’t charge any Americans, but it lays out activities that a lot of good-faith Trump volunteers and campaign workers were engaged in. And their actions are perhaps now tainted or got touched or got spun by Russians, which, you know, isn’t fair to them, much less Hillary Clinton, who was—you know, who was ultimately targeted by it. So, I think you’re going to see a change in how, especially Republicans, but even skeptics, more generally, how they approach this issue. But we also now, I think, see where Mueller is going with the rest of the investigation better.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Marcy, what do you make about the statement by Rod Rosenstein that no Americans willingly participated, according to this indictment, and that there’s no evidence that the alleged interference actually altered the election outcome?

MARCY WHEELER: Well, for one, I’m sure he said that to keep Trump happy and keep himself in his job. But I think it’s actually really important he said that. As I said, you can look at the indictment—and I do this in a post I did on Saturday—and there are at least 20 Americans who were just engaging in politics. They were putting together campaign events. They were engaging in online speech. That’s like, you know, the most sacred part of being an American citizen. And yet, they were unknowingly interacting with Russians, who were trying to and, at times, actually funding or encouraging certain activities.

So, I do think it’s important—he didn’t say no Americans were involved. There are ways in which the indictment suggests certain events may show up later in the investigation. For example, the indictment focuses on two events, a pro-Hillary—an anti-Hillary and pro-Trump event, that took place in the summer of 2016, and it focuses on a great deal of Florida activity. The Florida activity is of particular interest because the Guccifer 2.0, who’s the persona that is believed to have been used by the Russians to leak stolen documents, that figure released a ton of documents on—from the Democrats on Florida campaigns. So, Florida Republicans are actually the ones who most concretely can be shown to have benefited from the stolen documents from the Democrats. So, it may be that we’re going to see the Florida activity tied back in to the actual hack and leak later on. But what Rosenstein was importantly saying is that all of these Americans—most of them named in the indictment were Trump supporters—they didn’t do anything wrong. They were just engaging in politics, and Russians came in and used them, basically, to kind of turn their politics into something that it wasn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the key here—and Rosenstein said it, Trump said it throughout the weekend—is that this didn’t prove any kind of collusion. But Rosenstein said this. This is separate from it. It has to do with Russians interfering with the elections—something the U.S. government knows well about over the decades—right?—in being involved with interfering with other countries’ elections. But can you talk about what happened in Florida, for example, the protests? And also, describe this internet troll farm in St. Petersburg and how it operates.

MARCY WHEELER: Well, I mean, Amy, you make a good point, that the indictment calls this information “warfare.” It says that the troll farm considered themselves to be engaged in information warfare. But sure, we do that, absolutely. And so, one of the questions is, you know: Where are the lines going to be drawn? What are the norms? But, basically, these are people in St. Petersburg who were fluent English speakers, who were paid to engage in certain themes, use fake Twitter accounts, basically, to engage in certain themes and kind of just press the limits of certain partisan divides that already exist here, and not just partisan divides. They were also playing on religion and race, guns. So, they were basically paid to rile up Americans even further than our politics already do. Although I’ll also say that all sides engaged in similar kind of behavior in 2016. I mean, campaigns do this, as well. Campaigns even had bots. The difference here, according to the indictment, is that these bots were hiding the fact that it was a Russian effort, whereas, you know, Hillary or Trump bots were claiming correctly to be Hillary or Trump bots.

One of the most interesting things about the indictment is it describes how much, how well these trolls were able to get actual people here in the United States to go out and, say, pay an actress to pretend to be Hillary Clinton, and pay somebody to build a cage, so that they could, you know, drag around a fake Hillary Clinton in a fake cage to play on the theme of Hillary going to prison. So, that’s the sort of alarming thing, is that from St. Petersburg, they were able to get actual campaign events put together by pretending to be Americans. And I think, again, none of this—none of the American side of this was charged. And the people described in the indictment probably—you know, they were just engaging in good-faith politics. Whether or not I agree with their politics, they were just doing what we’re supposed to do in the United States, which is engage in politics. But we do know, as I said, that the Guccifer 2.0 figure leaked a bunch of Democratic targeting data on the Florida races, and so that state is one to watch, and those events are ones to watch, I think.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Marcy, could you talk about this now L.A. Times report that Rick Gates, the former aide to Trump’s presidential campaign, is expected to plead guilty and testify against Paul Manafort? What’s the significance of this, potentially?

MARCY WHEELER: Well, it’s another cooperating witness there. With the Internet Research Agency indictment on Friday, there actually was not another guilty plea that was announced, for a guy who had sold bank accounts that the trolls used to set up PayPal accounts. So, Gates, if he does flip, will be the fourth cooperating witness for Mueller. He is important because he was Paul Manafort, campaign manager’s deputy throughout the summer of 2016, which is when—Gates was not at the June 9th meeting, where Russians sort of promised to sell—to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton. But Gates was, for example, in the loop on discussions about setting up a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin. Manafort forwarded him an email and said, “We need to kind of hide—we need to not signal”—it’s unclear what that means. Gates probably knows what that means. But “we need to not signal on this.”

And so, you know, the public report in the L.A. Times is that Gates will be testifying predominately against Manafort, not against Trump. But I’m a little bit skeptical of that, one, because Gates was very much in the loop throughout the summer, and, two, because Gates stayed on. He was still working in the transition team all the way through the inauguration. So, I suspect Gates has more to tell the Mueller team than the L.A. Times piece makes out. And it just adds to the pressure. You get the feeling—and Trump has even said as much. Trump, a couple of weeks ago, said to Howard Fineman that he doesn’t think Manafort will flip on him, and so he thinks he’s OK. But with Gates flipping and cooperating with the Mueller team, it makes it far more likely that Manafort is going to be forced to do so. And that gets into things like that June 9th meeting.

