KUSHNER 2

3/18

no merri

===

LOW PROFILE FOR A WHILE?

Ginni told MM she reached out to jared big lie

pow, evil pending (done, covid!)

SEE BIBI DERSHOWITZ --> EPSTEIN MOSSAD? CHABAD

reportedly short-list for cos

parscale pal, gives cover

SEE Dmitriev VEB BANK RUSSIA

see failson

MBS MBZ

see board of peace gaza see witkoff

declares victory during epic fail? // "mission accomplished"? 5/20

not even pretending to be in charge of anything? middle east mbz deal? oddly awol in campaign? RNC? his job clap for ivanka?

brooke rollins?

bondi?

eric trump

DOW CORTEVA?

LANCE WALLNAU?

DAVID ELLISON SKYDANCE

VAYMAN BVI OFFSHORE BANK

BAK 3 26

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an 9 26

'Widely circulating' Russian nickname for 'clownish' Trump aides revealed

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FLAMINGO REVO

DISCOVER ISLAND FROM YACHT ROTHSCHILD; NATURE SANCT; VILLAGE GRABBED BY MAFIA

8 26

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an 9 26

President Donald Trump and his high-ranking officials are engaged in a simultaneous project of spreading far right ideologies worldwide — and raking in billions while doing so.

In an article by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum on Monday, Americans learned the full extent of Trump's mixing of exporting paranoid politics and turning a profit from Brazil and the United Arab Emirates to threatening longtime democratic allies like Canada and Denmark. She added that the major industries helping Trump do this include oil and gas, rare earth minerals and cryptocurrency.

"American power is no longer deployed solely by trained diplomats and reliable officials, working through state channels. Informal envoys, private companies, online grifters, and hardened ideologues both inside and outside the government matter more," Applebaum wrote. "Unlike their predecessors, these people do not talk about spreading democracy, and don’t want to build long-term relationships. They don’t care about America’s reputation. They are deploying the tools of American diplomacy and government for their own purposes, to promote their own business interests or their own ideological goals, because, suddenly, they can."

She also added that "the clan of predators currently in charge of the U.S. federal government is no different. Wrongly described as 'isolationists,' many of its true believers don’t think of themselves as ordinary Republicans who won an election and will temporarily hold power until the next election. Nor are they mere appendages of Trump. They believe they represent something much greater: the vanguard of a movement that will alter not just America, but the world."

Applebaum contrasted the attitude of Trump supporters with that of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who famously said during the 2008 election that his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), was a decent man with whom he happened to disagree.

"Their enemies are existential, and they are international: super-spreaders of a 'wokeness' plague, or proponents of a fictitious 'censorship-industrial complex,' or advocates of 'regulation' that will hamper American business, or self-hating promoters of “mass migration” who want to drown Western civilization in a sea of brown-faced aliens," Applebaum explained. "To maintain their power and defeat these enemies, the predators, like their Bolshevik counterparts, cannot rely on traditional diplomacy, because they don’t trust its practitioners."

She concluded, "Nor do they trust many of the leaders of the democratic states that have long shared the same political and economic values as America. Although the U.S. military and intelligence services continue to cooperate closely with allied governments, the ideologues in and out of the administration are actively seeking to replace them with people and parties who share their disdain for liberal democracy and for what were once considered, at least aspirationally, to be American values. To do so, they need to expand their global influence, manipulate elections in former partner nations, and alter the flows of money and power, especially inside other democracies. Much of the world has always believed America’s defense of democracy to be hypocritical, and that American-led economic integration was self-serving. But now even the people who sincerely believed in the postwar American project are discovering that it no longer exists."

Trump himself has raked in billions since assuming office in his second term, while his sons have netted millions using their foreign policy connections to get involved in matters like investing in tungsten mines. Earlier this month, a Gallup poll found a historically high number of Americans are upset with government corruption, writing that "Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89 [percent] of U.S. adults saying it is widespread. That figure is up 10 percentage points from last year and well above readings in the 72 [percent] to 79 [percent] range between 2010 and 2025."

The poll added, "Democrats’ perceptions of government corruption have risen the most sharply since 2024 compared with other party groups. In former President Joe Biden’s final year in office, 57 [percent] of Democrats said corruption was widespread in government; that rose to 76 [percent] in 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, and reached 91 [percent] this year. The figure among political independents (90 [percent]) aligns more closely with Democrats’ than with Republicans’ (83 [percent]) and is up 12 points since 2024."

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AN 8 26

Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are among those that BBC is seeking to subpoena as part of its lawsuit from President Donald Trump, Politico reported on Friday.

Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation alleging that the broadcaster unfairly edited or presented remarks he made in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump argues that the BBC’s programming created a misleading impression that he directly encouraged violence and that it significantly damaged his reputation.

The BBC has defended its journalism, saying its reporting and documentary coverage were based on the public record and protected by free-expression principles. Unlike other media outlets sued by Trump, the BBC is refusing to settle, and it's moving forward with a defense, including seeking documents and interviews with Trump advisors.

According to the BBC's lawyers, the Trump family members “without question have personal knowledge” about the president's intentions when making the speech.

BBC lawyers explain that testimony collected by the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack found that Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were present at the speech on the Ellipse. It was also reported that Kushner drafted a statement for Trump condemning the violence.

The subpoenas are asking for deposition testimony as well as documents, Politico said.

The BBC attempted to serve the subpoenas on Jared and Ivanka, but was blocked by the U.S. Secret Service.

Troy Epstein, lawyer for the Secret Service, claimed, “The United States Secret Service, as an agency of the United States Government, is not authorized to accept service of these subpoenas for these individuals, nor can we opine on how you all may best facilitate or effectuate service of these subpoenas."

The same thing happened earlier this year with Trump Jr. In a footnote for one of the court filings, a reference emphasized the word "prevented" when saying the Secret Service blocked the subpoena service.

"Ironically, the government complains about the subpoena to Mr. Trump Jr. even though the government itself – specifically, the U.S. Secret Service – has to date prevented Defendant from serving that subpoena on Mr. Trump Jr.," court documet filed in July said.

The Secret Service protects all of Trump's five adult children, as mandated by Department of Homeland Security regulations. It does not have the legal authority to interfere with subpoenas or any legal matters.

Trump sued the BBC in a South Florida court district.

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AN 5 26

In late April, President Donald Trump announced that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff (the Trump Administration's special envoy to the Middle East) would be resuming peace talks with Iran — only to tell the media, the next day, that the trip was off. Kushner and Witkoff are longtime business associates of Trump as well as political allies; both of them have backgrounds in high-end real estate, like the Trump Administration.

Reporter Linda Kinstler examines the "murky legal status" of Trump's Board of Peace and the Trump Administration/Kushner/Witkoff arrangement in an article published by the New York Times Magazine on May 1.

"Over the past year," Kinstler explains, "Kushner and Witkoff have crisscrossed the globe as White House emissaries: They have met with Hamas and with Vladimir Putin, with (Ukrainian President) Volodymyr Zelensky and with Iranian negotiators. Their near-universal presence at high-stakes negotiations suggests that Kushner and Witkoff, New York real estate developers who are now executive members of Trump's Board of Peace, have been almost single-handedly tasked with realizing Trump's desire to be remembered as the 'president of peace.'"

Kinstler adds, "But these are businessmen first and diplomats second…. Their view seems to be that peace is an asset to be leveraged and maximized."

Lawmakers, according to Kinstler, "are noticing the murky legal status" of Board of Peace activities.

"Several Democratic congressional investigations are looking into both Witkoff's and Kushner's financial records and international relationships," Kinstler notes. "In mid-April, four Democratic senators announced a probe of the Board of Peace's proposal to create a stablecoin for Gaza, pointing out that a number of its executives, including Witkoff and Trump himself, could stand to profit. In a letter addressed to Kushner announcing a House Judiciary Committee probe of his dual role as an investor and a 'volunteer' government representative, Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote, 'You cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own.'"

Kinstler adds, "By continuing to do so, Kushner was effectively insisting 'that the normal rules do not apply to you,' Raskin argued."

The reporter stresses that it remains to be seen what the Board of Peace will be able to accomplish in the Middle East.

"Rising energy prices have begun to strain American households," Kinstler observes, "but Trump and his 'people' aren't feeling the squeeze. Witkoff has said he is in the process of divesting from his real estate and crypto holdings; in 2024, Kushner said he would 'try to pre-emptively avoid any conflicts of interests.' But both men have seen their wealth grow significantly since Trump returned to office. And the peace they have long promised remains out of reach."

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===

tmtg fusion business?!

PSW 4 26 CORRUPT STATS $ TRUMP KIDS BARRON

ARAB JUSTIN SUN SUE LIBERTY, DRONE PLUS GOLF MERGER

pakistan stable coin?

Apr 22, 2026 Pod Save the World

Tommy and Ben break down another chaotic and consequential week in global affairs. Trump blinks and extends the ceasefire with Iran, but the Strait of Hormuz remains closed as US-Iran negotiations stall. Meanwhile, an internal power struggle between Iran's elected leaders and military is complicating talks, and the human cost for ordinary Iranians continues to mount. In Lebanon, Trump stunned Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu by publicly ordering Israel to stop bombing, but the IDF continues to occupy southern Lebanon, and an explosive image of an IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ threatens to erode evangelical support for Israel.

The guys also dig into the sprawling conflicts of interest and corruption plaguing Trump's foreign policy team: Jared Kushner's billion-dollar Gulf slush fund, Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s drone grift, and the Trump family’s foray into the crypto and fusion energy business. Finally, they talk about the historic election results in Hungary and Bulgaria,

Trump’s slow-rolling regime change efforts in Cuba, and reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is such a sloppy drunk that he’s become a threat to national security. Then Tommy is joined by former USAID official Nicholas Enrich to talk about his new book, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches and subscribe to his Substack here.

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an 4 26

no lnx

Trump's son-in-law has a $5 billion problem

:{Jared Kushner applauds during U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 24, 2026.

Thom Hartmann March 20, 2026

There are several clear winners from Trump’s attack on Iran:

— Russia, who can again fund its violence against Ukraine with new oil revenue and now claims its unprovoked attack on that nation is consistent with this new Trump Doctrine;

— Saudi Arabia, which has long hated Iran and lobbied since at least 2008 for the US to attack that country;

— the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has similarly pushed America to attack Iran since at least 2010;

— the American defense weapons industry, which is making additional billions;

— Don Jr. and Eric, who have taken a big position in a drone-manufacturing business, getting them in on the Pentagon gravy train;

— Donald Trump himself, who’s succeeded in largely pushing Epstein off the front page;

— and Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s called for American strikes against Iran since 1992 and will stay out of prison as long as the war continues.

The losers include:

— The credibility of the United States and the rule of international law;

— the families of 13 dead and 140 injured American soldiers and airmen,

— the families of at least 160 dead Iranian little girls and thousands of other dead civilians in a dozen countries,

— American taxpayers who’re paying for the bombs;

— and future prospects for world peace.

But the biggest winner may be Jared Kushner, who apparently pushed Trump to initiate the war while he’s trying to solicit $5 billion from the same Arab states that have been begging American administrations for decades to attack Iran.

Back on March 5th, I speculated here on Hartmann Report that Kushner and Witkoff had been negotiating with Iran in bad faith, possibly to get the Iranian leadership to meet together in one place so Netanyahu (who used to sleep in Kushner’s bedroom) could kill them all with a missile strike.

Three years earlier, I laid out the backstory of how Kushner allegedly helped MBS take over the Saudi kingdom and was richly rewarded with $2 billion to fund his new investment venture.

Now, The New York Times is reporting that Kushner is back at the Arab trough, trying to pick up an additional $5 billion for his company from the same states that have been begging America to attack Iran for decades.

This represents a massive and apparently corrupt conflict of interest, as Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senator Ron Wyden pointed out when they called for an investigation into Kushner acting as an unregistered foreign agent in violation of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. They wrote:

“This revelation is deeply disturbing, as Mr. Kushner appears to be influencing U.S. foreign policy by acting as a political consultant to the Saudi government while also accepting their money. … Mr. Kushner’s proximity to President Trump and the potential for political interference warrants the appointment of a Special Counsel.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, in a brilliant imitation of Vladimir Putin, is threatening news organizations for their reporting on the War. He seems upset about news stories that Trump may have ignored warnings from his top generals that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if we attacked them; those reports appear to be well-sourced.

And it appears it was Kushner who was one of the main cheerleaders for this war, risks to world oil supplies and the possibility of the conflict igniting WWIII be damned.

Trump himself said that Kushner had advised him that Iran was preparing to strike America, something that’s patently impossible; they don’t have any missiles capable of reaching the United States and had just offered to sign a new deal promising never to develop any. Nonetheless, Trump — in an eerie echo of Bush’s lies about Iranian WMD — told America:

“Within a week, [Iran was] going to attack us, 100 percent. They were ready. They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought, and they were going to attack us.”

Did I mention that Kushner is asking the Saudis and Emiratis for another $5 billion? As Popular Information reported:

“Kushner’s largest investor is the Saudi Arabian government, which provided Kushner with $2 billion in funding in 2021. Each year, Saudi Arabia pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, $25 million, as a ‘management fee.’ Meaning he has received in excess of $100 million from the Saudi government over the last few years.

“Notably, ‘Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump’ in February, advocating a U.S. attack,’ according to reporting in the Washington Post. Trump’s comments reveal that Kushner used his role in Geneva to push Trump toward the outcome favored by his biggest client. Affinity Partners also received more than $200 million from the UAE. According to CNN, behind the scenes, the UAE was also lobbying Trump to strike Iran.”

Never before in American history have US negotiators had massive personal financial stakes in the outcome of their own negotiations. It’s a clear violation of the Constitution’s and US law’s ban on foreign emoluments, and possibly numerous anti-bribery laws.

With Congress paralyzed by terrified, spineless Republicans refusing to even look into the possibility that billionaire Trump, billionaire Kushner, billionaire Witkoff, and billionaires in the Middle East have thrown America into war just to enrich themselves, the burden has fallen on the American press.

Which has produced the predictable squeals from Carr and the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” propaganda channel, and from Whiskey Pete Hegseth, giggling about how things are going to change when David Ellison takes over CNN.

Threats notwithstanding, our elected officials need to step up now to defend both the First Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, and the lives of our men and women in uniform.

Even lacking subpoena power, Democratic leadership should convene shadow hearings to investigate this possible double-dealing that’s already killed Americans and threatens to plunge the entire world into flames.

At the very least, they should spend a few weeks holding public, on‑the‑record hearings into whether this Iran war is being steered from Riyadh, Jerusalem, and Kushner’s investment firm instead of the Pentagon.

With their Benghazi spectacle that followed the death of four Americans, Republicans taught us that when our officers and enlisted people die abroad, Congress has a duty to drag every decision‑maker before the cameras; Democrats should apply that same standard now, and ask under oath whether Trump, Kushner, and their billionaire partners are profiting from a war they helped ignite.

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an 4 26

Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, was working with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Iran when the U.S. began its bombing campaign. They were close to an agreement, but Trump went to war anyway, said a report from The Guardian.

It's prompting one national security analyst to question why the two are trying again to negotiate if they weren't able to succeed the first time around.

In a BlueSky thread, Marcy Wheeler questioned why folks are focused on things like the 25th Amendment and impeachment, instead of asking about Kushner, who doesn't even work for the White House and has his own economic interest in continuing the war. *The New York Times* reportedlast month that while he was negotiating a peace deal, he was also trying to raise money from Gulf states.

"NO ONE is really holding the GOP accountable for letting Trump send his son-in-law on a diplomat's errand, EVEN AFTER his incompetence led to war, or the fact that he has rid his White House of either experts or grown-up advisors," wrote Wheeler.

She added that there's also "the fact that they let him go to war without fully briefing before and during. It's that accountability that matters, one way or another. And impeachment/25A can be a tool to force that accountability."

Wheeler said that House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are "intent" on demanding a vote over the War Powers Act.

"That would have the effect of peeling off a few members in both [houses]. But you need a larger narrative that GOP refusal to do its job enabled a catastrophic war," Wheeler added.

The comment comes as Trump posted on Truth Social that, despite closing the Strait of Hormuz and causing a possible global economic collapse, he believes Iran has "no cards." He called the closure of the strait "extortion."

*The Guardian* reported a few weeks after the bombing began that one Gulf diplomat, with direct knowledge of the negotiations, is furious with Witkoff and Kushner’s behavior. That person described them as “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war from which he is now desperate to get himself out of."

Now, Vice President JD Vance is en route. Vance never wanted the war to begin with, so he might have more success than Kushner and Witkoff.

Meanwhile, inflation has risen above the level it was at when Trump took office in Jan. 2025.

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GOING FOR 5B MORE FOR ARAB SOV FUNDS WHILE OUR ENVOY

AN 3 26

Since the Epstein Files were released in January, people have been poring through its millions of documents in an attempt to uncover the truth about a rumored secret cabal. Much that was previously unknown has come to light, and some mysteries have only deepened, but one thing is clear: many of those in Epstein’s orbit were more connected — and up to shadier business — than anyone previously realized.

To that end, one recently unearthed FBI document contains the shocking allegations that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is “the real brains” behind the Trump organization and presidency.

The file — an FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS) Reporting Document — makes wide-ranging assertions about Jeffery Epstein, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Jared Kushner and his brother Josh, Trump, and others in his orbit. It claims Dershowitz was an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and that he once said Epstein “belonged to both U.S. and allied intelligence services.” It tied Trump and the Kushners to a number of dubious real estate deals, asserted that the brothers were students of Dershowitz, and linked them all to Russian collusion efforts that connected directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It even threw Henry Kissinger into the mix, claiming that the former Secretary of State had introduced the Kushner family to the Chinese ambassador, who may have helped Jared Kushner navigate a sketchy billion-dollar real estate deal, in which suspicions were raised that he traded influence for a financial bailout from Qatar.

While all of this is intriguing, it is not the first suggestion that Epstein, Dershowitz, Trump, and their associates are possible intelligence assets for the U.S., Israeli, and Russian governments. But it does appear to be the first evidence of a previously unreported dynamic between Trump and Kushner.

According to the document, the “CHS advised that this was a real collusion story — Trump has been compromised by Israel, and Kushner is the real brains behind his organization and his Presidency.”

That is no small claim, as it would mean that Kushner — who the President has tasked with everything from brokering peace in the Middle East to reforming the criminal justice system to spearheading COVID response to solving the opioid crisis — is in fact manipulating the presidency from behind the scenes. The FBI source suggested that Kusher is part of a Russian-linked organization that is “doing everything they can to co-opt the Trump presidency.”

The document contains nothing to imply that Trump realizes the extent of his son-in-law’s influence over the presidency, but implies that Kushner wields inordinate power within the American government, which he uses to further his own financial gain.

According to the file, the source was blunt in its assessment, urging that “the FBI should investigate Kushner's family charities to find evidence of corruption and money laundering.”

REF1

Democrats Want Answers About Jared Kushner’s Very Shady Middle East Deal (No, Not the Saudi One!) | Vanity Fair

IN August 2018, an economic miracle for the ages took place. Eleven years after a 26-year-old Jared Kushner plunked down a record-setting $1.8 billion on an aging Midtown skyscraper (on the eve of the financial crisis, no less), and just six months before the Kushner family would have to come up with the $1.4 billion it owed on the mortgage for the aptly named 666 Fifth Avenue, an alternative investment firm named Brookfield Asset Management came to the family business’s rescue. That rescue entailed taking on a 99-year lease for the place, which had become an albatross around Jared & Co’s necks, and, The New York Times reported at the time, paying a whopping $1.1 billion in upfront rent; coupled with the reported negotiations between Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, and the company’s lenders, to pay less than Kushner Companies was in debt for, the family narrowly escaped a major financial pickle.

That the presidential in-laws were able to emerge from Jared’s historically bad decision to buy 666 was extremely surprising for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that his previous partner had reportedly once said that 666 Fifth “would be worth a lot more if it was just dirt.” Also, there was the fact that the Kushners had spent years attempting to drum up a bailout without success, reportedly being rebuffed by everyone from the richest man in France to the South Korea’s sovereign wealth fund. What, exactly, did Brookfield see in the place?

The prevailing theory at the time was that the deal may have had something to do with Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, which was one of Brookfield’s biggest investors, and Jared Kushner’s work in the White House (as you may recall, Donald Trump tasked Jared Kushner with bringing peace to the Middle East). While Brookfield steadfastly insisted that Qatar knew nothing about a deal to bail out the then president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, not everyone—congressional Democrats in particular—believed that the arrangement was entirely above board. And apparently, they still don’t.

Watch Now:

Emma Chamberlain Would Shave Her Head For a Role

The Washington Post reports that Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Carolyn Maloney, in their capacities as chairs of the Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight Committee, have “launched an aggressive new effort to obtain information about whether Jared Kushner’s actions on US policy in the Persian Gulf region as a senior White House adviser were influenced by the bailout of a property owned by his family business.” In letters sent to the Defense and State departments Monday night, the lawmakers requested material they believe could reveal if “Kushner’s financial conflict of interest may have led him to improperly influence US tax, trade, and national security policies for his own financial gain.” And the optics do not look great.

Per the Post:

Kushner played a significant role in policy affecting Qatar. He had helped persuade Trump to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia during a May 2017 visit to the Arab nation. A month later, Saudi Arabia joined several countries in breaking relationships with Qatar and imposing a blockade, accusing Qatar of financing terrorism. Kushner wrote in his memoir that, contrary to accusations by some in the administration, he was not to blame for the Saudi action against Qatar and “tried to convince them to delay the decision.” He then tried to work to lift the blockade against Qatar, he wrote.

With questions swirling about whether Kushner used his influence to get investors to bail out the Fifth Avenue building, Charles Kushner in January 2018 gave his first interview about the matter, telling the *Post* that he had purposefully avoided doing business with sovereign investment funds or similar entities, to avoid a conflict of interest with his son’s White House job. A month after that interview, according to emails obtained by the committees, Charles Kushner talked with [Ric] Clark, the Brookfield chairman, about investing in the Fifth Avenue property. An associate of Charles Kushner then emailed Clark with a summary of a proposed deal.

Two months later, Qatar’s leader visited the White House and Trump officials called for an end to the blockade. In their letter, the committees said the Trump administration’s support for the blockade “evaporated shortly after Charles Kushner’s discussion with Brookfield,” but they did not supply evidence that the two events are linked. The following month, Brookfield and the Kushner real estate company confirmed that they were negotiating a deal on the Fifth Avenue building.

Neither Jared Kushner nor Charles Kushner responded to the Post’s request for comment. The Qatar Investment Authority declined to comment. Asked about Wyden’s previous allegation that it appeared Qatari money was involved in the deal to bail out the Kushners, and the accusation that the firm had been “stonewalling on whether it intentionally misled the public,” Brookfield told the Post: “We have been fully transparent and responded to all requests. As we have said all along, the decision to acquire this building was based purely on its own merits—it was an iconic, underperforming building in a prime location in need of significant redevelopment. The building has now been transformed, and we believe it will exceed our expectations in delivering value for our clients.”

The questions about Kushner and Qatar come at the same time as the House Oversight Committee investigates the curious case of Kushner’s newly formed private equity firm receiving a $2 billion check from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund shortly after leaving the White House. According to reporting from The New York Times, the panel that performs due diligence for the Saudi fund made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that Kushner’s firm should not be given a dime—but that recommendation was overruled by the fund’s board, which happens to be led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The crown prince, you may recall, is the guy who US intelligence agencies said approved a plan to kidnap and kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and who benefited from Kushner’s unwavering support within the White House. In his memoir, Kushner wrote that he wasn‘t willing to turn his back on MBS, who denied involvement, over one measly dismemberment by bone saw. What a guy!

Republican lawmaker says he supports and agrees with former president’s call to get rid of the Constitution

Yes, he deleted the remark, presumably after the considerable blowback. But luckily, the internet never forgets:

X content

To honor yOUR LEFT OUT...]

REF 2 OMG

Age Verification | United States Department of Justice

10 2020

OCASTA TOLD EPS IS ALLIED INTEL AGY; DERS AND EPS TALK --> MOSSAD WD CALL FOR DEBRIEF; EPS CLOSE TO BARAK AND TRAINED AS SPY UNDER HIM; BARAK THOT BB CRIM; EPS CO-OPTED MOSSAD AGENT;

DRUKOVA DAY ONE VENTURES STEAL TECH

CHABAD PUTIN JEW OLIG; RABBI SCHEERSOM; KSH STAKE IN CADRE NOT DISCL; JK MOVED RUSS $; CHABAD LAUNDER

CRAIG HOROWITZ ARTL 2004; KEN KURSON KNOWS;

KISSENGER CHS KUSH INTRO TO CUI TUANAKAI CHIN AMB; ANBANG NEGOT 666 5TH AVE

M COHEN BEV HILL HSE UNDER MKT

RENDA REX TILLERSON NY POST SMEARS // STATE DEPT

LEON BLACK BWTR ARMS HU TRFFICK; CEO APOLLO 50M TO EPS 184M LOAN TO JK // 666

ELLIOT BROIDY PLED LANDER; PLAYBOY MODEL; JOEL MOWBRAY --> JEW; REP ED ROYCE, WIFE LOBBYIST;

GAWKER DISINFO 2016? --> ZERO HEDGE

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tpm

2 26

As details about President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and its plans for the reconstruction of Gaza trickle out, two things become increasingly clear: Palestinians have barely, if at all, been consulted in these plans; and the people in Trump’s orbit stand to benefit from the project the most.

The U.N. Security Council approved the Board of Peace as a mechanism for implementing Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Israel and Gaza back in November, though its mandate now appears much broader. The BoP itself consists of high-level representatives from Gulf nations, Israel, Serbia, Albania, and Argentina, among others, with Trump himself as the chair and ultimate decision-maker. Absent from the Board of Peace are representatives from almost every EU country except Bulgaria and Hungary, and anyone representing Palestine.

*More from Ellen Ioanes

The BoP’s executive board—tasked with putting the BoP’s vision into practice—is composed of billionaire businessmen like Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and Steve Witkoff, the real estate mogul turned Trump donor turned special envoy to the Middle East. There’s Ajay Banga, the World Bank president who prioritizes private-sector investment in global development, as well as U.S. Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel, and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The special Gaza Executive Board adds Israeli-Cypriot real estate mogul Yakir Gabay, who enjoys a close friendship with Kushner, as well as representatives from the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey. Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch U.N. coordinator for humanitarian aid into Gaza and the lone humanitarian-sector representative, and former U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov lend the group a dash of gravitas—but just a dash.

The Palestinian role is reduced to a 15-member technocratic and “apolitical” governance body, led by engineer and former Palestinian Authority official Ali Shaath.

Details about how exactly Trump’s group plans to carry out Gaza’s reconstruction are limited thus far, but the number of real estate and finance bigwigs on the executive board indicates that it will likely be a highly privatized endeavor.

“When you look at the executive committee, I think it is absolutely unprecedented in multilateral organizations, which I guess the Board of Peace is supposed to be, even if it’s not really [multilateral] because of Trump’s dominance over it,” said Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “I think it is nonetheless pretty much unprecedented to have such explicit power exerted by private individuals who are there by virtue of their business interests.” The Prospect reached out to two members of the Gaza Executive Board with questions about how board members would keep their business interests separate from their political role, but did not receive a response by press time.

IFrame Content

Multilateral institutions like the U.N. are supposed to operate under cooperative and humanitarian principles; representatives to such bodies are supposed to represent the interests of their nations or regions, not their private businesses.

“President Trump does not seem to do anything unless it benefits the U.S., but more specifically, unless it seems to benefit himself,” Lovatt said. “And this is not something that is exclusive to Gaza or the Board of Peace, and I think is very much interwoven into his presidency.”

Among those private individuals, Kushner’s business activities have raised significant concern. He is now the owner and principal of Affinity Partners, an investment firm that doesn’t seem to be doing that much investing, according to findings from an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee. But Kushner still profits, with Affinity pocketing a 2 percent annual management fee from almost all his investors. “He’s able to get such enormous fees, as an investor with a pretty crummy record who’s just raking in money from sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf, regardless of how well he is shepherding those investments,” said Ryan Carey, chief communications adviser and deputy policy director at the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

The fund’s assets under management come almost exclusively from “the very Arab petrostates critical to the agreement and potential reconstruction—Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,” journalist Mohamad Bazzi wrote in*The Guardian*. These nations have already begun investing in Syria and could be involved in rebuilding efforts in Lebanon, in a bid to exercise more influence in the region.

---

= PVT EQUITY HEDGE FUND BAcked by oil [monarchy?]

Search Assist

Sovereign wealth funds are state-owned investment funds that invest in various assets, and in the context of Jared Kushner, he has secured significant investments from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). These investments have raised ethical questions due to Kushner's previous role as a senior advisor to former President Trump and his close ties with Middle Eastern leaders like MBS and UAE's Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ).

[

Overview of Sovereign Wealth Funds and Key Figures

What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund?

A sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is a state-owned investment fund that invests in various assets, including stocks, bonds, real estate, and private equity. These funds are typically financed by revenues from commodity exports or foreign exchange reserves.

Key Figures Involved

Name	Title/Position	Country	Notable Actions/Connections
Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)	Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia	Saudi Arabia	Invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner's firm, Affinity Partners.
Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ)	President of the United Arab Emirates	United Arab Emirates	Key player in Middle Eastern diplomacy and investments.
Jared Kushner	Former Senior Advisor to Donald Trump	United States	Secured significant investments from Saudi Arabia post-White House.

Jared Kushner's Business Ventures

Affinity Partners: Kushner's private equity firm, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) shortly after he left the White House.
Investment Concerns: The investment raised ethical questions due to Kushner's previous role in the Trump administration and his close ties with MBS.

Recent Developments

Kushner has been involved in high-profile negotiations and investments, including a recent $55 billion bid for Electronic Arts in partnership with Saudi Arabia's PIF and other investors.
His relationships with Middle Eastern leaders have been pivotal in securing funding and shaping diplomatic efforts in the region.

This information highlights the intricate connections between sovereign wealth funds, key political figures, and business ventures in the Middle East.

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an 1 26

Jared Kushner's luxury-focused 'master plan' in Gaza a pipe dream: analysis

AN 12 25

On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.

“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”

Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”

Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”

But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”

“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”

“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.

Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”

Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”

Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”

Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”

NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”

---

HE’S BAAAAACK! AN 11 25

The peace plan that President Donald Trump's administration offered to end the ongoing war in Ukraine has been widely criticized for being overly accommodating to Russia. Now, a new report shows that Russia may have been even more intricately involved in its composition than previously known.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the proposal — which Trump administration special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner (who is also the president's son-in-law) — relied heavily on input from a "Kremlin insider." Kushner, Witkoff and the Kremlin advisor huddled behind closed doors in multiple "secret meetings" in Miami, Florida, according to the Journal.

That Kremlin advisor was identified as Kirill Dmitriev, who the Journal described as an envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin who also has ties to Kushner. Witkoff also met Dmitriev during his April trip to Moscow. The 28-point plan has been described as a "framework" to end the war, though multiple senators allege Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio described it as "essentially the wish list of the Russians." (Rubio has denied making that comment)

The three men reportedly met for three days in late October at Witkoff's home in Miami, where Dmitriev communicated multiple items the Kremlin demanded in order to agree to end hostilities with Ukraine. The Journal reported that Dmitriev called for Ukraine to never be allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pull all troops out of the eastern Donbass region and other territory Russia wanted to control (like the Crimean Peninsula, which it illegally invaded in 2014). The Kremlin also wants Ukraine's military to be capped at a much lower number than its current 900,000-member force.

Dmitriev also specifically called on the Trump administration to engage in multiple economic agreements in the areas of artificial intelligence, energy and other industries. The Journal also reported that the bulk of the plan was written by both Kushner and Witkoff before they even engaged with Russia or Ukraine.

When Witkoff and Kushner attempted to engage senior Ukrainian officials to get their input on the peace plan, one told the two Trump administration envoys that the deal was better for Russia than for Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the two men for working toward ending the war, but also said their plan needed revisions.

Trump administration officials maintain that the final version of the plan will be more accommodating to Ukraine, and suggested amending it to raise the cap on the size of the Ukrainian military beyond what Russia wanted, and that language permanently barring Ukraine's membership in NATO could be removed.