AMY GOODMAN: Marcy Wheeler, I wanted to get your response to The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, who wrote a piece, “A Consensus Emerges: Russia Committed an ’Act of War' on Par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Should the U.S. Response Be Similar?” He writes, “All of this underscores the serious dangers many have pointed to for more than a year about why all this unhinged rhetoric is so alarming. If you really believe that Russia—with some phishing links sent to John Podesta and some fake Facebook ads and Twitter bots—committed an 'act of war' of any kind, let alone one on par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11, then it’s inevitable that extreme retaliatory measures will be considered and likely triggered. How does one justify a mere imposition of sanctions in the face of an attack similar to Pearl Harbor or 9/11?” That’s the question of Glenn Greenwald, Marcy.

MARCY WHEELER: Well, so, with the trolling, let’s be really clear that while Russia did spend a lot of money to do this, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what either side, the Republicans or Hillary Clinton, spent to do the same kind of activity. So, it could have made the difference in Michigan—I’m in Michigan. It could have made the difference here, in Wisconsin. But it is not—it is a drop in the bucket compared to the kinds of activities that go on in a political campaign.

We don’t know what else Mueller is going to show. We don’t know what kinds of quid pro quo, if in fact that happened. I always raise the fact that the Shadow Brokers, these leaked NSA files that were closely associated with all this, if that’s shown to be part of this same operation, that’s a great deal of damage to the United States.

That said, the trolling—you and I already said this. This is stuff the United States engages in all the time. It’s considered fair game for intelligence agencies. Even stealing hacking tools, fair game for intelligence agencies. Hacking political candidates, the United States does that, as well.

So, I do think we need to ask about what the appropriate response to this is. But part of that is understanding precisely what happened. And part of it is understanding what the best response is to prevent it from happening. I mean, one of the reasons Putin did this is because of the sanction regime put in place, because of what he perceives as the same kind of activity in 2011 and 2012 in elections in Russia. So, is more of the same going to—

AMY GOODMAN: He felt that Hillary Clinton supported protests against him.

MARCY WHEELER: Precisely, and with the same kind of online activity and the same—I mean, we call it “democracy promotion,” but it uses some of the same kind of tactics as these troll farms used on us. And, you know, the more important question is: Is the issue keeping America safe and free from foreign intervention, or is it needing to retaliate against Putin? And, you know, that may not be a binary choice. But, you know, it seems like this was a pretty remarkable attempt to interfere with the United States. The question is: What is the best response the United States can make, going forward, to prevent it from happening in the future? Is ratcheting up the pressure the thing to do, or is making ourselves resilient, is fixing our own politics? Which is really what Russia did, is they exploited both divisions within our own country, but also how easy it is to get money into our own politics or to have outsiders interfere in our own politics. We’ll be better off fixing that, fixing our politics, rather than ratcheting up again against Russia. And, I mean, I hope that we have a real debate about this, going forward, but people should not dismiss Glenn’s concerns out of hand.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Marcy, could you give us a quick take on this latest report from CNN, that Mueller is now looking into Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and possible negotiations he had with foreign entities about business deals for his company during the transition period? Is this going somewhat far afield from Mueller’s mandate?

MARCY WHEELER: I don’t think so, and here’s why. I said that the main charge in the Internet Research Agency was conspiracy to defraud the United States by basically pretending to be something you’re not, by pretending to be engaged in good-faith politics when you weren’t. That’s actually the same charge that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates are facing. They are pretending, according to Mueller, to be engaged in lobbying for American interests, when in fact they were representing the interests of pro-Russian Ukrainian political party. So, exact parallel there. The idea is that Paul Manafort was engaging in politics and pretending to be interested in the United States’ best interest, but in fact doing the bidding of pro-Russian money.

What you, I think—the reason why Kushner’s business deals are important, we’ve talked—and in the intro, this wasn’t the only example of—there’s the Don Jr. We’ve talked about how poorly Trump’s people have separated his business interests from the interests of the country. The same is even more true for Jared Kushner, whose family business is basically bankrupt. And over and over again, he’s been shown to be in negotiations with entities, including Russians, but also Chinese and Middle Eastern. So, you know, he’ll go in and say, “OK, we’ll talk about this grand peace plan,” which is not about peace at all, “but, oh, by the way, can you bail out our 666 Park Avenue building, which is badly underwater?” And I think Mueller could make the same argument he’s made with the IRA indictment and the Manafort indictment, and say that Jared Kushner is pretending to be serving America’s foreign policy interests, but in fact he is just doing his own bidding. He’s just trying to bail out his own company. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s moving towards a very similar indictment on conspiracy to defraud the United States, having to do with his conflicts of interest.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, interesting that Kushner also hasn’t managed to get top security clearance, when he’s a senior adviser to President Trump, as Porter didn’t because he beat his wives, etc. And then you’ve got Donald Jr. now in India promoting Trump businesses, as, of course, Donald Trump is the president of the United States. And he’s standing with the prime minister of India as he does this, promoting the Trump brand, Marcy.

MARCY WHEELER: Exactly. I mean, if Trump and his son and his son-in-law are pretending to be doing the business of the United States but are instead just trying to enrich themselves, again, I don’t think it’s a—you know, we’ve talked about the Emoluments Clause and how you go after the Trump campaign—the Trump officials for their egregious conflicts of interest. And, frankly, it extends into his Cabinet. But what Mueller seems to be doing, with some very good appellate lawyers, by the way, is to be laying out this framework that if you are pretending to be doing something in the interest of the United States but are actually doing something else, serving somebody else’s bidding, whether it’s Russia, pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, or whether it’s your own family business, then they’re going to go after you for a conspiracy charge. And I wouldn’t be surprised if these conspiracy charges all kind of link up at the end, in this kind of grand moment of—I think that’s where he’s headed.