Click here to read the Journal's report in full (subscription required).

---

In December 2015, Michael Flynn was paid $45,000 by Russia Today, a Kremlin-supported television channel, for delivering a talk in Moscow, and Russia provided him a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip.^[70] As a retired military intelligence officer, Flynn was required to obtain prior permission from the Defense Department and the State Department before receiving any money from foreign governments; Flynn apparently did not seek that approval before the RT speech.^[71] Two months later, in February 2016 when he was applying for renewal of his security clearance, he stated he had received no income from foreign companies and had only "insubstantial contact" with foreign nationals.^[72] Glenn A. Fine, the acting Defense Department Inspector General, confirmed he was investigating Flynn.^[70]

On November 10, 2016, President Obama warned President-elect Trump against hiring Flynn.^[73][74] Trump appointed Flynn as National Security Advisor on November 18, 2016, but Flynn was forced to resign on February 13, 2017, after it was revealed that on December 29, 2016, the day Obama announced sanctions against Russia, Flynn discussed the sanctions by phone with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had earlier acknowledged speaking to Kislyak but denied discussing the sanctions.^[75][76]

On March 2, 2017, The New York Times reported that Flynn and Kushner met with Kislyak in December 2016 to establish a secret line of communication (backchannel) between the Trump administration and the Russian government.^[77] In May 2017, it was further reported that at that December meeting, Kushner and Flynn asked the Russians to set up a direct, encrypted communications channel with Moscow, so that Flynn could speak directly to Russian military officials about Syria and other matters without the knowledge of American intelligence agencies. Kislyak was hesitant to allow Americans access to Russia's secure communications network, and no such channel was actually set up.^[46][48]

On May 31, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee served Flynn with subpoenas for testimony and production of personal documents and business records.^[78][79] On September 13, The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn promoted a Russian-backed, multibillion-dollar Middle Eastern nuclear plant project while working in the White House.^[80] The project involved building 40 nuclear reactors across the Middle East, with security provided by Rosoboron, a Russian state-owned arms exporter that is under American sanctions.^[81] On September 15, BuzzFeed reported that Flynn, Kushner, and Bannon secretly met with King Abdullah II of Jordan on January 5, 2017, to press for the nuclear power plant project.^[82]

On December 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI^[83] and was later pardoned by Trump.^[84]

===

an 1 25

Although Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner served as senior advisers in Donald Trump's first administration, neither has expressed interest in direct participation in his second.

Ivanka Trump, during a recent, stressed that her "role" in her father's second administration will be strictly "supportive." Reportedly, both Kushner and Ivanka Trump plan to concentrate on their own business activities rather than politics in the months ahead.

According to Bloomberg News reporter Adveith Nair, Kushner "unveiled a slew of deals" in the "days leading up to Donald Trump’s swearing in."

Nair, in an article published on Inauguration Day 2025, explains, "Just over a month ago, Jared Kushner disclosed that his Affinity Partners had raised an additional $1.5 billion from the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi-based asset manager Lunate. Last week, Bloomberg News reported that the firm got the approval to double its stake in one of Israel’s top financial firms and is partnering with Emirati billionaire Mohamed Alabbar on a luxury development in the Serbian capital: Trump Hotel Belgrade."

Nair notes that after serving the first Trump Administration, Kushner "set up Affinity, which now counts the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the QIA and Lunate as its three largest limited partners."

Kushner, according to Nair, is working with Eric Trump — Donald Trump's son and executive vice president of the Trump Organization — on the Trump Hotel Belgrade deal.

Kushner told Bloomberg News, "I thought the tower would make a tremendous Trump Tower, so I spoke to Eric about it, and he was very excited. So we’ll be bringing them in as our hotel partner.”

Dirty tricks? Trump Super-PAC sent out a bogus Medicare cancellation notice to scare voters about Kamala Harris.One of the largest pro-Trump superPACs has dropped a massive mailing of “Medicare Cancellation Notices” letting seniors know that Kamala Harris is preparing to end the program or at least throw them off it. As David Corn reports at Mother Jones, some of the richest men in America are behind it: “MAGA, Inc. is the top pro-Trump super PAC. It has raised over $300 million during the 2024 campaign, most of it from Republican billionaires, including Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager; Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner and real estate magnate who went to jail for tax evasion and for retaliating against a federal witness (and whom Trump pardoned); and Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, who has pumped in over $150 million.” What could these billionaires want? If you selected “more tax cuts” and “a return to segregation” I’d bet you’d have hit it right on the nose. Meanwhile, an unknown GOP-aligned group is sending text messages to college students in Wisconsin threatening them with prison if they dare vote. These people will stop at nothing…

===

'I’ve never seen anything like it': Economic analyst breaks down origin of Jared Kushner’s $3 billion profit

Maya Boddie

an 9 24

Kushner firm may be front to 'funnel foreign government money' to Trump family: Senate Dem

===

6 24

How Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump botched the White House's COVID-19 response -- according to Stephanie Grisham

===

an 3 24

Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law's presidential campaign.

A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner's real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they're completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump's former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.

Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president's immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn't involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.

Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner's departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

The former president's son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver's seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi's assassination).

The Times quoted an unnamed source who claimed that Grenell — whose Balkan connections likely helped Kushner secure his business deals in Albania and Serbia — hopes to be appointed secretary of state should Trump retake the presidency in November. Public Citizen president Robert Weissman called on Kushner to "freeze any new investment plans" pending the result of the election, saying they were unethical given his father-in-law's ongoing campaign.

"This particular investment plan seems to involve the worst of every corrupt tendency of the Trump administration and Trump family," Weissman told the Times.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden's son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son's favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.

Comer and Jordan both relied heavily on a confidential FBI informant's testimony in what's known as a "1023 report" as the basis of their investigations, in which both Joe and Hunter Biden were accused of soliciting $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian officials. However, the source of that report, Alexander Smirnov, was later indicted for lying to investigators regarding that claim, and he has since been exposed as having contact with "high-ranking" members of Russian intelligence agencies.

===

Remembering Trump and Kushner's deadly, evil plan - Alternet.org

===

'I’ve never seen anything like it': Economic analyst breaks down origin of Jared Kushner’s $3 billion profit

Maya BoddieAugust 14, 2023

During Monday's segment of MSNBC's Morning Joe, economic analyst Steve Rattner left panelists astounded after providing an in-depth look into the root of ex-President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's "$3.1 billion cash haul."

Rattner shared a chart displaying a breakdown of the sources of Kushner's money via Twitter Monday, writing, "Jared Kushner spent much of his White House tenure cozying up to MBS [Mortgage-Backed Securities] & Saudi Arabia. Six months after leaving Washington, his private equity firm landed $2 billion in investments from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund."

During the show segment, MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire noted howKushner's "background in real estate" does not exactly qualify him "as a hedge fund magnate or peace broker in the Middle East."

"You're right, Jonathan. Jared Kushner did work in the White House," Rattner said. "He worked very hard. It's becoming less clear what he worked hard at, because after he left the White House, he went out and raised $3.1 billion -- that's billion with a 'b' -- for a private equity fund and he's not a private equity guy, he is a real estate guy. So where does the money come from? Some of it we know from filing. Some from press reports.What we know for a fact is that he raised $3.1 billion and only about $30 million of it actually came from investors in the United States all the rest of it is foreign money. And of that foreign money, $2 billion came from the Saudis."

The analyst emphasized, "I've been in this business 40 years. I've never seen somebody get two-thirds of their money from a single investor. Usually a single investor might be a few percent of the fund, might be 5 percent, occasionally 10 percent — I've never seen this. Another $200 million we believe came from Qatar and another $200 million from the United Arab Emirates and then the $625 million from foreign investors that we don't even know who they are. So what was Jared Kushner doing in the White House? And, by the way as a fun fact, on January 6, the famous January 6, Jared Kushner was in the Middle East."

Morning Joe panelist Elise Jordan then asked Rattner, "There's not much out there on how Jared has actually been able to execute his funding. He has all this money, but his background is not in private equity andI've seen only one news report of a small European investment. He's sitting on all this money. Are the Saudis investing with him just to hedge their bets politically in case Trump comes back into office?"

Rattner emphasized, "We haven't seen him do a lot with this money. He has hired some people, I do know that. I've seen nothing else about what he's actually done with the money. It is normal to invest this money over a period of several years, so I don't think we can draw a firm conclusion yet. But, again, we're going back to a guy who's a real estate guy, and frankly not a particularly good one at that, who's suddenly got $3 billion trying to do private equity deals competing against people who've been in this business for a long time. And I wouldn't, if I were the Saudis, count on making a lot of money from this any time soon."

Rattner concluded, "U.S. private equity firms still raise the vast bulk of their money from U.S. investors. This is extraordinary — unprecedented — I've never seen anything like it."

READ MORE: Bombshell testimony links Jared Kushner to stop-the-steal fundraising cash: legal analyst

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Gonna end this family grift': Christie hits Trump over Kushner-Saudi relationship

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Haley schemed with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to replace Pence as VP: Pompeo book

https://www.alternet.org/mike-pompeo-2659279340/

an 1 23

new book is shedding light on the behind-the-scenes arguments that took place between former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner during his time in the White House.

During the days leading up to the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, Trump spent a substantial amount of time pushing baseless claims and conspiracy theories questioning the integrity of the presidential election he lost to President Joe Biden.

According to Mediaite, details about Trump and Kushner's clashing are included in the new book, "The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House," written by author Chris Whipple.

Although many of Trump's supporters and allies echoed his claims, Kushner, according to Whipple, was not in agreement with many of the former president's attempts to overturn the election. Whipple even highlighted some of the “knock-down, drag-out screaming matches” Kushner actually had with Trump.

“With all due respect, I’m not going to like what you are doing, and you’re going to be screaming at me,” Kushner reportedly told the former president during a heated exchange about the claims of voter fraud.

According to Whipple, there was also a time when Kushner warned Trump of what his future might look like based on the conspiracy-driven path he was on.

“Look, when you’re out of here, a lot of people will scatter,” Kushner reportedly said, adding, “I’m with you until you hit the dirt — so you may want to listen to what I’m saying."

Per the news outlet, The Forward’s Jacob Kornbluh also highlighted key takeaways from the book with a brief overview of what happened prior to Biden's inauguration, which Trump did not attend.

"Since election day, Kushner and Ivanka Trump had kept telling themselves that Trump would eventually come around and accept his defeat, but 'just needed to nurse his wounds,' Whipple writes," Kornbluh reported. "Even after supporters of Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Kushner reportedly told friends he still hoped Trump would invite Biden to the White House on inauguration day. 'That image of the two presidents together, he thought, was what America wanted to see,' Whipple writes."

“It just shows he’s got many different layers,” Kushner told Whipple.

The author's book has garnered lots of attention and received praise from The New York Times’s John Gans, who described the piece as a “feat of a book.”

“Writing a book that quickly — and especially on these past two years — is no easy task,” Gans wrote, adding:

"The titular fight may be Biden’s, but Whipple must himself exhaustively cover President Donald Trump’s lame-duck struggle and accused sedition. At its best, Whipple’s comprehensive approach adds dimension to the news stream — for example, Biden’s discomfort with the Secret Service is both deeper and more dramatic than is widely understood. At its worst, the book’s iterative structure feels like scrolling a dated Twitter timeline in which the vaccination drive is defeating Covid-19, and Biden’s effort to curb climate change is doomed to failure."

thom an 8 22

...

It adds, detailing Trump’s specific obstruction of justice crimes:

These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.

Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. For example, the President’s direction to McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed was followed almost immediately by his direction to Lewandowski to tell the Attorney General to limit the scope of the Russia investigation to prospective election-interference only—a temporal connection that suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose with respect to the investigation.

There are, after all, credible assertions that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, explicitly celebrating a victory they truly believed they helped make happen.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador, resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy. That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime US spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

As CNN noted when the story leaked two years later:

The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.

According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.

The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned the spy was so great that, at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may have helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine, we pulled the spy out of Russia in 2017.

Similarly, when they met in Helsinki, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is alsofluent in English and German) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large room in which they met.

Things were picking up in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.

On July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…
The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’sBetsy Swan reported that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”
Within a year, The New York Timesran a story with the headline: “Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by Donald Trump himself.

Also in 2019, when the international press verified that Putin was paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American service members in Afghanistan (and 4 had died as a result), Trump refused to demand the practice stop, a possible sign that Putin ran him, not the other way around.

As The New York Times noted at the time:

Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence... But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.

Instead of stopping Putin, Trump shut down every US airbase in Afghanistan except one (there were about a dozen), crippling incoming President Biden’s ability to extract US assets from the country in an orderly fashion.

In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a visit to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.

In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump made “promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.

As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress":

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.

Along his journey toward converting America into a full-blown oligarchy (as I detail in *The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class*), Trump has picked up quite a few democracy-skeptical allies.

As early as 2018, for example, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a private note from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown.

Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s side with regard to the 2020 election and, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago this month, responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act. Perhaps he had ambitious plans for a role in the Trump administration after the planned end of American democracy?

With that backstory, consider more contemporary events to see if they fit together.

In January of last year Trump stole and moved to Florida information that, multiple sources assert, would reveal the identities of many of our spies, as well as our nuclear plans and capabilities.

Three months later, in March of 2021, Jared Kushner filed papers showing that his brand new investment company — against the advice of the Saudi government but at MBS’s order — had received over $2 billion from the Kingdom.

It’s still unknown if or how much money the Kingdom gave to Trump himself, presumably through the dark offshore accounts common among billionaires like Trump.

This was not the first time Kushner had apparently altered US foreign policy or shared valuable US secrets with Middle East players in exchange for large quantities of cash that flowed directly to him or other members of the Trump family.

As investigative reporter Vicky Ward notes in the most recent post on *Vicky Ward Investigates* on Substack:

Kushner was struggling with the ticking time bomb of a $1.8 billion mortgage on 666 Fifth Avenue that would come due in February of 2019—a debt no domestic buyer was interested in. Not even the Chinese or Qataris wanted it. … Kushner desperately needed a bail-out for his troubled building…and the clock was ticking.

Then, in the spring of 2018, two things happened within weeks. First, the U.S. withdrew their support of the blockade of Qatar, leading the Saudis and Emiratis to lift it.

Then, Brookfield, a Canadian real estate investment trust whose largest outside shareholder is the Qatari government, bailed out the Kushners in a deal that has real estate moguls rolling their eyes to this day: A 99-year lease paid upfront on a building that was bleeding money.

Which brings us back, again, to last year, just after Trump’s failed January 6th attempt to overthrow the US government.

About six months after the Saudis gave Kushner that second batch of billions, we learned that for several months “dozens” of American spies and agents had been “captured or killed” around the world. As The Washington Post reported on October 5, 2021:

Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

Is it possible that all these different data points are part of one whole?

That Trump had a plan, worked out with Putin, MBS, a few dozen high administration officials, and a large handful of Republicans in the House and Senate, to overthrow our government and establish an oligarchic system like what is currently in place in Russia and that Fox “News” showcased in Hungary? ...

an 7 22

although Fox News is facing a major defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for promoting the false and totally debunked claim that Dominion’s equipment was used to help steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, some members of Fox News’ hard news division did some accurate reporting on Election Night. Fox News’ decision desk, in fact, accurately called Arizona for now-President Joe Biden on Election Night 2020, and according to former White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner’s new book, “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” Rupert Murdoch had no doubt that Biden was the legitimate winner in Arizona.

After Fox News called Arizona for Biden, Murdoch, according to the book, told Kushner, “The numbers are ironclad. It’s not even close.” Subsequent vote recounts in Arizona demonstrated that Murdoch, in that case, was absolutely right: Biden, not Trump, was the clear winner in Arizona....

flew back for ME jan 6?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/jared-kushner-donald-trump-omitted/

jan 7 spch

dist from trump $?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-endeavors/

featured in jan 6 hearing vids flawless makeup and lighting?

guk wolff bk

Russia

Bannon was Wolff’s main source on how the White House reacted to Trump’s firing of the FBI director James Comey – which he says was Ivanka and Kushner’s idea – and the appointment of the special counsel Robert Mueller. guk

Bannon strenuously denies any involvement with Russia-related events but does not spare the rod on others: the meeting at Trump Tower was “treasonous”, “unpatriotic” and “bad shit” and there is “zero” chance Trump did not know of the meeting involving his son Donald Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. The president may have met the Russians himself, Bannon says.

He also suggests that Trump has never understood what trouble he is in over Russia and claims money-laundering charges, such as those denied by Trump’s onetime campaign chairman Manafort, are what will bring the Mueller investigation to its head, probably involving Deutsche Bank and the Kushner property empire.

Wolff quotes the former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes telling Trump: “You’ve got to get right on Russia. You need to take this seriously, Donald.”

“Jared has this,” Trump replies. “It’s all worked out.”

...

infighting

Trump’s response to Mueller is at the heart of the extensively quoted derision from staff members about the president’s mental state; the president himself is quoted deriding everyone around him, sons – known to White House staff as “Uday and Qusay”, after Saddam Hussein’s offspring – and daughter included.

“There was now a fair amount of back-of-the-classroom giggling about who had called Trump what,” Wolff writes. “For [the treasury secretary] Steve Mnuchin and [the former chief of staff] Reince Priebus he was an ‘idiot’. For [the economic adviser] Gary Cohn, he was ‘dumb as shit’. For [national security adviser] HR McMaster, he was a ‘dope’. The list went on.”

Bannon is ranged against Kushner and Ivanka and in the words of Richard Nixon’s adviser Henry Kissinger: “It is a war between the Jews and the non-Jews.”

It seems perhaps the most hated entity is “Jarvanka”, AKA Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Wolff also writes that the couple had a much-mocked deal: that “the first woman president … would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.”

another charm offensive? fla?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/jared-kushner-big-lie-skeptical/

Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers

Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis

by John Nichols

furious denunciation of America’s coronavirus criminals

Hundreds of thousands of deaths were caused not by the vicissitudes of nature but by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful people, as revealed here by John Nichols.

On March 10, 2020, president Donald Trump told a nation worried about a novel coronavirus, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” It has since been estimated that had Trump simply taken the same steps as other G7 countries, 40 percent fewer Americans would have died.

And it was not just the president. His inner circle, including Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, downplayed the crisis and mishandled the response. Cabinet members such as Betsy DeVos and Mike Pompeo undermined public safety at home and abroad to advance their agendas. Senators Ron Johnson and Mitch McConnell, governors Kristi Noem and Andrew Cuomo, judges such as Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Rebecca Bradley all promulgated public policies that led to suffering and death. Meanwhile, profiteer Pfizer (and anti-government propagandists such as Grover Norquist) fed at the public trough, while the billionaire Jeff Bezos added pandemic profits to a grotesquely bloated fortune.

John Nichols closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, which took aim at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the “speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering” that stoked the Depression. There must be accountability.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/jared-kushner-and-ivanka-trump/

grisham bk? covid fail

what is their pension plan? she was gonna run?

an 621

Ivanka and Jared are distancing themselves from Trump as he has 'frequent contact With Lindell: report

David Badash The New Civil Rights Move

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/

Despite the pandemic, which took a toll on many businesses across the United States, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner reportedly made substantial profits during their time working for the U.S. government under former President Donald Trump's administration.

According to a report published by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the affluent couple's final financial disclosure reports, which cover the duration of 2020 up to Jan. 20, 2021, signal monetary profits of "**$23,791,645 and $120,676,949 in combined outside income."**

The analysis also highlights a number of questionable aspects of Trump's disclosure reports that centers on "fixed guaranteed payments she arranged to receive from a few entities to prevent a situation in which she would have a stake in their performance while she worked in the White House."

CREW reports:

Starting in 2018, Trump began receiving annually $100,000 from T International Realty LLC, $800,000 from TTT Consulting LLC, and $600,000 from TTTT Venture LLC. In her latest financial disclosure report, however, she reported receiving an extra $62,500 from TTTT Venture LLC and only $362,500 from TTT Consulting LLC. While the extra income from TTTT Venture LLC could be explained by the longer reporting period covered by her annual/termination report, it is not clear why she received less than half of the $800,000 guaranteed payment from TTT Consulting LLC in her final year working for the government.

As for Kushner's financial disclosure report, CREW noted that although the former White House senior advisor had committed to selling his $25 to $50 million stake in Cadre over conflict of interest due to his work for the government, "the Office of Government Ethics withdrew the certificate of divestiture related to his plans to sell his interest in the company in June 2020," per his request.

Kushner also unveiled "Kushner Companies BVI Limited," a new company he has formed offshore in the British Virgin Islands. The publication reports that it appears the new offshore company, which is one of many for Kushner, was formed in an effort to restructure some of his assets.

The latest reports come as former President Donald Trump, as well as his family business, faces a number of pending investigations into potential fraud and tax evasion.

Ivanka Trump and Kushner took no salaries from the government, according to previous disclosures; advisers of their status tend to make around $183,000 a year. But their decision to forgo this payment isn't necessarily a good thing, from an ethics perspective. Government workers are typically expected to make their money from the government itself so that they aren't improperly influenced by or dependent on outside entities while doing work for the American people. Kushner and Ivanka Trump could only choose to decline their salaries because they had so much income and wealth from other sources.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

what legal experts are saying about Trump’s Manafort, Kushner pardons

Alex Henderson

December 24, 2020

On Wednesday night, December 23, President Donald Trump announced yet another round of pardons — and this time, they ranged from his 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort to Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, White House Senior Adviser Jared

dem hse oversight invest

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/head-of-cdc/

is this why they both think they'll be prez?!

sid morn news

The Post ended up endorsing Trump, with reservations, in the New York primary, but refrained from endorsing either him or Hillary Clinton in the general election.

More recently, Murdoch expressed exasperation with Trump's immigration policies.In response to the White House ban on travel of people from majority-Muslim nations, his company, 21st Century Fox, released a memo offering assistance to any employees hurt by the executive order and reminding them that "21CF is a global company, proudly headquartered in the U.S., founded by - and comprising at all levels of the business - immigrants." In August, James Murdoch, the younger son of Murdoch and the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, condemned the president's response to the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The man partly responsible for the detente was another moneyed outsider who craved status and respect: Jared Kushner.

When Kushner bought The New York Observer in 2006, he wasted little time reaching out to Murdoch. "He wanted to be Murdoch," said one person close to both men at the time. In early 2016, after a presidential debate during which Trump faced aggressive questioning from Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News anchor, the candidate sent Kushner to Murdoch on a media diplomacy mission.

Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump, is close friends with Murdoch's third wife, Wendi Deng. Murdoch and Deng attended the Kushner-Trump wedding in 2009 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the Murdoch daughters, Grace and Chloe, served as flower girls.

Before Murdoch and Deng divorced in 2013, Kushner and Ivanka Trump vacationed on Rosehearty, Murdoch's 184-foot sailing yacht. In a further sign of the two families' closeness, Ivanka Trump took on the job of Murdoch trustee responsible for overseeing the two girls' $300 million fortune - a role she gave up a month before her father took office....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-kushner-ppp/

corrupt

an 1120

no lnx

Arizona officials vow to 'continue our job' as armed Trump backers gather at local election building

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams November 05, 2020

Undeterred by a crowd of Trump supporters—some of whom were armed—that gathered outside of the Maricopa County, Arizona election office late Wednesday to protest alleged "fraud" in the vote-counting process, county officials vowed to "continue our job" of tallying ballots in the battleground state that both Fox News and the Associated Press have called for Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

"Staff at the Maricopa County Elections Department will continue our job, which is to administer elections in the second largest voting jurisdiction in the county," the department tweeted early Thursday morning amid reports that officials in the county building were forming an "exit plan" due to safety concerns caused by assault rifle-wielding Trump supporters baselessly alleging election theft by the Democratic Party.

"We will release results again tonight as planned," the department added. "We thank the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for doing their job, so we can do ours."

Early Thursday, the county released a newly counted batch of more than 70,000 votes that favored Trump by a margin of 59% to 41%, leaving Biden with a lead of more than 68,000 votes in a state Trump won in 2016.

The fresh results came as Trump supporters, emboldened by the president's constant attacks on the legitimacy of the vote-counting process in states nationwide, rallied outside the Maricopa County election office chanting, "Stop the Steal!"—a slogan that has been embraced and amplified by Trump backers on social media.

Angry over the network's decision to call Arizona for Biden on Election Night, the Trump supporters also chanted, "Fox News sucks!"

The New York Times reported Wednesday that "Trump and his advisers erupted" after Fox News called Arizona for Biden, fearing the move would further undermine the president's false narrative that he won the election outright.

"Jason Miller, Mr. Trump's political adviser, disputed the accuracy of the call on Twitter and frantically called Fox News, asking the network to retract it. He was unsuccessful," the Times reported. "Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, was also in touch with Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News owner, as the night wore on. And on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, insisted the president would win Arizona by 30,000 votes."

In a statement released late Wednesday, a pair of Maricopa County election officials—one Democrat and one Republican—raised concern over "the misinformation spreading about the integrity of our elections" and said that "everyone should want all the votes to be counted, whether they were mailed or cast in person."

"An accurate vote takes time. It's possible the results you see now may change after all the votes are counted. This is evidence of democracy, not fraud," the statement continued. "We would like to thank the hundreds of volunteers, poll workers, and staff for being a part of an incredible elections team. All of us are committed to a fair and efficient count of all votes."

roy cohn lives

"Nuts!' Lincoln Project mocks Jared and Ivanka for their 'comical' threat to sue over Times Square billboards

Eric Dolan Raw Story

The Lincoln Project on Friday night fired back at White House advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump for threatening to sue over billboards in Times Square attacking their response to t...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/the-kushners-freddie-mac-loan-wasnt-just-massive-it-also-came-with-cnusually-good-terms/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/team-trumps-response-is-now-a-worldwide-embarrassment

hunter kos

stats --> They’re laughing at us, Donald. Well, they’re laughing at you. Well, actually nobody’s laughing, there’s 200,000 Americans dead and in the ground right now and, still, the only pandemic “plans” coming out all members of Republican leadership combined ended up abandoned because they left it to Jared Kushner, and Jared Kushner got bored.

920 an

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/we-were-flabbergasted-new-report-says-jared-kushners-conduct-stunned-attendees-at-a-19-meeting/

when Jared Kushner was grilled by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer earlier this week, the White House senior adviser vigorously defended President Donald Trump on a range of issues — including the president’s widely criticized response to the coronavirus pandemic. Kushner has played a key role in that response: he was put in a charge of a private sector-oriented coronavirus task force that was separate from the White House task force with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.

And in a lengthy, in-depth article for Vanity Fair, Katherine Eban revealed some explosive details of Kushner’s coronavirus response, focusing heavily on a meeting on Friday, March 20.

Kushner was present at that meeting, which was attended by “a large group of officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency — people one attendee described as ‘the doers’ — to strategize how best to replenish the nation’s depleted reserves of PPE.”

Kushner, Eban reports, had a “confrontational tone” when he told attendees, “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do." When one of the attendees expressed concerns about PPE shortages, Kushner said, “Free markets will solve this. That is not the role of government.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Eban notes, was desperate for supplies — and Kushner’s response was, “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer, and that’s their problem.” And one of the attendees told Vanity Fair, “That’s when I was like, ‘We’re screwed.’”

According to Eban, “What actually transpired in the room stunned a number of those in attendance. Vanity Fair has reconstructed the details of the meeting for the first time, based on recollections, notes, and calendar entries from three people who attended the meeting. All quotations are based on the recollections of one or more individual attendees.”

Kushner, according to one of the attendees Vanity Fair interviewed, became “very aggressive” and told the group they “only understood how entrepreneurship works, but didn’t understand how government worked.”

Another attendee told Vanity Fair it was “very clear” that Kushner wasn’t interested in finding a solution to the shortages because in March, COVID-19 was primarily hurting blue states. According to that attendee, “We were flabbergasted. I basically had an out-of-body experience: where am I, and what happened to America?”

Eban goes on to describe some of the subsequent problems with Kushner’s coronavirus response, including plans for Eastman Kodak to manufacture drugs needed during the pandemic.

“Of all the aborted efforts to secure America’s supply chain of essential lifesaving supplies,” Eban writes, “no deal has blown up more spectacularly than the one to turn an aging camera film company, Eastman Kodak, into an American manufacturer of ingredients for low-cost generic drugs.”

According to Eban, “Vanity Fair has learned, Eastman Kodak was so untested when it came to making drug ingredients that the company’s head of government relations, Kristin Calabrese Williams, wrote to a government health official in March saying that the company would need a ‘waiver from the FDA’s requirements’ to ensure drug safety.”

920 an

Woodward fires back after Kushner claims he has his own audio tapes: ‘I report accurately’

David Edwards / Raw Story September 15, 2020

Bob Woodward on Tuesday dismissed a veiled threat from White House adviser Jared Kushner, who claimed to have audio tapes of the veteran journalist. In an interview on the Today Show,…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/how-america-is-still-failing-health-care-workers-battling-the/

wapo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

no lnx

National Security

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

Karoun Demirjian and

Ellen Nakashima

August 18, 2020

President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.

In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.

But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”

Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence. But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.

The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.

“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statementinstead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.

“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”

Five Democrat senators — including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”

The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”

The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.

“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.”

Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony

Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.

Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.

The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.

At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.

“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”

The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.

“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”

The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”

The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.

Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic, nonpublic knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.

The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included Stone, Manafort and Rick Gates, the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.

The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”

The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.

Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.

After his testimony, Trump Jr. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.

Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.

~ baRon?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/jared-kushner-defends-response-says-hes-absolutely-sending-his-kids-back-to-in-person-school/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/dont-be-hoodwinked-by-trumps-uae-israel-peace-deal-its-a-sham/

:{https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{/2020/08:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{/how-jared-kushner-became-trumps-most-dangerous-enabler/615169/:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

[quite long]...er the past three years, Jared Kushner has achieved the power his father desired for him and then some. He has assumed direct control of the most important assignments and installed like-minded allies in nearly every crucial position in the White House. He tends to dispense his advice to the president privately, out of earshot of other aides.

What has he done with that power? The press has focused on the bungled acts of commission, but the acts of omission have been far more significant. Although he likes to think of himself as a moderating presence, a business-minded voice of reason, Kushner’s record in power suggests the opposite.

In earlier phases of his presidency, Trump gestured toward the conventions of the White House. He surrounded himself with former generals who maintained a sense of allegiance to the nation (John Kelly) and Republican apparatchiks with a strong sense of allegiance to the party (Reince Priebus). These weren’t avatars of courage or effective governance. But they were sources of friction.

Peter Wehner: Donald Trump is a broken man]

Where the likes of Kelly and Priebus set out to play the doomed role of superego, Kushner has let the president’s id run wild. More than anyone, Kushner seems to have created the permissive atmosphere in which Trump has turned the presidency into a vehicle for his grudges and bizarre theories. At the height of Kushner’s power, the president has set about purging the government of inspectors general who investigate abuses of power, removed a prosecutor looking into the misdeeds of his allies, and implored foreign leaders to investigate his political enemies. He has urged the treatment of disease with unproven medicine and threatened to deploy federal troops to clamp down on protesters.

Kushner likes to cast himself as an adviser, but that’s a taxonomic mistake. He’s family. More than just another obsequious aide, Kushner approaches his work with a tribal ferocity and a deep yearning to win the praise of the clan’s chief. On the campaign, his mantra was “A happy candidate is a winning candidate”; he considered it his job to please his father-in-law. He plays the same role at the White House. Kushner knows how to navigate the president’s eruptions, although he can’t entirely avoid being walloped by them; he knows when self-preservation demands capitulation; he is a student of how not to push too hard.

Read: Donald Trump is all alone]

His survival strategy can be seen on his face. Nearly every other top Trump aide has been captured wincing at their boss. Even in private, Kushner never evinces any such unease. Each time I interviewed one of his friends or colleagues, I asked if they had ever heard him express anger or even irritation with the president. None witnessed him display agitation beyond shrugging and saying, “Oh well, you know Donald …”

In a White House where everything eventually leaks, there are no known accounts of Kushner disparaging the president. To create such distance would be inimical to him. At the very center of his identity, Kushner is a Good Son. He’s run the country in a spirit of filial devotion to an implacable father. It’s a role that he thrives at playing, because he’s spent his whole life rehearsing for it.

wow 3 in one day an 8/20, apparently vanity fair

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/jared-kushner-called-on-to-resign-after-damning-report-reveals-his-depravity/

no lnx

common dr

in the wake of devastating new reporting by Vanity Fair, a chorus of voices Friday called for the immediate resignation of Jared Kushner, a top White House advisor and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for disastrous—and deadly—failures by the administration that appear to have put the political desires of the president above the public health needs of the American people.