AMY GOODMAN: Marcy Wheeler, I want to thank you for being with us, independent journalist covering national security and civil liberties issues for EmptyWheel.net. We’ll link to your piece, “What Did Mueller Achieve with the Internet Research Agency Indictment?”

This is Democracy Now! When we return, we speak with economist Robert Reich, former labor secretary under President Clinton. He has a new book; it’s called The Common Good. Stay with us.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/2/20/ ... 3_russians
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 21, 2018 12:06 pm

JARED’S CLEARANCE AND THE FOREIGN POLICY VERSION OF CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AMERICA

February 21, 2018/6 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Financial Fraud, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

I confess there is no multi-day Trump story I’ve looked forward to more than the problem with Jared Kushner’s clearance. And it is officially here. Last night, the NYT described how Jared is butting heads with John Kelly over whether he’ll lose clearance under Kelly’s post-Rob Porter mandate that people who can’t be cleared won’t be kept around anymore.

Kushner, frustrated about the security clearance issue and concerned that Mr. Kelly has targeted him personally with the directive, has told colleagues at the White House that he is reluctant to give up his high-level access, the officials said. In the talks, the officials say, Mr. Kushner has insisted that he maintain his current level of access, including the ability to review the daily intelligence briefing when he sees fit.


Today CNN and WaPo weigh in, with CNN nodding towards the conflict this will present Trump.

Though a source familiar with the situation said Kushner has not yet appealed to the President directly about his access to highly classified information, those close to Trump believe he would be inclined to grant his son-in-law access if asked. This source pointed to the fact that Kushner is part of the President’s family and has outlasted all of his rivals in Trump’s inner circle, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former deputy campaign manager David Bossie.

Trump, however, has given Kelly his full support in efforts to reform the White House’s system of security clearances, and has told his chief of staff that changes need to be made to bring the system into order, according to a person who has spoken to him about the matter. Kelly has interpreted that as a wide-ranging mandate that would include Kushner, a person familiar with the matter said. The person said Trump and Kelly would likely discuss the matter this week, if they haven’t already, before Kelly’s self-imposed Friday deadline.


WaPo brings the appropriate level of skepticism over whether Kushner can really do his Fake Peace Plan job without clearance.

It is not clear how Kushner could perform his job without a high-level security clearance.

He holds a broad range of responsibilities, from overseeing peace efforts in the Middle East to improving the efficiency of the federal government. And he is the administration’s interlocutor with key allies, including China and Saudi Arabia, where he has developed a personal relationship with the young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

[snip]

And apart from staff on the National Security Council, he issues more requests for information to the intelligence community than any White House employee, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.


More importantly, WaPo includes a series of false bravado quotes from Jared’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, who bizarrely offered up his judgement that Jared is speaking with foreign officials “properly.”

“My inquiries to those involved again have confirmed that there are a dozen or more people at Mr. Kushner’s level whose process is delayed, that it is not uncommon for this process to take this long in a new administration, that the current backlogs are being addressed, and no concerns were raised about Mr. Kushner’s application,” he said in a statement.

[snip]

Lowell said Kushner’s job is “to talk with foreign officials, which he has done and continues to do properly.”


I’ve come to think of Kushner’s clearance process in similar terms to the way I’ve thought of the bail process Mueller has used with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates: While Gates ultimately did make bail, Manafort is still (!) almost four months after his arrest, struggling to show enough liquidity free of taint from his money laundering to alter his release conditions. The process of making bail (and having to serially beg to attend his kids’ soccer events) seems to have been one of the factors that brought Gates to the point of flipping, but along the way, he probably gave Mueller’s team far more leverage in plea negotiations, because they know how little Gates actually has to pay a defense attorney to oversee the flip (indeed, that may lie behind the confusion over Gates’ current legal representation).

Kushner’s liquidity problems are literally an order of magnitude greater than these men. But unlike them, he made the idiotic decision to work in the White House, and thereby to undergo the scrutiny of sworn statements laying out all the financial vulnerabilities and foreign entanglements that might make him susceptible to blackmail.

Which brings me back to my description of how Mueller is leveraging “conspiracy to defraud the United States” (what I will henceforward refer to as ConFraudUS*) charges to prosecute political influence peddling for which our regulatory system has completely collapsed. With the Internet Research Agency indictment, Mueller charged ConFraudUS because the trolls bypassed a campaign finance system that no longer works. With Manafort and Gates, Mueller charged ConFraudUS because they bypassed Foreign Agents Registration Act requirements that have never been enforced.

In the old days, to pursue the kind of quid pro quo we see outlines of, in which Trump officials (from George Papadopoulos’ proposed business with Sergei Millian to the possibility Kushner might get bailed out by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is itself a cut-out for the sanctioned Vnesheconombank, whose head, Sergey Gorkov, Kushner met in December 2016), you’d pursue bribery. But post-Bob McDonnell, bribery is a far tougher charge to make stick, as Mueller prosecutor Andrew Goldstein, who worked on the Sheldon Silver prosecution team, knows well.

What if, however, you could charge people whose meetings seamlessly tie the foreign policy decisions of the United States with discussions of their own financial interests, with ConFraudUS? That might make it easier to charge someone whose foreign policy decisions don’t serve the US interest but might enrich them for the quid pro quo entailed.