The Vanity Fair article takes an exhaustive look at decisions made and actions taken by a secretive task force led by Kushner that was charged with implementing an “aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response”—including a federal testing regime that would help stem the spread of the virus. What the investigation uncovered, according to reporter Katherine Eban, was an ultimately “aborted plan” for a far-reaching national testing strategy and a deliberative process that “began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires.”

While the plan itself devised by the team Kushner put together was characterized as “imperfect” but “a starting point,” the most shocking revelations have to do with why the strategy, which members of the unit believed would head straight to Trump’s desk and then be rolled out nationwide with large fanfare in early April, suddenly seemed to disappear—like “poof into thin air,” said one participant in the effort.

As Eban reports:

the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.

On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states.

While the veracity of such claims cannot be verified—and Kushner refused to answer a detailed set of questions or be interviewed by Vanity Fair—the implications of such a decision speak for themselves and drew immediate outrage and a demand for accountability.

“Imagine the administration had intel on an imminent terrorist attack that would kill over 100,000 people, and chose to do nothing because it was politically easier,” tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy advisor for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on his personal account. “That’s what we have here. We need to be talking about accountability. For all of it.”

“So the White House made the explicit decision that it was a better political call to let people die in the blue states and blame the governors then try to fix the testing situation,” responded Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo.

Wajahat Ali, an op-ed contributor to the New York Times, indicated the seriousness of these accusations against Kushner should not be ignored.

“Jared Kushner has blood on his hands,” Ali stated. “And we should talk about this today.”

According to Duss, simply voting Trump out of office in November would not count as holding administration officials responsible for this kind of behavior.

“No, losing the election doesn’t qualify as accountability,” Duss said. “Over 100,000 Americans are dead because of these people’s incompetence and viciousness. I know the idea of prosecuting the previous administration makes some uncomfortable. Time to start getting over that.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-kushner-must-be-prosecuted-for-crimes-against-humanity/

wa mo no lnx

last month I wrote that president Trump had admitted to a crime against humanity. It was true. The president had openly bragged about deliberately slowing down COVID testing for political gain, thereby causing the deaths of untold numbers of Americans to make himself look better. It is a monstrous crime for which he has not yet been held accountable.

But the latest report from Vanity Fair implicates both Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner of an unspeakable horror orders of magnitude greater. Instead of implementing a comprehensive and aggressive national testing plan the pandemic team originally recommended, Kushner scuttled it. The president and his son-in-law were instead content to allow tens of thousands of Americans die as long as they were mostly people of color, and hailing from Democratic states and counties. Not only that, they saw it as a political opportunity to both cull the numbers of opposing voters and lay blame on Democratic governors at the same time:

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.

Should we believe this report?Maggie Haberman of the New York Times casually confirmed the gist of it, which only raises further questions about why the Times did not report with more alarm on the details:

If this is true–and there is very little reason to doubt its veracity, despite the White House press secretary’s denials–it would constitute perhaps the greatest crime against humanity of any president in American history. Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears was more deliberately vicious and murderous; George W. Bush’s immoral war of choice in Iraq killed more people overall.

But no American president has ever betrayed his oath of office more profoundly than in deliberately allowing the deaths of over 140,000 of his own fellow citizens and counting for partisan political gain.

We even lack the vocabulary to even describe it. “Gross negligence” doesn’t reach the level of the crime. “Murder” is lurid, but frankly not a comprehensive enough word to describe the death of 140,000. “Treason” comes to mind when considering that the President of the United States knowingly allowed 140,000 Americans to die because they were mostly his political opponents–but despite his Russia entanglements, there is no direct evidence he did so on behalf of a foreign power.

But there’s another option: “genocide.” The known racial bias of the deaths overlaps with the political bias–black and brown Americans tend to be Democrats and live in Democratic areas, and are disproportionately falling victim to the virus–which in turn would make “genocide” the most compelling way to describe what Trump and Kushner have done.

Genocide. Yes, it sounds preposterous. It sounds like the hyperbole of the deeply unserious. But what else can you call it? No word is perfect, but the crime must have a name that fits the monumental scope of its evil. It must describe what actually happened. And what happened is that the president and his son-in-law deliberately allowed 140,000 (and counting) Americans to die of a pandemic, because it would mostly kill off their political opponents. Because it would kill off mostly poor people of color. Because they thought they could gain an upper hand by blaming opposing governors. But they thought it would advantage them politically. It’s like a plot out of a bad action movie with a comic book villain, except it’s real life and those villains are still governing and making decisions.

When the founders named “high crimes and misdemeanors” as the basis for impeaching a president, they chose the phrase because it was deliberately vague: it would be impossible to write a law to cover every possible abuse of power by a deranged executive. They expected the Congress to respect its own authority and the health of the country enough to know when a relevant “high crime” or “misdemeanor” had taken place.

The problem now is that this president has already been impeached, there isn’t time or appetite to impeach him again, and the Senate controlled by the president’s party refuses to act out of political cowardice and self-interest. Moreover, the phrase “high crime” doesn’t really do justice to the scope of the evil of which the president is reportedly guilty.

This is a crime against humanity. A crime so profound we may not have a law to cover it. A crime with international implications, one so vast it may require an international court.

But somehow, some way, it must be prosecuted. The majority of Americans, the ones not enthralled by conservative infotainment and the Trump propaganda machine, are suffering from years of collective trauma and looking forward to the November election as a means of escape. One can hardly blame them. Nor would many be to blame for wanting to put this entire era behind us and never look back.

But assuming democracy remains intact and Trump is driven from office, this enormous crime cannot be forgotten. It cannot be ignored. There must be accountability for this genocide, this greatest crime in American history.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/ivanka-and-jareds-friday-night-news-dump-was-because-they-have-tons-of-conflicts-of-interest-report/

no twt lnx

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have extensive conflicts of interests as they serve in the White House for President Donald Trump, according to an analysis of the ethics forms they released Friday.

“Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner earned at least $36.2 million as they served in the White House last year, reporting a boost in income from some companies they own that hold residential and commercial properties, new disclosures released Friday show. President Trump’s daughter and her husband, who both serve as top advisers to him, reported a minimum combined income that was at least $7 million higher than in 2018, when they reported making at least $29 million, according to their personal financial disclosures, which they are required to file annually,” The Washington Post reported Friday.

James Hohmann, a national political correspondent for the newspaper, provided context for the story on Twitter.

“They put this out late on a Friday night because they don’t want people to understand the extent to which they’re profiting from private business holdings, which present tons of conflicts of interest and from which they haven’t fully divested, while working in the White House,” Hohmann posted, add a bag of money emoji.

“Jared and Ivanka continue to collect huge sums from their outside businesses even as they work inside the administration. Their combined income last year ranged from $36.2 million to $157 million, based on the ranges in the disclosures,” he added in a second tweet, this time using a bag of money emoji and a stack of cash emoji.

cf moyers cox So won civil war; pluto olig: only rich white men deserve are qualified to govern, thus kush gets covid and ME peace:

a 720

Here’s why Jared Kushner’s plan for widespread COVID-19 testing ‘just went poof into thin air’

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/nytimes-investigation-finds-trump-administration-was-desperate-to-shift-blame-for-a-crisis-of-its-own-creation/

Conducting over two dozen interviews with senior administration and public health officials, and consulting a cache of previously unavailable documents, the *New York Times* has uncovered what now seems obvious to everyone except perhaps Trump’s dwindling and ignorant base of supporters: the Trump administration deliberately sought to shift blame for its botched handling of the Covid-19 pandemic to the states, in what theTimes authors aptly characterize as a “catastrophic policy blunder” and “one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.”

A team in the White House led by President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, met daily on the crisis, but the ultimate goal was shifting responsibility. “They referred to this as ‘state authority handoff,’ and it was at once a catastrophic policy blunder and an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations,” write Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger.

Other than Trump himself, two of the officialstaking a lead role in causing this catastrophe, according to the Times, were Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Coronavirus Task Force leader Deborah Birx. Birx’s role in delivering deliberately upbeat information to Trump (in the face of dire negative news directly to the contrary) played a major role in Trump’s decision-making, according to the Times, which refers to her as the “chief evangelist” portraying the threat from the virus as “fading.” (The Times article in fact contains an entire, devastating segment explicating Birx’s influence on the policy; she declined to be interviewed for the article).

For scientific affirmation, they turned to Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the sole public health professional in the Meadows group. A highly regarded infectious diseases expert, she was a constant source of upbeat news for the president and his aides, walking the halls with charts emphasizing that outbreaks were gradually easing. The country, she insisted, was likely to resemble Italy, where virus cases declined steadily from frightening heights.

As late as April 11, Birx was telling Trump that the “nation was in good shape,” while Meadows was casting the handling of the crisis in ideological terms, as an issue that the states should handle, rather than the federal government. Birx was also largely instrumental in developing a plan that shunted responsibility for the pandemic away from the federal government and onto the cash-strapped states. Not surprisingly, these were the exact types of messages guaranteed to please Trump (who from Timesinvestigation was clearly too uninterested and self-absorbed to interpret any data himself).

Over a critical period beginning in mid-April, President Trump and his team convinced themselves that the outbreak was fading, that they had given state governments all the resources they needed to contain its remaining “embers” and that it was time to ease up on the lockdown.

The results of this deliberate exercise in self-delusion manifested themselves in an overall attempt to minimize the necessity of lockdowns and social distancing, with the catastrophic results we are now witnessing today. Importantly,the Times investigation makes clear that Trump’s policy was not simply a matter of misjudgments, but “a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans.”

It was also a strategy designed solely with Trump’s re-election prospects in mind, and extended to deliberately and “disdainfully” ignoring scientific studies which contradicted the Trump line, “muzzling” voices advocating a more safety-oriented approach, and “continu[ing]to distort reality even as it became clear that his hopes for a rapid rebound in the economy and his electoral prospects were not materializing.”

The Times’ report includes several facts not previously disclosed. First, nearly the entirety of the administration’s policy was formulated by aides with no public health or scientific background whatsoever. Second, Trump’s perverse “campaign” against testing was intentional and in fact directly related to shifting wholesale responsibility to individual states so that he, Trump, would not be blamed for the catastrophe. Third, the silencing of Fauci through limiting his media appearances was deliberate as they were afraid he would “go off message” and start telling Americans the truth about skyrocketing infection rates; and fourth, California’s governor was told by administration officials that if he wanted bulk deliveries of nasal swabs to test for Covid-19 infections, he would have to call Trump personally and thank him before they would be delivered.

The article also confirms that it was Jared Kushner, as well as administration officials acting on his cues, who was largely influential at the federal level in depriving states of the number of tests necessary to adequately combat the virus.

But the enabler of the administration’s failure, at least according to the emphasis implicit within theTimes’report, was Birx. It was Birx who came up with the language referring to individual hotspots and outbreaks as “embers” that simply needed to be tamped down. She repeatedly and persistently likened the situation in the U.S. to the experience of Italy, which turned out to be disastrously wrong. She ignored warnings that the models she continually hyped to White House Officials might not be accurate. The authors of the University of Washington model, in particular, were alarmed when administration officials began using their model to try to predict what would occur if social distancing measures were abandoned.

TheTimesarticle is a devastating portrait of a slow-motion train-wreck in the making, with the health and safety of the American public repeatedly treated as an afterthought to Donald Trump’s political fortunes.

Unfortunately, as we now know, that train is now bearing down on all of us.

CC made peace w/ kush?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/chris-christie-and-jared-kushner-are-helping-trump-prepare-for-his-debates-with-biden/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-some-of-trumps-friends-and-family-who-were-cleared-for-millions-in-small-business-bailout-fund

Businesses tied to President Donald Trump’s family and associates stand to receive as much as $21 million in government loans designed to shore up payroll expenses for companies struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal data released Monday.

A hydroponic lettuce farm backed by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., applied for at least $150,000 in Small Business Administration funding. Albert Hazzouri, a dentist frequently spotted at Mar-a-Lago, asked for a similar amount. A hospital run by Maria Ryan, a close associate of Trump lawyer and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, requested more than $5 million. Several companies connected to the president’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, could get upward of $6 million.

There’s no ban on businesses connected to Trump’s orbit receiving money. Democrats added a provision to the CARES Act excluding government officials and their family members from receiving some bailout funds, but not those from the PPP.

The firms sought funding under the Paycheck Protection Program, one of the Trump administration’s sweeping pandemic relief efforts. Created in late March by the CARES Act, it allowed small businesses — generally, those with fewer than 500 employees — to apply for loans of up to $10 million. The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities.

The program paid out $521 billion to almost 4.9 million companies in an effort to provide relief for small businesses and their workers amid the sudden economic shock brought on by the pandemic. As applications slowed after the initial rush, $132 billion remained unspent, and Congress voted to extend the program.

After resisting releasing the names, the government bowed to pressure from critics and watchdog groups. On Monday, the administration disclosed only those entities that were approved by banks for loans over $150,000. A consortium of news organizations, including ProPublica, has sued the administration under the Freedom of Information Act to release the full list of recipients and loan details.

The program has been criticized for including some loan recipients, particularly large, publicly traded companies, and for favoring wealthier businesses that had existing relationships with banks. In some cases customers could essentially skip the line. Overall, however, many economists praise the PPP for having gotten billions to companies relatively quickly.

The New York Observer, the news website that Kushner ran before entering the White House and is still owned by his brother-in-law’s investment firm, was approved for between $350,000 and $1 million, data shows. A company called Princeton Forrestal LLC that is at least 40 percent owned by Kushner family members, according to a 2018 securities filing, was approved for $1 million to $2 million. Esplanade Livingston LLC, whose address is the same as that of the Kushner Companies real estate development business, was approved for $350,000 to $1 million. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The loans to Kushner-related companies were first reported by The Daily Beast.

In addition, up to $2 million was approved for the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, a nonprofit religious school in Livingston, N.J., that’s named for Jared Kushner’s grandfather and supported by the family.

....

Kushnerville finds itself in unfamiliar territory as coronavirus restrictions halt its apparatus of intimidation ProPub 5/20 an

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/democrats-demand-trump-state-department-turn-over-secret-plan-to-slash-social-security-amid-pandemic/

no lnx

Democrats demand Trump State Department turn over ‘secret plan’ to slash Social Security amid pandemic

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams May 18, 2020

House Democrats are demanding that the Trump administration turn over to Congress all documents related to an internal State Department plan that reportedly proposes giving Americans direct cash payments in exchange for cuts to their Social Security benefits, an idea advocacy groups denounced as “monstrous.”

In a letter (pdf) sent late last week to Keith Krach—Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment at the State Department—Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and John Larson (D-Conn.) called on the administration to release in full the so-called “Eagle Plan,” the existence of which was first reported last week by the Washington Post.

“In this moment of crisis, when millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet and fear for their retirement, we should be enhancing Social Security, not developing policies to reduce benefits,” the lawmakers wrote. “The idea that you would ask individual Americans to sell out their hard-earned retirement security as the price of desperately-needed help during a crisis is unacceptable.”

The Post reported that the “Eagle Plan” was written by Paul Touw, chief strategy officer to Krach, and forwarded to the White House Council of Economic Advisers by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

In a statement, Castro characterized the internal State Department proposal as “a secret plan to cut hard-earned Social Security benefits.”

“This should not be a surprise after earlier this year in Davos when President Trump said, ‘At the right time, we will take a look at that,'” Castro said. “Jeopardizing retirement security during a health and economic crisis that disproportionally impacts older Americans is not the ‘right time’—we should only be strengthening Social Security.”

Larson, who has proposed an emergency expansion of Social Security benefits during the coronavirus crisis, echoed Castro, saying “the idea that we would ask Americans to sell out their retirement and long-term security for assistance during a crisis is insane.”

“Social Security is here for Americans for times exactly like the ones we face today,” said Larson. “It is time we strengthen it. This attempt is ludicrous.”