Which is why I’m interested in the report that Mueller has shown increased interest (almost certainly tied to Steven Bannon’s public pronouncements that, “It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit”) in Jared’s foreign financial dealings, how he has mixed his business interests and US foreign policy.

One line of questioning from Mueller’s team involves discussions Kushner had with Chinese investors during the transition, according to the sources familiar with the inquiry.
A week after Trump’s election, Kushner met with the chairman and other executives of Anbang Insurance, the Chinese conglomerate that also owns the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, according to The New York Times.
At the time, Kushner and Anbang’s chairman, Wu Xiaohui, were close to finishing a deal for the Chinese insurer to invest in the flagship Kushner Companies property, 666 Fifth Avenue. Talks between the two companies collapsed in March, according to the Times.

Mueller’s team has also asked about Kushner’s dealings with a Qatari investor regarding the same property, according to one of the sources. Kushner and his company were negotiating for financing from a prominent Qatari investor, former prime minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, according to The Intercept. But as with Anbang, these efforts stalled.


Lowell’s false bravado in this report is even more ridiculous than that in the clearance stories.

A representative for Kushner declined to comment prior to the publication of this story. After publication, Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell told CNN in a statement, “Another anonymous source with questionable motives now contradicts the facts — in all of Mr. Kushner’s extensive cooperation with all inquiries, there has not been a single question asked nor document sought on the 666 building or Kushner Co. deals. Nor would there be any reason to question these regular business transactions.”


Lowell may not have turned over any documents relating to 666 Fifth Avenue. But Deutsche Bank got subpoenas even before Bannon started running his mouth (albeit in a separate EDNY probe). Moreover, the key detail under my imagined ConFraudUS charge would be whether Kushner did things — like try to get Chinese investors visas — that didn’t serve or indeed violated the interests of the United States. Admittedly, the President gets largely unfettered control over the foreign policy of the United States (though Trump has defied Congress in areas where they do have some control). But to the extent Jared pursued his own business interests during the transition, he wouldn’t be able to claim to rely on presidential prerogative.

Which brings me back to Jared’s long struggle to get a security clearance.

Abbe Lowell may not have turned over the financial documents on 666 Fifth Avenue that would show how susceptible Jared’s debt woes make him to foreign influence. But he has serially provided that evidence in support of Jared’s almost certainly futile attempt to convince the FBI he should get a permanent TS/SCI security clearance.

I laid this out yesterday at the very end of my Democracy Now appearance:

I think—the reason why Kushner’s business deals are important, we’ve talked—and in the intro, this wasn’t the only example of—there’s the Don Jr. We’ve talked about how poorly Trump’s people have separated his business interests from the interests of the country. The same is even more true for Jared Kushner, whose family business is basically bankrupt. And over and over again, he’s been shown to be in negotiations with entities, including Russians, but also Chinese and Middle Eastern. So, you know, he’ll go in and say, “OK, we’ll talk about this grand peace plan,” which is not about peace at all, “but, oh, by the way, can you bail out our 666 Park Avenue building, which is badly underwater?” And I think Mueller could make the same argument he’s made with the IRA indictment and the Manafort indictment, and say that Jared Kushner is pretending to be serving America’s foreign policy interests, but in fact he is just doing his own bidding. He’s just trying to bail out his own company. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s moving towards a very similar indictment on conspiracy to defraud the United States, having to do with his conflicts of interest.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, interesting that Kushner also hasn’t managed to get top security clearance, when he’s a senior adviser to President Trump, as Porter didn’t because he beat his wives, etc. And then you’ve got Donald Jr. now in India promoting Trump businesses, as, of course, Donald Trump is the president of the United States. And he’s standing with the prime minister of India as he does this, promoting the Trump brand, Marcy.

MARCY WHEELER: Exactly. I mean, if Trump and his son and his son-in-law are pretending to be doing the business of the United States but are instead just trying to enrich themselves, again, I don’t think it’s a—you know, we’ve talked about the Emoluments Clause and how you go after the Trump campaign—the Trump officials for their egregious conflicts of interest. And, frankly, it extends into his Cabinet. But what Mueller seems to be doing, with some very good appellate lawyers, by the way, is to be laying out this framework that if you are pretending to be doing something in the interest of the United States but are actually doing something else, serving somebody else’s bidding, whether it’s Russia, pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, or whether it’s your own family business, then they’re going to go after you for a conspiracy charge. And I wouldn’t be surprised if these conspiracy charges all kind of link up at the end, in this kind of grand moment of—I think that’s where he’s headed.


Remember, Trump and his spawn never really thought they’d win the election. Instead, they seemed interested in, among other things, a Trump Tower in Moscow and refinancing 666 Park Avenue. But if they made deals with Russians in hopes such personal financial benefits would result, a ConFraudUS charge might be a way to prosecute them for it.

*I originally shortened this “CTDTUS,” but following Peter Crowley’s suggestion, I’m instead using “ConFraudUS.”
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/21/j ... ent-727413
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby Elvis » Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:48 pm

Henry Kissinger, who, in his role as a high-priced international consultant, maintains close relationships in the Chinese hierarchy, had introduced Kushner


I have to wonder if Kissinger is playing an even greater role behind these scenes.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:02 pm

:D


Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence

A memo sent Friday downgraded the presidential son-in-law and adviser and other White House aides who had been working on interim clearances.

By ELIANA JOHNSON and ANDREW RESTUCCIA
02/27/2018 03:39 PM EST
Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded — a move that will prevent him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he once had unfettered access.

Kushner is not alone. All White House aides working on the highest-level interim clearances — at the Top Secret/SCI-level — were informed in a memo sent Friday that their clearances would be downgraded to the Secret level, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

The SCI acronym stands for sensitive compartmentalized information, a category of information that comes from sensitive intelligence sources and must be walled off.

The memo was not signed by chief of staff John Kelly, but it comes as the retired Marine general and other top White House aides are grappling with the fallout of a scandal involving former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, which revealed that dozens of White House aides had yet to receive permanent clearances but nonetheless had access to some of the country’s deepest secrets.

The president has the ability to grant Kushner a permanent clearance, but Trump said Friday — the same day the memo was sent — that he was leaving the decision to his chief of staff.

“I will let General Kelly make that decision,” Trump told reporters. “I have no doubt he’ll make the right decision.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the memo.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on Kushner’s clearance status at a briefing Tuesday.

“We actually haven’t commented on Jared’s issue indicated, but we have commented on his ability to do his job. Which, he’s a valued member of the team and he will continue to do the important work that he’s been doing since he’s started in the administration.”

Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement that Kushner “has done more than what is expected of him in this process.”

Lowell added that the changes would “not affect Mr. Kushner’s ability to continue to do the very important work he has been assigned by the president.”

Friday’s decision is the first change to the clearance process instituted in the wake of the Porter debacle that will directly affect Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to Trump and has until now had access to the president’s daily brief, the most highly-classified document that Trump sees.

Kelly took the rare step last week of issuing a public statement that Kushner would be able to continue his work in the White House unfettered.

“As I told Jared days ago, I have full confidence in his ability to continue performing his duties in his foreign policy portfolio including overseeing our Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and serving as an integral part of our relationship with Mexico,” Kelly said in the statement.

It was unclear whether Kushner would need access to top secret information to continue performing those duties — and whether Kelly was prepared to enact a policy that could be perceived as a jab at the president’s son-in-law.

The decision to downgrade White House still working on interim clearances, however, indicates that Kelly is prepared to impose the same sort of discipline on the White House clearance process that he has tried to impose on the West Wing staff more broadly.

“The American people deserve a White House staff that meets the highest standards and that has been carefully vetted — especially those who work closely with the president or handle sensitive national security information,” Kelly told colleagues in a memo circulated on Feb. 16. “We should — and in the future, must — do better.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/ ... ade-427178



1. BITES THE DUST
an hour ago
Jared Kushner’s Key Aide Leaving White House

REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST

Senior White House communications official Josh Raffel is leaving to join the private sector, Axios reported Tuesday. A former Hollywood PR executive, Raffel quickly became the point man for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump within the White House—handling the “worst stories” and having connections in major publications and TV networks. He also handled communications surrounding the Israel-Palestine negotiations, and a number of issues for the National Economic Council, such as tax reform. “Josh is honest, passionate and thoughtful,” Ivanka Trump told Axios. “Whether it was offering strategic guidance on the communications for tax reform or a foreign trip, Josh's guidance was invaluable. The White House won’t be the same without him.” Raffel’s last day is reportedly sometime within the next two months.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jared-kus ... hite-house
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby Elvis » Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:58 pm

Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence


:D


Interesting, this....

The president has the ability to grant Kushner a permanent clearance, but Trump said Friday — the same day the memo was sent — that he was leaving the decision to his chief of staff.


...seems un-Trumplike to cave in like that, I wonder what might be putting Trump into a corner?

And surely they'll try to circumvent the restrictions, which should lead to serious trouble for them.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:24 pm

Elvis » Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:48 pm wrote:
Henry Kissinger, who, in his role as a high-priced international consultant, maintains close relationships in the Chinese hierarchy, had introduced Kushner


I have to wonder if Kissinger is playing an even greater role behind these scenes.


Take this with a grain of salt, as my source is Michael Wolff, but in Fire and Fury there was a lot of behind the scenes meetings between Kissinger and Kushner. I believe he described it like an uncle taking a nephew under his wing.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby Elvis » Tue Feb 27, 2018 8:47 pm

stillrobertpaulsen wrote:Take this with a grain of salt, as my source is Michael Wolff, but in Fire and Fury there was a lot of behind the scenes meetings between Kissinger and Kushner. I believe he described it like an uncle taking a nephew under his wing.


I didn't finish reading Wolff's book but maybe I will now.

Seems that in 2016 Bill & Hillary skipped their usual Christmas holiday — "Clintons and the Kissingers regularly spend holidays together at a beachfront villa" in the Dominican Republic. Coulda been awkard.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:37 am

The Deep State Takes Out the White House’s Dark Clown Prince

Jared Kushner had a very bad terrible no good day. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.


If you’ve ever filled out a form SF-86 for a U.S. government security clearance, you’ll know the hassle of dealing with the sheer volume of information it entails. Listing contacts, personal, financial, and travel information in enormous, painstaking detail isn’t trivial, and even small errors will get the form kicked back to you or your clearance rejected. Applicants are required to spell out in great detail the specifics of foreign travel and overseas contacts. Investigators need to know where you’ve made your money and to whom you have debts.

I did it in my early twenties when my life was relatively uncomplicated, and it was still a pain in the ass. It’s not easy, and it’s not supposed to be.

It’s even harder when you’re a corrupt, entitled snake who repeatedly lies about your finances to federal investigators and serves as a living, breathing poster child for privileged venality. It’s even harder when you’ve rather clumsily attempted to use both your familial relationship and proximity to the president of the United States to save your family’s failing real-estate empire.