Rep. John Larson

@RepJohnLarson

.@JoaquinCastroTx & I are urging the Trump Administration to turn over all documents & information involved in their plan to cut Social Security. Social Security is here for Americans for times exactly like the one we face today. We need to strengthen it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/democrats-scrutinize-state-department-plan-to-overhaul-social-security/2020/05/14/c6cd3e10-9622-11ea-8107-acde2f7a8d6e_story.html …

Democrats scrutinize State Department plan to overhaul Social Security

The “Eagle Plan” is among the options that have circulated in the Trump administration to address concerns about the ballooning national debt.

washingtonpost.com

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2:50 PM - May 15, 2020

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According to the Post, the “Eagle Plan” is one of two proposals to cut Social Security that senior White House officials have considered in recent days as the administration and congressional Republicans claim to be concerned about the rising deficit. Progressives have warned that the GOP’s renewed deficit hawkery is a cynical ploy to justify gutting safety net programs.

Alex Lawson, executive director of advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement last week that the “Eagle Plan” would “force people to choose: Go hungry today or work until you die.”

“The Trump administration is obsessed with using the coronavirus crisis to undermine our Social Security system,” said Lawson. “Social Security is an earned insurance benefit. It is not a piggy bank.”

“This plan, and any plan that raids Social Security, is a moral abomination,” Lawson added. “Instead of trying to steal the earned benefits of desperate people, the government should be sending $2,000 a month to everyone in America, as Democrats in Congress have proposed.”

risen

...Jared Kushner, his pale, thin-lipped son-in-law, has gone from creating havoc in the Middle East, where he was supposedly in charge of developing Trump’s “policy” for the region, to creating havoc in the federal response to Covid-19, thanks to his role running a backdoor coronavirus task forcerife with incompetenceand political favoritism. (The Trump White House has a front-door ad-hoc task force, run by Vice President Mike Pence, but Trump shut down the professional pandemic team at the National Security Council in 2018.)

Kushner’s most consequential and deadliest contribution to the government’s response came early in the crisis, when he convinced Trump that the press was overhyping the threat. That appealed to Trump’s natural inclination to call Covid-19 a media-invented hoax, especially as he started facing criticism for failing to address shortages of tests and other urgently needed medical equipment, including protective gear for nurses and doctors. Trump’s failure to take any action during the pandemic’s critical early days allowed the virus to become embedded in the United States.

Naturally, Kushner has now declared victory, even as Covid-19 expands its fatal reach across the nation. “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this,” Kushner told Fox News last week. “We’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story.”

Kushner’s coronavirus task force gave top priority to requests from ‘VIPs’ Jeanine Pirro and Brian Kilmeade: report

Alex HendersonMay 6, 2020

Requests that far-right Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro or Brian Kilmeade recently made to White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force were prioritized, according to a complaint from a whistleblower…

5/20 an

an 52o

damning whistleblower complaint details the ‘tragic’ blunders of Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force: report Alex Hend

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/illinois-governor-chartering-flights-from-china-in-a-herculean-effort-to-prevent-trump-from-snatching-millions-of-masks-and-gloves-report/

kush grabbed ppe from hosp?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/chaos-kushner-commandeered-supply-chain-task-force-operates-in-the-dark-and-turned-government-into-arm-of-big-business/

no lnx

def of facsism corpism?

‘Chaos’: Kushner-commandeered supply chain task force operates in the dark — and turned government into arm of big business

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement April 13, 2020

Jared Kushner is best known for his failures, and his decision to commandeer the supply chain task force and turn it into an arm of Big Business may be his greatest.

The supply chain task force, a part of the larger coronavirus task force, should be helping the federal government procure desperately-needed personal protective equipment (PPE) including face masks and shields, along with life-saving medical equipment like ventilators, at a lower cost, and distributing it to the areas that need it the most.

But under Kushner’s manipulation, the supply chain task force has “virtually no accountability,” NBC News reports. It has “operated almost entirely in the dark, releasing few details of their arrangements with the big companies; created a new and convoluted emergency response system; and sown confusion and distrust in the states and among the people who need medical supplies.”

“Jared and his friends decided they were going to do their thing,” one senior government official told NBC News. “It cost weeks.”

Congressional officials warn the supply chain group is mired in “chaos, secrecy and ineptitude.”

NBC reports under Kushner the supply chain task force has spent about one million dollars each on 40 chartered FedEx flights in a deal for chemical giant DuPont to send its made in the USA Tyvek material over to Vietnam, where it is sown into body suits.

Those suits used to sell for $5 each. The federal government, in addition to basically donating what would amount to $40 million to DuPont, is now paying up to three times as much for the suits: $15 each, NBC News reports. To make matters worse, instead of paying FedEx $1 million per flight the federal government could have used U.S. military aircraft which would have cost less than half: $410,000 per flight.

And if all that weren’t bad enough, DuPont only sold 60 percent of the suits to the federal government.

“We actually helped get raw materials supplied from Richmond, Virginia, and we flew that s— to Vietnam, all so that DuPont could sell us” their products, said a senior federal official involved in the coronavirus effort.

President Donald Trump and HHS, which announced the deal last week, described the arrangement as one in a string of massive successes in delivering badly needed medical equipment into the U.S. in an expedited fashion.

Read the entire report here.

hHS head’s ‘future uncertain’ after Kushner and Pence sideline him for not giving Trump good news about virus spread: report

Tom Boggioni / Raw StoryApril 13, 2020

According to a report from the Daily Beast, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar may soon be exiting the White House for refusing to sugarcoat information about the coronavirus pandemic when…

https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/jared-kushner-surveillance/

as Jared Kushner has set himself a prominent role in the administration’s coronavirus response, there’s been a growing chorus of questions about what, exactly, he’s up to and how much the public will ever find out about it. Today, a trio of lawmakers are demanding answers from Jared Kushner about work his public-private taskforce has reportedly been doing with a “range of technology firms” to “establish a far-reaching public health surveillance system” in response to the pandemic.

Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, along with Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, wrote a letter to Kushner on Friday asking about the issue three days after *Politico*reported that Kushner’s shadow task force had “reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system” that would give government “a near real-time view” of patients seeking treatment. Even though Politicocited interviews with “seven tech executives, government officials and other people familiar with its contours,” a White House spokesperson denied to the news outlet that Kushner had any knowledge of such plans.

“Your office’s denial of the existence of this effort, despite ample corroborating reporting, only compounds concerns we have with lack of transparency,” the lawmakers wrote in the April 10 letter, which expressed fears that such a system “could undermine the confidentiality and security of our health information and become the new status quo.”

The lawmakers’ concerns about transparency echo previous worries that Kushner’s taskforce is operating outside of normal government procedure, perhaps to the point of breaking the law. (Kushner has said that President Trump instructed him to “knock down every barrier needed” and “make sure that the government is doing things that the government doesn’t normally do, where we’re stretching, where [we] are acting very quickly.”)

On March 27, Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote a letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone asking him to ensure that Kushner’s working group “fully comply with all laws,” specifically citing provisions of the Presidential Records Act and and Federal Advisory Committee Act that bar or limit the use of private email accounts for government business.

On Friday, Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief FOIA counsel, told Mother Jones that the organization was still working to get its arms around the full scope of Kushner’s activities and had yet to receive a response to its letter. But with the federal government spending trillions in response to the coronavirus , she says Kushner’s secret work with a range of often unnamed private officials was especially troubling, especially if they are conducting business in a way that evades oversight.

“Given the amount of money at stake, there is significant possibility that these people are also trying to leverage their position for their own personal profit, or profit for their companies,” she said. “We should have assurances that people who are given such enormous power and responsibility are acting in the interest of the nation.”

house probes role of Jared Kushner as federal government seizes orders of COVID-19 medical supplies Igor Derysh / Salon

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-tragic-and-laughable-rise-of-jared-kushner-should-leave-us-all-terrified

no lnx

The tragic and laughable rise of Jared Kushner should leave us all terrified

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly April 7, 2020

1.2K

We now know a bit more about what is happening with the critical medical supplies that I wrote about on Monday. Here is how Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker explained it on PBS News Hour.

Josh Marshall

@joshtpm

Gov @GovPritzker confirms that the federal ‘Air Bridge’ flights from China, organized by the White House taskforce, are bringing PPE back from China which are then turned over to private companies. The states then have to bid against each other to purchase from those companies.

Embedded video

The federal government is seizing shipments of these supplies meant for states or other countries and then turning them over to private companies to distribute. Here is the formula, as outlined by a report in the New York Times.

FEMA allows those distributors to sell about half of the equipment to companies and counties that had previously placed orders. The other half of the shipments must be sold to counties that the federal government prioritizes by the severity of the outbreak, based on data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The federal government will also soon save 10 percent of the supplies on each flight for the national stockpile, according to officials.

There are five companies that have been chosen to distribute these supplies: McKesson Corp., Owens & Minor, Cardinal Health, Medline Industries, and Henry Schein. While there has been zero transparency on how those companies were chosen, on Saturday, it was announced that they would all be exempt from anti-trust laws in order to coordinate their efforts.

That’s what we know about the plan so far. This one has all the markings of being dreamt up by Jared Kushner, who has long demonstrated that he embraces the Republican principle that private business operations are always superior to those handled by the government. So after weeks of telling governors that they were on their own to find critical supplies, the White House has seized the product, handed it over to private for-profit businesses, and put governors in the position of having to compete against each other. What could possibly go wrong?

But there is also the issue of the supplies that will be sold directly to counties by FEMA based on priorities established by the federal government. Under normal circumstances, that might be the preferable approach. But normal doesn’t usually include having the president’s son-in-law in charge of those decisions. Here is what Gabriel Sherman reported about how that works.

In recent days Kushner has advocated for his usual, iconoclastic public-private approach, drawing on business contacts. Last week he called Wall Street executives and asked for advice on how to help New York, people briefed on the conversation said. Kushner encouraged Trump to push back against New York governor Andrew Cuomo after Cuomo gave an emotional press conference during which he said New York was short 30,000 ventilators. In a White House meeting around this time, Kushner told people that Cuomo was being an alarmist. “I have all this data about ICU capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators,” Kushner said, according to a person present.

In that instance, Kushner consulted with Wall Street executives and his own data about ICU capacity to suggest that the governor of New York was being “alarmist” in stating his need for critical medical supplies. Here’s another example from the New York Times article.

Advisers to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have surprised FEMA officials in recent weeks to deploy supplies to communities after the area’s representatives got through to Mr. Trump, even if the state had not yet gone through the formal process to secure supplies.

For instance, after Mr. Trump heard from friends that the New York public health system was running low on critical supply, Mr. Kushner directed agency officials to ensure that there were enough N95 masks in the administration’s inventory…

If that sounds like a new reality television series titled “Kushner Knows Best,” it is because that is how he operates, according to those who have dealt with him in the past. Journalist Andrea Bernstein literally wrote the book on the Trumps and the Kushners. Here’s what she told Michelle Goldberg about Jared.

Again and again, she said, people who’d dealt with Kushner told her that whatever he did, he “believed he could do it better than anybody else, and he had supreme confidence in his own abilities and his own judgment even when he didn’t know what he was talking about.”

I have often felt that Jared and Ivanka are carbon copies of “the Donald,” with the one exception being that they have replaced his showmanship with an obsession about image combined with proficiency in speaking the language of PowerPoint.

Alexandra Petri did an amazing job of using irony to describe Jared in Jared’s voice in a piece titled, “How lucky we are to have Jared Kushner!” Here’s just a taste, but you’ll want to read the whole thing.

We would be fortunate if into this generation had been born a person capable of solving the problem of peace in the Middle East, or the opioid crisis, or how to make government work in an age of pandemic — but what are the odds that we would have all three, and that they would turn out to be the same man? Truly the gods have blessed us. Truly this is a towering intellect.

The amazing thing, too, is that if you were to listen to him talk, you would not think that this was a man who knew anything about anything. Perhaps to really understand his brilliance you must be related to him. At least there was one person who always believed in Jared Kushner, and fortunately for him, that person was the president’s son-in-law, who through a strange coincidence was also himself.

That would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. After all, Kushner’s accomplishments fall miles short of his opinion of himself. Here is how Goldberg put it.

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.

With lives on the line, this is the guy who has put himself in charge of making decisions about who gets the critical medical supplies that hospitals need during a pandemic. As I said, what could possibly go wrong?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/economist-robert-reich-trump-is-shamelessly-exploiting-chaos-for-personal-gain-during-the-deadly-coronavirus-crisis/

other examples of coronavirus madness in Trumpworld, Reich observes, range from White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner “running a ‘shadow’ coronavirus task force that has been enlisting the private sector” to corporate provisions in the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill Trump recently signed into law.

“Is there any doubt Trump will try to use this money, as well as his son-in-law’s secretive dealings, to improve his odds of re-election?,” Reich asserts...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/cnn-host-spars-with-trump-economist-peter-navarro-for-touting-his-social-scientist-credentials-in-hydroxychloroquine-fight-why-should-we-listen-to-you-and-not-fauci

CNN host spars with Trump economist Navarro for touting ‘social scientist’ credentials in hydroxychloroquine fight: ‘Why should we listen to you?’

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Alex Henderson April 6, 2020

Axios’ Jonathan Swan has reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci and Peter Navarro (policy coordinator for the Trump White House’s trade policy) had a heated argument in the White House’s Situation Room over the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a way to possibly treat coronavirus. Navarro, like President Donald Trump, has been pushing chloroquine aggressively — while Fauci has strong reservations. And the merits of hydroxychloroquine (which has been used to treat malaria) in relation to coronavirus were hotly debated on Monday morning, April 6 when Navarro appeared on CNN’s “New Day” and was aggressively grilled by host John Berman.

Berman emphasized that Navarro lacks Fauci’s medical expertise, asking why someone would believe Navarro over a well-respected “infectious disease doctor” like Fauci. When Navarro described himself as a “social scientist,” Berman responded that being a “social scientist” is not the same as having medical expertise.

“I’m sorry, that doesn’t qualify you to treat patients,” Berman said. “You know it doesn’t qualify to you treat patients.”

“Why should we listen to you and not Dr. Anthony Fauci?,” Berman maintained. The CNN host demanded to know, “Why is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead infectious disease doctor in this country, wrong about this?”...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/jared-kushner-creating-confusion-by-coordinating-covid-19-response-with-trumps-corporate-allies-wapo-reporter

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Jared Kushner creating ‘confusion’ by coordinating COVID-19 response with Trump’s ‘corporate allies’: WaPo reporter

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story April 6, 2020

Reporter Robert Costa revealed that Jared Kushner has been coordinating the distribution of medical supplies with Republican donors.

The Washington Post national political reporter said President Donald Trump’s son-in-law has sparked confusion in those efforts by placing himself in the chain of command, and both Kushner and trade adviser Peter Navarro were contradicting advice from White House medical experts.

“When you ask about the inner circle, it is clear to me,” Costa told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “based on my reporting, that Peter Navarro, more than anyone now, whether it’s on urging the president to take a position that’s different than Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, or when it comes to the Defense Production Act, nudging corporations, sometimes pushing corporations to do what the White House wants, that Navarro is at the center.”

“Jared Kushner is there and he’s really being a liaison to different donors, to different corporate allies of this administration, which has created confusion about the chain of command, about whether corporations should work through Jared, whether they should work through Vice President [Mike] Pence and the task force,” he added.

Navarro and other Trump advisers, including Rudy Giuliani, have been overriding medical experts on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus, and Costa said the president’s confidence in that unproven drug was not matched by science.

“That scene at the [Centers for Disease Control] from weeks ago, where the president says he is quite familiar with medicine, even though he is not a medical professional, is a statement that you often hear inside of the White House,” Costa said. “Top officials say the president has confidence that’s not backed up by experience or data. This is an alarming situation for not only people in the White House but many governors. They say if the president keeps talking about hydroxychloroquine in a way that is encouraging people to go seek it out, you’re going to have a medical, chaotic situation in this country, where people are trying to get a drug that’s not truly proven as efficacious for treating coronavirus and COVID-19.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/jared-kushner-gets-the-scorched-earth-treatment-on-msnbc-as-the-man-whos-failed-at-everything/

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Jared Kushner gets the scorched earth treatment on MSNBC as the ‘man who’s failed at everything’

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story April 4, 2020

On MSNBC Saturday, Intercept reporter Mehdi Hasan slammed President Donald Trump for mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic — and particularly for putting his son-in-law Jared Kushner at the forefront of the effort.