All of which helps explain Jared Kushner’s very bad day on Tuesday. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a man who has compromised himself and his supposed values to accommodate and indulge President Trumphausen’s various whims, impulses, urges, feuds, and paranoid episodes, finally drew the line and busted Kushner’s security clearance down from TS/SCI to Walmart Greeter Background Check (Provisional).

Hear that? That was America’s intelligence community, down to the last GS-7, breathing a loud sigh of relief.

Kushner is a man who needs a billion dollars fast, and is willing to cast shame on the winds to get there. The stench of his venality and desperation hangs around him like stripper perfume, cloying and obvious. Jared all but hiked up his sassy pink petticoats while whistling “Hey, sailor!” to the Chinese, Israeli, Arab, and Russian investors he begged to invest in his failing 666 Fifth Avenue white elephant.

Kushner has no one to blame but himself. His ambition exceeded his abilities by orders of magnitude so vast it would take a team of advanced mathematicians a generation to devise a system by which to measure the differential. Even his simpering beta-male, child-voiced affect couldn’t hide his spectacular reach and overpowering thirst for the power, influence, and financial rewards of Washington.

It wasn’t just that Kushner omitted tens of millions of dollars of investments from his SF-86 and was forced to revise again and again and again, or that his listing of foreign contacts and engagements was glaringly insufficient. It’s that he lied and omitted information in a way that was painfully obvious to the FBI and government officials examining his qualifications for the most elevated intelligence clearances. Then, the whispers in foreign capitals started; Kushner, they whispered, is for sale. American intelligence was listening.

Tuesday night, The Washington Post broke a massive story on intercepted intelligence from the UAE, China, Israel, and Mexico in which foreign officials capered in glee over how to manipulate and bribe the Naif Prince of Trumplandia. It’s one thing to be a target. It’s another thing to be an easy target.

The knowledge that every foreign intelligence agency in the world saw Kushner’s desperation for cash no doubt set America’s beleaguered counterintelligence community into a state of raw panic. The fact that Kushner is up to his hot-yogaed ass in dealings with Sergei Kislyak and was a key member of the infamous Trump Tower meeting in which Russia offered a quid for a still mysterious quo is just the icing on that cake.

Until today, Jared Kushner was one of a handful of recipients of the President’s Daily Brief, a product that compiles the crown jewels of the American intelligence community’s input and analysis. He was exposed to source and methods, high-grade analytical product, and the darkest secrets we have gleaned from the most sensitive sources. Although President Postliterate Bestwords has his PDB presented in graphic-novel form or performed by costumed dancers, Jared was apparently an aggressive consumer of intelligence, ordering up briefings and information outside even his broad purview. What he knows after a year in this position makes him the juiciest intelligence target in the world.

Trump’s nepotism always put the soft-handed Kushner on an impossible pedestal. By the time it was clear even to a slowcoach like Trump that Jared couldn’t be the Minister of All Portfolios, it was too late. The imagined power couple of Jared and Ivanka waged their snippy, passive-aggressive media war from their offices in the West Wing, leaking diligently to boot first Reince Priebus, and then Steve Bannon from the White House. The humiliation of being ousted by Jarvanka must rankle Bannon to this day. Kelly was their next target, but he moved first, and struck hard.

For now, Kelly has skillfully maneuvered his boss into a tight corner. Trump can either give in to the simpering “But Daaaaaaaady” whinge of Princess Ivanka and restore Jared to his full suite of security clearances, or face a tornado of razor cuts from leaks over Jared’s business dealings and behavior.

The almost certain knowledge that Robert Mueller isn’t done with Jared by a long stretch doesn’t make it any easier for Trump, even as the red flags thrown up by Rod Rosenstein over the president’s son-in-law and very special adviser were one more sign of the urgency of closing up the leakiest, riskiest White House in history. The best part of this trap is that Trump (R-Oppositional Defiant Disorder) will be tempted to do the one thing that will make his political situation more politically tenuous and legally risky by restoring Jared’s clearances. It’s within his rights as the president, but he would be dumber than a sack of hammers to do so. A smart president would have already told Jared to pack up and get the hell out, but... oh, who are we kidding?

This battle was only ever going to end one way, and in the war of the Deep State vs. Team Trump, the bad guys often make it easy by being greedy, sloppy, and stupid. Jared was all three.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-deep- ... e?ref=home
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:59 pm

Has Jared Kushner Conspired to Defraud America?

By MARCY WHEELER
FEB. 28, 2018


Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser, has conducted foreign policy without officially disclosing all the personal interests he may have been serving. Alex Brandon/Associated Press
Amid the dizzying details of internet trolls, almost a million dollars’ worth of antique rugs and fake bank accounts, the indictments brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, in his investigation of Russian tampering in the 2016 election have one thing in common.

Both the indictment of 13 Russians associated with a troll farm called Internet Research Agency and the indictment of President Trump’s onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort accuse the defendants of pretending to engage in American politics in good faith but secretly serving someone else’s interest. In both cases, the charge, “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” is an assertion that they were really serving the interests of Russia or of a Russian-backed Ukrainian politician, and that by hiding their true intent, the defendants prevented the United States government from protecting our politics from undisclosed outside influence.

That precedent, and the guilty plea to the same charge by Rick Gates, Mr. Manafort’s deputy, may pose a real danger to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. According to reports, Mr. Mueller appears to be assessing whether Mr. Kushner, in the guise of pursuing foreign policy on behalf of the United States, was actually serving the interests of his family and foreign governments.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that “officials in at least four countries” — United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico — “have privately discussed ways they can manipulate” Mr. Kushner by taking advantage of his “complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience.” The president gave his son-in-law an expansive foreign policy role, including an effort to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The implication in the article is that the United States government has intercepted communications of foreign leaders talking about ways they could take advantage of Mr. Kushner, whose family real estate empire is facing substantial debt woes.