“I think it’s very unified leadership. They’re all unified in their ignorance and their denialism and their callousness,” said Hasan, speaking with host Ali Velshi. “They all have the same approach, which is just to play it down, which is to pretend things are getting better, which is to turn this into a partisan political crisis where states like Florida that voted for Donald Trump get resources and states that didn’t vote for him like New York or Colorado or Maine don’t get the same level of resources.”

“What we’re seeing right now, real time, is a kakistocracy,” continued Hasan. “Government by the worst people. Kakistocrats. Led from the top by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. On what planet is Jared Kushner put in charge of the White House’s response to the coronavirus? This is a man who’s failed at everything he’s touched … he’s failed to run a New York newspaper, he’s failed in the property business his criminal father gifted to him, failed at trying to bring peace to the Middle East. And now failing at trying to handle this major public health crisis which he’s not qualified to handle.”

“You mentioned the quote from him and Donald Trump saying, these are our ventilators, this is the federal government’s stockpile, this is for ourselves,” added Hasan. “Who are the ours? Who are the ourselves? If the federal government doesn’t stand up for the 50 states of the United States, who does it stand up for? It’s bizarre, the level of incompetence, the indifference — it’s completely crazy!”

Watch below:

“What we’re seeing right now in real time is a kakistocracy. Government by the worst people! Kakistocrats…on what planet is Jared Kushner put in charge of the White House response to the coronavirus? This is a man who has failed at everything he’s touched” – me on @MSNBC today: pic.twitter.com/V1FniQ0uaQ

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 4, 202

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Trump continues to base policy on what he hears on Fox News

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / The Washington Monthly April 4, 2020

On Thursday night, Donald Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act. He made the announcement on Twitter, of course.

We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. “P Act” all the way. Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing – will have a big price to pay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2020

According to a report from Kevin Breuninger, the president issued an order on Thursday night directing Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to “use any and all authority available under the Act to acquire, from any appropriate subsidiary or affiliate of 3M Company, the number of N-95 respirators that the Administrator determines to be appropriate.”

Here is the response from 3M’s CEO.

“The narrative that we aren’t doing everything we can as a company is just not true,” 3M CEO Mike Roman says, after President Trump criticized the manufacturing giant and invoked the DPA to force 3M to step up production of respirator masks. https://t.co/Lfa4xPqVwo pic.twitter.com/3cxA2FUDiu

— CNBC (@CNBC) April 3, 2020

In commenting on this, Kevin Drum identified the problem with Trump’s selective use of this authority.

The White House didn’t explain this, and it’s a little unnerving to see Trump using the DPA in such a gleefully punitive way. It’s supposed to be a technocratic tool for coordinating production, not a way for a president to score political points on Twitter.

All of this raises the question of what 3M did that earned the ire of the president.As it turns out, this segment of Tucker Carlson’s show aired on Fox News not long before Trump fired off his tweet.

Tucker Carlson & @JaredEMoskowitz Calling Out @3M Selling Masks to Foreign Governments Instead of to Americans

Jared: “I can’t & other emergency management directors can’t get this life-saving PPE because a company decided to make a Globalist decision and not put America First.” pic.twitter.com/wPoFQnm6ej

— The Columbia Bugle ???? (@ColumbiaBugle) April 3, 2020

Carlson’s guest, Jared Moskowitz, works for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis as his director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. He railed about not being able to get face masks from 3M.

It is difficult to sort out the truth from the lies in that segment. Some of the issues Moskowitz is pointing to surfaced after we learned that the federal government, probably under the direction of Jared Kushner, has turned the supply chain for these critical supplies over to the private sector. Josh Marshall documented the issues that raises.

First is that there’s no clear mechanism to allocate these supplies on the basis of need based on a coherent national plan or framework. Secondly, it opens the door to massive profiteering. Even if companies aren’t technically gouging, that’s what bidding is. And you really can’t call this a legitimate private sector market if every state is having to bid with private companies to secure medical supplies during a historic national health emergency. The private sector rationale is also undermined if the US military has taken over a significant part of the fulfillment process.

The man who turned around the Bush administration’s botched response to Katrina, Lt. General Russel Honore, explained why that is a recipe for disaster.

After hearing the White House say critical supplies are going to commercial distributors who are then selling them to the states which are begging for help, I called @ltgrusselhonore who commanded federal troops after Hurricane Katrina to get his reaction. Watch this: pic.twitter.com/x7u3qoQ0v6

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) April 3, 2020

Regardless of any complicity on the part of 3M, none of the issues Moskowitz complained about would be happening if this administration was taking charge of the supply chain rather than turning it over to the private sector. Those are the facts.

But beyond all of that, what we see is that once again the President of the United States took retributive action based on a segment he watched on Fox News. If you think his son-in-law, who has now been put in charge of managing this effort, will do any better, take a look at this.

Well, this is concerning.

Kushner says Trump finally acted on addressing supplies shortages after hearing about them “just this morning” from “friends of his in New York.”

Not the governor. Not the hospitals. Friends.

This is how Trump runs your country. pic.twitter.com/vlwDR86WWs

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) April 2, 2020

What we have is a president who, during a national emergency, is directing policy based on what he hears on Fox News and from his “friends.” Of course, that’s what he’s always done. In the past, it was bad news. But it is now unconscionable.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/kushner-companies-may-be-a-prime-beneficiary-of-mortgage-freeze-in-coronavirus-stimulus-report/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-organization-goes-to-deutsche-bank-for-loan-deferments-as-pandemic-throttles-its-business

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/national-stockpile-makes-bumbling-change-to-its-site-apparently-covering-up-for-jared-kushners-jaw-dropping-gaffe/

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National Stockpile makes bumbling change to its site — apparently covering up for Jared Kushner’s jaw-dropping gaffe

Written by Alex Henderson April 3, 2020

When White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner spoke at a coronavirus-related news conference on Thursday evening, he argued that the United States’ Strategic National Stockpile was exclusively the property of the federal government — not a resource for individual states. And since then, Politico’s Quint Forgey reports, the language used on the stockpile’s website has been changed to reflect Kushner’s assertions.

At the news conference, Kushner told reporters, “The notion of the federal stockpile was: it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”

Before that news conference, the website described the stockpile as the “nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.”

It added: “When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.”

But the following morning, the website said that the stockpile’s role “is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled as well.” The line about the stockpile ensuring that “state, local, tribal, and territorial” responders have what they need was completely removed.

Forgey noted that “President Donald Trump and the White House have repeatedly sparred with state and local authorities over their requests for ventilators, personal protective equipment and other critical medical supplies amid the coronavirus pandemic.”

One state authority stressing the need for more ventilators in his state is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Repeatedly, Cuomo has warned that hospitals in New York State could run out of life-saving ventilators as the number of people infected with coronavirus continues to increase.

On Twitter, CNN reporter Daniel Dale asserted that the website’s new description of the Strategic National Stockpile’s purpose was inconsistent with the type of language used on other parts of the site. Dale explains, “The style of the new ‘as well’ sentence — ‘many states have products stockpiled, as well’ — is so clearly different than the rest of the Stockpile website.”

To make his point, Dale tweeted screenshots of what the stockpile’s website said before Kushner spoke at the Thursday evening press conference and what it said after he spoke.

In another tweet, Dale noted, “After Jared Kushner’s comment about how the Strategic National Stockpile is not supposed to be for states, lots of people pointed to the fact that its own website says it is. The language on the website has now been changed.”

Daniel Dale

@ddale8

The style of the new "as well" sentence -- "Many states have products stockpiled, as well" -- is so clearly different than the rest of the Stockpile website. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1246109260104294406 …

Daniel Dale

@ddale8

After Jared Kushner’s comment about how the Strategic National Stockpile is not supposed to be for states, lots of people pointed to the fact that its own website says it is.

The language on the website has now been changed.

My screenshot from last night vs. one from today:

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

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9:41 AM - Apr 3, 2020

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615 people are talking about this

The Washington’s Post Aaron Blake also made a before-and-after comparison, tweeting screenshots of the Stockpile’s website on Thursday compared to Friday morning.

Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance (a University of Alabama Law School professor and legal analyst for MSNBC) had a biting response to Kushner’s comments on the Stockpile, tweeting, “Your tax dollars weren’t being spent to protect your life after all, according to Jared.”

Aaron Blake

@AaronBlake

The Trump administration just changed its language about the Strategic National Stockpile on an HHS website to jibe with Jared Kushner's claim that this isn't for the states.

(h/t @LEBassett)

Before vs. After:

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

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8:50 AM - Apr 3, 2020

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Kushner once controlled the health insurance company that has launched a coronavirus testing website

One of the major complaints about President Donald Trump’s response…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-the-kushner-family-is-cashing-in-on-covid-19

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How the Kushner family is cashing in on COVID-19

Written by Sarah Okeson / DC Report March 16, 2020

The Kushner family is trying to cash in on the pandemic that could kill millions of us.

Oscar Health, the health insurance company co-founded by Jared Kushner’s younger brother, announced Friday it has launched a testing center locator for COVID-19. It shows where more than 100 centers are in the United States. The company is also offering a risk assessment survey and means to talk to a doctor online.

The coronavirus is predicted to kill anywhere from almost 500,000 Americans in the next year to more than 5 million. At least 62 people in the United States had died by Sunday; 3,130 have tested positive.

Team Trump announced Saturday that Trump tested negative for the virus despite presiding over a coronavirus hot zone at Mar-a-Lago. Testing efforts have been marked by delays [...]

This Raw Story article ...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/jared-kushners-tenants-are-davids-going-up-against-goliath-in-netflixs-dirty-money/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/how-jared-kushner-wrestled-control-of-trump-pardon-process-away-from-bill-barrs-doj-report/

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How Jared Kushner wrestled control of Trump pardon process away from Bill Barr’s DOJ: report

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story February 20, 2020

President Donald Trump has taken the pardon process away from the Justice Department and given more direct control to son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.

The president granted clemency Tuesday to a group of 11 political allies, Fox News regulars and others, and he has put together an informal task force overseen by Kushner to recommend and vet new candidates, reported the Washington Post.

The group has been meeting since late last year, after Kushner recommended taking away control of the process away from the Department of Justice.

One official told the newspaper that Trump was unconcerned about criticism of this week’s pardon spree, and said more pardons would be coming before November’s election.

“He likes doing them,” the official said.

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-february-17-2020/

am olig rebroadcast fundraiser

rudy sent to ukraine to undercut manafort invest in order to undermine Mueller collusion invest

trump sr bought bankrupt prop, bribed pols to get favors, eg loans

tax dodger

ME plan

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/jared-kushner-gives-birth-to-travesty-of-the-century/

https://www.c-span.org/video/?467980-1/after-words-andrea-bernstein

*After Words* Andrea Bernstein, "American Oligarchs"Journalist Andrea Bernstein chronicles the Trump and Kushner families rise…

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/evangelicals-are-anticipating-the-end-of-the-world-and-trump-is-listening/

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Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying

End Times.

Stephanie Mencimer January 23, 2020

Mother Jones

The enemies of Israel have unleashed a massive air attack on the Promised Land. Hundreds of fighter jets streak across the sky. But before Israel can be destroyed, fire rains from the heavens and the enemy jets explode in mid-air with no explanation. Hailstones the size of golf balls follow the fire. The ground shakes. Birds pick clean the bodies of the fallen attackers. The enemy is vanquished without a single Israeli casualty, and the country is saved.

These are some of the opening scenes of the bestselling 1995 book Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, by Jerry B. Jenkins and the late evangelical minister Tim LaHaye. But don’t mistake this scenario for a mere action sequence: It’s based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a “place in the far north” that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will join with Persia—now Iran—and other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel “like a cloud that covers the land.” LaHaye, like many evangelicals, believed this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme.

The story of Gog and Magog is central to the bloody eschatology long embraced by millions of American evangelicals. In recent years, End Times has gained special political currency as believers have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

On many levels, President Donald Trump’s self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trump’s improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ. Lured by the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-abortion measures, and a commitment to Christian supremacy under the guise of religious freedom, white evangelicals voted for Trump in higher numbers than any other group—more than 80 percent.

He desperately needs them if he’s going to be reelected. And while some have expressed concern about the administration’s inching toward war with Iran, many of those with what were once fringe beliefs have cheered the killing of Soleimani. “Iran has this big part to play in biblical history,” says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, attended an evangelical college and seminary, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis at Duke University on American fundamentalism. “There are these particular prophecies from Ezekiel, where there is talk of a war that will happen at a very important moment in Israel’s history. And that war is going to kick off the End Times. People in this prophetic community believe Iran is going to be one of these aggressors.”

“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals.”

Bass thinks this worldview may be central to understanding Trump’s foreign policy. “When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals. They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration,” she says. “They don’t necessarily want violence, but they’re eager for Christ to return and they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.”

Not all or even most evangelicals believe in the literal truth of these sorts of prophecies, though nearly 60 percent of white evangelicals, according to one 2010 poll, believe Jesus is definitely or probably going to return by the year 2050. But those who do subscribe to this apocalyptic world view seem to be overrepresented among Trump’s religious supporters and advisers. In October, a host of influential evangelical pastors came to the White House to pray with Trump to protect him from impeachment. Among those who laid hands on the president as he stood, head bowed, in the Oval Office, was repeat visitor Greg Laurie, pastor of a California megachurch. A few days after the killing of Soleimani, Laurie made a YouTube video with Don Stewart, author of 25 Signs We Are Near the End, to discuss Iran and the End Times. “The scenario that the Bible predicted, seemingly so impossible,” Stewart promised, “is now falling into place.”

From the outset, Trump has surrounded himself with people who hail from the fringes of the evangelical community that is steeped in the language of biblical prophecy, and his administration regularly reflects that language back to them in its messaging. In March 2017, for instance, Trump issued an official White House statement recognizing the Persian New Year in which he misattributed a quote to Cyrus the Great, the libertine pagan leader of the ancient Persian empire who was anointed by God to free Jews in Babylon. Ordinary Americans probably wouldn’t have even noticed the announcement, but evangelicals knew that Trump was speaking their language. Many of them believe Trump is like Cyrus, a flawed nonbeliever who nonetheless is chosen by God to work his miracles on Earth.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly instrumental in pushing for the killing of Soleimani, is also a master of such messaging. In March, during an interview in Jerusalem with the Christian Broadcasting Network (founded by another apocalyptic preacher, Pat Robertson), Pompeo showed his familiarity with another Iran-centric Bible story popular with End Times evangelicals. In the story, a Persian king is urged to slaughter the Jews in his kingdom at the urging of the evil adviser Haman. But his Jewish Queen Esther convinces him not to and saves her people. Asked whether he thought Trump could be a modern-day Esther, saving the Jews from Iran, Pompeo replied, “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.” The secretary of state’s End Times beliefs made headlines again after the Soleimani killing, as meme-makers circulated a quote from a speech he made in a Kansas church in 2015. A few days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Pompeo said: “We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle. … until the Rapture.”

The State Department did not respond to questions about how Pompeo’s religious views may affect his foreign policy decisions. But it’s not hard to see how apocalyptic evangelicalism might be influencing the Trump administration as it seeks to mobilize the millions of evangelicals reached by televangelists and megachurch pastors preaching the End Times. The most blatant appeal to this constituency came when Trump made the controversial decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-desired goal of evangelicals who see it as fulfilling a biblical prophecy necessary in securing the Second Coming. What may be less obvious is how Trump’s disdain for international governing bodies like NATO also dovetails almost perfectly with End Times theology, whether he realizes it or not.

Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University history professor and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, says evangelicals who believe the end is near have always been hostile to any sort of international organizations. That’s because they believe biblical prophecies that say that in the last days, a world leader who preaches peace will emerge and move toward a one-world government. In fact, the prophecy goes, that leader will be the Antichrist who will force the world to accept a false religion and persecute people who don’t accept him as a Messiah. (In Left Behind, the Antichrist is a Romanian UN secretary-general.) Evangelicals love Trump’s talk of pulling out of NATO, his attacks on the UN, and his trashing of the Paris climate change accord. “They hate the UN,” Sutton says. “Trump’s unilateralism is also music to their ears.”