The biggest concern in the Post report — and surely one reason such intelligence led to Mr. Kushner’s being stripped of his interim top-secret security clearance last week — is that foreign countries would offer him personal financial benefits in the same conversations in which he purports to represent America’s best interests.

There has already been ample reporting suggesting that Mr. Kushner may have done just that. During a period when Mr. Kushner was negotiating President Trump’s first visit to China, his family business was trying to sell a debt-ridden property in New York to an insurance company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Public scrutiny of the deal scuttled it. Last May, The New York Times described how, immediately after the Trump administration extended a visa program for wealthy investors, Mr. Kushner’s sister invoked Mr. Kushner in a presentation seeking Chinese investment in one of the family’s New Jersey real estate developments.

Such appearances of conflict might not, by themselves, get Mr. Kushner in trouble. The president has broad authority to set the country’s foreign policy, and public corruption laws have been far more difficult to enforce after a 2016 Supreme Court decision overturning the conviction of the former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell on bribery charges.

But Mr. Kushner might face more trouble to the extent he keeps such negotiations secret from those in charge of carrying out United States foreign policy. When the national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, learned of some of Mr. Kushner’s communications only after the fact, he was surprised, one official told The Post, and thought it was “weird.”

Mr. Kushner has been famously tardy in disclosing his business interests and ties with foreigners in his application for a security clearance. He was still making updates to his forms as recently as January. That means he has conducted an entire year of foreign policy without officially disclosing all the personal interests he may have been serving.

Finally, the risk might be greater still if Mr. Kushner negotiated such deals before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. That’s the possibility raised by Mr. Kushner’s pre-inauguration meetings with Russia. In December 2016, Mr. Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a bank under American sanctions, Vnesheconombank. That meeting came after Mr. Kushner suggested a back channel of communications in a meeting with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, according to Mr. Kislyak.

Nor did Mr. Trump’s transition team alert the Obama administration before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates visited New York in December 2016 for a meeting involving Mr. Kushner and others at Trump Tower.

While the proper authorities may not have been informed of this series of meetings, Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s investigators late last year, did attend or at least knew of them. Steve Bannon, who recently sat for 20 hours of interviews with special counsel prosecutors, participated in the Zayed Trump Tower meeting along with Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kushner. So if they are a concern to Mr. Mueller, he has recently gotten far more details of what happened at the meetings.

Mr. Kushner’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, has been very forthcoming with the press. But he seems to have relied on the same on-the-record quotation since Feb. 16, when news first broke that Mr. Kushner might lose his interim security clearance. Twelve days ago, a statement from Mr. Lowell to The Washington Post directly addressed the gist of the story that just broke Tuesday. Mr. Kushner’s job, Mr. Lowell said, was “to talk with foreign officials,” which, he added, Mr. Kushner has done “properly.”

Perhaps Mr. Kushner is just a person who had no idea what he was doing and wanted to improve his and his family’s finances. Still, there are many reasons to question whether he has talked with foreign officials with the proper disclosures, designed to ensure that those claiming to represent the interests of the United States aren’t hiding their own interests or those of foreign governments.

In pursuing his investigation into Russian tampering, Mr. Mueller appears to be doing something more: restoring the regulatory teeth to ensure that those engaging in American politics are doing what they publicly claim they are. If Mr. Mueller extends this effort to foreign policy, Mr. Kushner may be in real trouble.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opin ... fraud.html


Kushner’s Family Business Received Loans After White House Meetings

FEB. 28, 2018

Jared Kushner’s tenure in the White House has been dogged by questions about conflicts of interest between his government work and his family business, in which he remains heavily invested. Tom Brenner/The New York Times
Early last year, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House.

Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris.

The job never materialized, but in November, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.

Even by the standards of Apollo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the previously unreported transaction with the Kushners was a big deal: It was triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo’s real estate lending arm, securities filings show.

It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.

That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Mr. Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, according to people briefed on the meeting. The two men talked about financial and trade policy and did not discuss Mr. Kushner’s family business, one person said.

There is little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplate sizable loans to his business, say government ethics experts.

“This is exactly why senior government officials, for as long back as I have any experience, don’t maintain any active outside business interests,” said Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration and, before that, a lawyer for the Air Force and Navy during Republican and Democratic administrations. “The appearance of conflicts of interest is simply too great.”

Lending Club
In 2017, Jared Kushner met multiple times in the White House with leaders of at least two financial institutions that subsequently made large loans to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate business, in which Mr. Kushner retains an interest.

Mr. Kushner met multiple times with Joshua Harris, who was advising the administration on infrastructure issues.

Apollo Global

Management

Apollo

Commercial

Real Estate

Finance

Kushner

Companies

In November, Mr. Harris’s company, Apollo, made a loan of $184 million to Kushner Companies.

In spring 2017, Mr. Kushner met at the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael Corbat.

Kushner

Companies

In March, Citigroup made a loan of $325 million to Kushner Companies and one of its partners.

The White House referred questions to Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, who did not dispute that the meetings between Mr. Kushner and the executives took place.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Mr. Lowell, said in a statement that Mr. Kushner “has met with hundreds of business people.” He said that Mr. Kushner “has taken no part of any business, loans or projects with or for” Kushner Companies since joining the White House and that he has followed ethics advice.

Christine Taylor, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said Mr. Kushner’s White House role had not affected the company’s relationships with financial institutions. “Stories like these attempt to make insinuating connections that do not exist to disparage the financial institutions and companies involved,” she said.

An Apollo spokesman, Charles V. Zehren, said Mr. Harris was not involved in the decision to loan money to Kushner Companies. He said the loan “went through the firm’s standard approval process.”

A Citigroup spokeswoman, Danielle Romero-Apsilos, said Kushner Companies had been a bank client since before the election and that the relationship had no connection to Mr. Kushner’s White House role. She said Citigroup negotiated the 2017 loan with Kushner Companies’ business partner, a real estate developer.

Mr. Kushner’s tenure in the White House has been dogged by questions about conflicts of interest between his government work and his family business, in which he remains heavily invested. Mr. Kushner steers American policy in the Middle East, for example, but his family company continues to do deals with Israeli investors.

This blurring of lines is now a potential liability for Mr. Kushner, who recently lost his top-secret security clearance amid worries from some United States officials that foreign governments might try to gain influence with the White House by doing business with Mr. Kushner.



Michael L. Corbat, left, the chief executive of Citigroup, and Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm. Both men are said to have met with Jared Kushner at the White House in 2017. From left: Laurent Gillieron/European Pressphoto Agency; Patrick T. Fallon, via Bloomberg
Investigators working for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election, have asked questions about Mr. Kushner’s interactions with potential investors from overseas, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar.

Mr. Mirijanian, the spokesman for Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that Mr. Mueller had not sought from the Kushner Companies or Mr. Kushner “any information or document concerning any business dealing either has had.”

Mr. Kushner resigned as chief executive of Kushner Companies when he joined the White House last January, and he sold a small portion of his stake in the company to a trust controlled by his mother.

But he retained the vast majority of his interest in Kushner Companies. His real estate holdings and other investments are worth as much as $761 million, according to government ethics filings. They are likely worth much more, because that estimate has his firm’s debt subtracted from the value of his holdings. The company has done at least $7 billion of deals in the past decade.

Public filings show that Mr. Kushner still owns part of the company that received the Apollo loan. The loan was used to refinance a Chicago skyscraper that is the Midwest headquarters for AT&T. Mr. Kushner also still holds a stake in the entity that owns the Brooklyn buildings and received the loan from Citigroup.

Federal ethics regulations restrict government employees from participating in some matters that involve companies with which the official is seeking “a business, contractual or other financial relationship that involves other than a routine consumer transaction.”

Mr. Fox, the ethics expert, said Mr. Kushner risked violating the regulations in his meetings with Citigroup and Apollo executives.



Jared Kushner sat next to Leon Black, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management, at the 2016 US Open, a few months before the presidential election. Jean Catuffe/GC Images
“Why does Jared have to take the meeting?” he asked. “Is there not somebody else who doesn’t have these financial entanglements who can brainstorm freely with these folks?”

The Trump administration no longer publicly discloses logs of visitors to the White House. In February, the White House settled litigation with Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization, and agreed to disclose some of that information.

Mr. Kushner has also met at the White House with Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the private equity firm Blackstone, which in the past has lent money to Kushner Companies for several projects, though all before the election. Until August, Mr. Schwarzman was the head of a White House business advisory council.

“Blackstone has not done any business with Kushner Companies since the election, nor has Steve ever discussed private business matters with Mr. Kushner,” said a Blackstone spokeswoman.

All of the executives who met with Mr. Kushner have lots to gain or lose in Washington.

Apollo has sought ways to benefit from the White House’s possible infrastructure plan. And its executives, including Mr. Harris, had tens of millions of dollars personally at stake in the tax overhaul that was making its way through Washington last year.

Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, is heavily regulated by federal agencies and, like other financial companies, is trying to get the government to relax its oversight of the industry.

Mr. Kushner has reported owning hundreds of partnerships, limited liability companies and other entities, but he is not required to disclose the lifeblood of any real estate firm’s business: its lenders and outside investors.

Some of the lenders can be pieced together through public records. The Apollo loan is disclosed in Chicago mortgage filings, which list the lender as “ACREFI Holdings J-I, LLC.” That vehicle is owned by Apollo’s real estate investment trust, securities filings show.

The loans’ interest rates and other key provisions are not disclosed.

Kushner Companies bought the Chicago building in 2007.

Apollo, best known for investing in companies such as Caesars Entertainment and Norwegian Cruise Lines, was founded by Mr. Harris, Marc Rowan and its current chief executive, Leon Black. Mr. Black and Mr. Kushner sat next to each other at the 2016 US Open, a few months before the presidential election.

Mr. Harris, a co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, is Apollo’s senior managing director. He also is an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Early last year, the White House enlisted Mr. Harris and other executives to advise the administration on infrastructure policy. Over a period of months, Mr. Harris met regularly with Mr. Kushner and other White House officials.

Apollo made the loan to Kushner Companies on Nov. 1, 2017, according to public records.

Apollo does not make real estate loans directly. Instead, it makes them through a so-called real estate investment trust, called Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance. The trust is a publicly traded company with its own set of shareholders. It is managed by Apollo, which charges the trust management fees, and has no employees of its own.

One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.

Mr. Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That investment never materialized.

Shortly after Kushner Companies received the loan from Apollo, the private equity firm emerged as a beneficiary of the tax cut package that the White House championed. Mr. Trump backed down from his earlier pledge to close a loophole that permits private equity managers to pay taxes on the bulk of their income at rates that are roughly half of ordinary income tax rates. The tax law left the loophole largely intact.



Mr. Kushner’s firm had sought a $500 million investment from the former head of the Qatari government’s investment fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Karsten Moran for The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/busi ... pe=article
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Jared Kushner

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:17 pm

So ... seven different investigations into Kushner business deals?

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