Trump is not the first president to surround himself with evangelical Christians with an apocalyptic bent. Ronald Reaganwas advised by Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, andpersonally believed in the End Times and the coming apocalypse, writing about it in his journals. He appointed people like Interior Secretary James Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist whose disdain for environmental conservation seemed to be informed by his belief that the end of the world was nigh. In an appearance before Congress, he told stunned lawmakers, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

Apparently George W. Bush was also part of this apocalypse-now group. When Bush was trying to convince French president Jacques Chirac to support an invasion of Iran in 2003, he reportedly told Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.” Chirac had no idea what Bush was talking about and had to consult a biblical scholar.

George W. Bush: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Trump, who seems unable to distinguish between the New and Old Testaments, doesn’t seem particularly fluent in the prophecies of Ezekiel. But he has brought into the White House a host of people who are.Quite a few also hail from what Bass delicately describes as the “not respectable charlatan wing” of evangelical Christianity. They’re the prosperity preachers and prophets of the sort depicted by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry. “I have no doubt at all that those people are sitting right next to [Trump], giving him these Bible verses, telling him about these prophecies,” Bass says, “which means that they are kind of egging him on, [telling him] that he’s part of God’s prophetic fulfillment for these last days.”

Many of those who have become White House regulars are associated with something known as the New Apostolic Reformation, what Christianity Today describes as “a loosely connected group of Pentecostals and Charismatics.” They’re the ones who speak in tongues, scour the news for clues to biblical prophecies, engage in faith healing, and preach prosperity gospel—the notion that faith in God (or, usually, the preacher) will make people wealthy (or at least enrich the preacher). These apostles tend to embrace “dominionist” theology that implores Christians to take over of all levels of government, media, and education as a way of preparing for the End Times and return of Christ. Influential politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who has made several visits to the Trump White House, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry fall into this camp.

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the liberal nonprofit People for the American Way who has tracked the religious right for many years, says that the network of preachers who come from NAR and Pentecostal media operations “are telling people over and over again that Trump was ‘chosen,’ that God intervened in the election. Some of them say very explicitly that Trump is playing a role in God’s End Time plans to bring about the return of Christ.”

One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

He has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel.

Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagee’s views “crazy and unacceptable.”

The election of Barack Obama consigned Hagee to his megachurch in San Antonio. But Trump has restored him to the corridors of power in Washington. Hagee endorsed Trump early in 2016. Once Trump was elected, Hagee met with the new president for two hours in 2017 to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Foreign policy experts feared the embassy relocation would destabilize the region and hamper peace talks, but Trump moved it anyway in May 2018. Israeli troops killed more than 50 people in the protests that followed.

Hagee attended the opening ceremony alongside notables such as Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, and he gave the closing benediction.“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message: Israel lives,” he announced. “Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran: Israel lives.” He later told the Texas Observer that he was looking forward to Trump confronting Iran, explaining, “The sum of Iran’s evil is greater than the whole of its parts.”

When Christians United for Israel held its annual DC confab and lobbying day last summer, Trump sent no fewer than five top administration officials to address attendees, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence (both evangelicals themselves), then–national security adviser John Bolton, a special envoy to the Middle East, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Pompeo opened the speech by telling the crowd of more than 5,000 people, “This is what it must have looked like to be part of the crowd for the fishes and the loaves. What a miracle that was.” Once more the story of Queen Esther came in handy, this time as Pompeo compared it to modern-day Iran.

Hagee is one of the most prominent of Trump’s evangelical supporters who see a war with Iran as a necessary step towards the End Times, but he’s far from the only one. The White House has hosted a steady stream of dominionists and NAR apostles since Trump took office, including Lance Wallnau, author of God’s Chaos President.An evangelical leader with a consulting business in Dallas, Wallnau has become famous as one of the few evangelicals who accurately prophesied Trump’s election after receiving divine inspiration to read chapter 45 of the Book of Isaiah. That’s the story of King Cyrus, whom Wallnau and many other evangelicals think Trump resembles.(For $45, Wallnau and ex-con televangelist Jim Bakker now sell a Trump/Cyrus coin that people can use to pray for Trump’s reelection.) Dr. Lance, as he’s known, has made several visits to the White House, including for a private briefing on Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan.

Facilitating many of these visits is Paula White-Cain, the controversial televangelist associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network who became Trump’s spiritual adviser after he saw her preach on TV in the early aughts. White led a 20,000-strong megachurch in Tampa that was investigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007 for lavish spending on private jets and big houses and possible violations of its tax-exempt status. His report did not find any wrongdoing—church leaders refused to cooperate with the investigation—but in 2012, White’s church declared bankruptcy. She went on to lead a mostly African American church in Florida where she remained until last spring, when her son took over the ministry.

Now on her third marriage, White has long been at odds with more elite, mainstream evangelicals because of her particular self-help brand of prosperity gospel. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore called White a “charlatan” and “heretic.” Nonetheless, in late October, Trump installed her in an official post at the White House office of public liaison to do outreach to evangelicals, formalizing access for some of the more extreme members of that group. She has referred to Trump as a modern-day Esther and called his enemies “demonic.”

Bass says that evangelical elites of the sort who associated with President George W. Bush have long looked down their noses at populist preachers like White and her crowd, but Trump has elevated them to positions of power. It’s a win-win situation. The evangelicals are at last in the influential positions those who disparaged them once held. And Trump’s narcissism is receiving special nourishment by their insistence that he was chosen by God. “I think that Trump likes it when people think he’s close to God—he called himself the ‘chosen one’—and to think that all of this has some sort of divine backing,” Bass says. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president who was quite influenced by this stream of evangelicalism as Trump has been.”

Naturally, there are political benefits to all of this. The administration has struggled to provide evidence of any imminent threats from Soleimani, but the timing for the assassination was certainly fortuitous for someone looking to mobilize evangelicals. Not only was Trump embroiled in impeachment hearings, he was still chaffing from a recent editorial in the evangelical publication Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, calling for him to be removed from office on moral grounds. Trump announced the killing of Soleimani just hours before appearing at the launch of his campaign’s Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami.

That event took place at a Pentacostal Latino church headed by Guillermo Maldonado, who speaks in tongues and hosts a TV show called “The Supernatural Now.” He’s the founder of the King Jesus International Ministry, a Miami megachurch with upwards of 20,000 members and a large TV and radio presence. Maldonado is also another regular White House visitor who has preached that Trump has a role in God’s plans for the End Times. At the 2019 Global Prophetic Summit, he claimed that God told him, “America, I have prepared this time, I have raised somebody in office to open the doors for my gospels.”

André Gagné, a theology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says the apocalyptic worldview is concerning at such high levels of power, because believers may be rather sanguine about the possibility that assassinating an Iranian general might spur an even bigger war or nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. “If it brings the end of the world, it brings the end of the world,” Gagné says. “They’re ready. They can’t wait for the Rapture to happen. For them it’s the ultimate reunion with God.”

to understand top presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, you have to learn his family history

Andrea Bernstein / ProPub

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/heres-why-congress-wants-to-look-inside-the-bank-that-fronted-donald-trump-2-billion/

no lnx

Here’s why Congress wants to look inside the bank that fronted Donald Trump $2 billion

Written by Dana Kennedy / Raw Story, DC Report December 31, 2019

Just try phoning Trump’s private banker Rosemary T. Vrablic at Deutsche Bank’s U.S. headquarters in Manhattan. Back in 2017, before too many bankers involved with Deutsche Bank started turning up dead, Trump once dared reporters to call her, saying she was the “the head” of the bank and “the boss.”

The good news is that Vrablic, 58, is alive. That is not something to take for granted when you look at two dead Deutsche Bank executives with ties to Trump, Russia and possibly at dead pedophile money man Jeffrey Epstein. One banker was found hanged in 2014 and one in November.

Vrablic’s office picked up right away when this reporter called following the Supreme Court’s decision on Dec. 13 to take up Trump’s argument that he be allowed to shield disclosure of his financial information from Congress and the New York attorney general.

Not surprisingly, the woman who answered the phone in Vrablic’s office refused to identify herself. Nor would she put Vrablic on to answer questions about Trump.

She sounded flabbergasted that anyone from the public, much less the media, would be calling someone who is, for the most part, a mystery woman. And that is despite her role in approving about $300 million in allegedly suspect loans to Trump. That arrangement will be part of a quite likely historic oral argument by the Supreme Court in March with a planned June decision.

Refusing to transfer the call to a corporate spokesperson, the person who answered the phone tried to imply that Vrablic no longer worked there. Then she agreed to take a message that was never returned.

‘Global Laundromat’

Deutsche Bank lent Trump millions after he defaulted on loans they already gave him and after he once sued them in 2008. Known derisively as a “global laundromat,” the bank is facing U.S. and British legal actions over its role in a $20 billion Russian money-laundering scheme. Two Congressional committees want the bank to release 10-plus years of records involving Trump and his three oldest children as Congress probes Russian money laundering and possible foreign influence involving Trump. White House lawyers have fought the committees tenaciously.

It’s hoped that the Supreme Court’s verdict will end years-long efforts on the part of U.S. officials to glean the truth about Trump’s finances. Especially at issue is whether Russians interfered in the 2016 election and if that meddling was powered by Russian money funneled to Trump through the giant, scandal-ridden German bank.

Teller to Managing Director

Vrablic, a one-time bank teller turned Deutsche Bank private wealth managing director, was Trump’s liaison at the bank. She sat in a hoodie in the VIP section at the Trump inauguration.

Trump borrowed more than $2 billion in the past two decades. Many allege the loans could hold the key to Russian funding of Trump.

Hired in 2006 with celebratory ads in The New York Times and a sweet deal guaranteeing her $3 million a year, Vrablic’s work raised the bank’s public profile–at first in a good way. Now the opposite is true.

Trump burned through his relationships with bank investment and commercial real estate departments because of his constant defaults and failures. Then Vrablic stepped up in 2010.

The Kushner Network

Trump’s daughter Ivanka had just married Jared Kushner, who was a longtime client of Vrablic along with his mother Seryl. Ivanka steered Vrablic in the private bank sector of Deutsche Bank her father’s way. It turned out to be the financial lifeline crucial in helping him win the election.

People at Vrablic’s level in the banking world, even when they are swept up in such international scandals, are rarely household names unless they die suddenly… read suspiciously. Even then, they are familiar to only the most inside-baseball financial journalists. They are never part of the daily Trump-Schiff-Pelosi-Schumer-AOC-Nunes-McConnell etc. political narrative though their influence is often greater.

Their deaths often remain murky. Supposed details take on a life of their own on conspiracy websites but the actual truth remains frustratingly out of reach – a bit like Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged jail suicide.

A Pair of Suicides

Thomas Bowers, 55, Vrablic’s former boss, ran the private wealth division of Deutsche Bank and oversaw loans to Trump and reportedly to Epstein until he left the bank, reportedly in 2015. It is said he hanged himself at his Malibu home on Nov. 19.

His death was first reported in a tweet by David Enrich of The New York Times, one of the foremost experts on Deutsche Bank. “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction,” an upcoming book by Enrich, focuses in part on the sudden death of William Broeksmit, a senior Deutsche Bank executive.

Broeksmit, a man who “knew too much,” according to Enrich, was found hanging in his London home in 2014. Enrich calls it a “mysterious suicide.”

Enrich previewed the deeply weird story of the whistleblower in the Broeksmit case, who turns out to be the troubled but possibly believable stepson of Broeksmit, in a New York Times Magazine story in October. So far, though, he has done no more than tweet about Bowers, first to announce his death, then to deny “rumors” that Bowers had been Epstein’s banker.

The Epstein Connection

Enrich said on Twitter that Bowers left Deutsche Bank in 2013, prior to Epstein becoming a client. Deutsche Bank would not comment on Bowers and other reports say Bowers left Deutsche Bank in 2015 when Epstein was already a customer.

Epstein, of course, allegedly committed suicide while in jail in August. One of Estonia’s leading bankers, Aivar Rehe, apparently committed suicide in September in Tallinn. Rehe ran Danske Bank which was used by clients in Russia and Eastern Europe to launder billions of dirty dollars. At the time of the Rehe death, Frankfurt prosecutors were eyeballing Deutsche Bank for its part in doing business with suspicious American customers, The New York Times reported.

The Democratic-controlled House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank in April for the records. In turn, Trump sued the bank to prevent it from complying. It’s believed that the bank has documents that would show on how Trump made his money, who he partnered with and extensive details of what he borrowed and resulting transactions.

The subpoenas also included demands for information about suspicious activity in Trump’s Deutsche Bank accounts.

Trump’s Lender of Last Resort

Starting in the late 1990s, Trump had become such a bad credit risk, either repeatedly defaulting on loans or declaring bankruptcy, that no U.S. banks would do business with him.

Deutsche Bank, which badly wanted to expand internationally, especially into the United States, saw an opportunity with Trump and became his chief creditor, despite his rank financial past.

Anti-money-laundering investigators at Deutsche Bank flagged “multiple transactions” involving accounts controlled by Trump and Jared Kushner in 2016 and 2017 and alerted bank executives who apparently ignored the intel, The New York Times reported in May.

“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering specialist who reviewed some of the transactions told The Times.

“It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.”

Additional reporting by Matthew Reagan and Anna Sasser, Occidental College, Los Angeles

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-furious-with-matt-drudge-for-turning-against-him-as-impeachment-looms-report

no lnx

Trump furious with Matt Drudge for turning against him as impeachment looms: report

Conservative Matt Drudge

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story November 23, 2019

According to a report at the Daily Beast, Donald Trump is privately fuming that the Drudge Report has been highlighting stories about his legal problems and administration missteps at a time when he desperately needs support from the highly influential conservative website.

The report notes that the president is an avid follower of Matt Drudge’s longtime news aggregation site and has become increasingly frustrated that he is not seeing links to stories praising him — and has tasked son-in-law Jared Kushner to approach the publisher and fix it.

“As House lawmakers move quickly toward a likely impeachment vote before the year’s end, President Donald Trump has kept a close eye on his conservative media allies—and hasn’t been shy about trashing them for projecting insufficient fealty,” the Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng writes. “But it’s been one media outlet in particular that has caught the president’s ire, even though it has so far been spared his Twitter rage: the Drudge Report. Publicly, Trump hasn’t said a peep about the highly popular news aggregator run by right-wing media impresarioMatt Drudge. But privately, he has simmered over the critical coverage that the site has run and linked to, with regards to the impeachment proceedings.”

According to his reporting, Trump has been dismayed with the headlines on the Drudge Report and has privately expressed, “What’s going on with Drudge?” with two other sources saying the president has complained to other staffers, wondering why the site is “so anti-Trump” lately.

In an attempt to fix the fracture the Drudge Report, which has long been a go-to for conservatives due to its right-wing outlook, the president has asked Kushner to step in.

“In recent weeks, Trump has even asked Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a top White House official—who has had a friendly relationship with the site’s creator—to ‘look into it’ and reach out to Drudge, the sources said,” the report states. “It is unclear if Kushner has done so. The White House and Drudge did not respond to requests for comment on this story as of press time.”

“Due to its huge audience, the site wields massive influence not just in conservative media, but in driving media narratives and political conversation among legacy newspapers and mainstream media publications as well,” Suebsaeng writes. “Trump’s private fretting over ‘what’s going on’ at the Drudge Report isn’t an isolated concern. Numerous others in the president’s orbit—re-election campaign, West Wing, media circles, long-time friends and associates—have noticed the site’s drift, as well. Some have expressed their anxieties about it directly to the president.”

The report goes on to note that Trump has held his fire when it comes to attacking Drudge, with Suebsaeng writing, “The fact that the president himself hasn’t yet taken to Twitter to bash Drudge in recent weeks may also have something to do with his general assessment of— and, at times, begrudging respect for—how Drudge operates, according to people who’ve spoken to Trump about the website and its famously reclusive creator.”

You can read more here.

~ rudy Sec of S?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-rudy-giuliani-how-americas-mayor-became-trumps-grifter/

no lnx

The rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani: How ‘America’s mayor’ became Trump’s grifter

Written by The Washington Monthly November 18, 2019

Rudy Giuliani was a shoo-in for attorney general or secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in a nascent Trump administration. Not only was Giuliani “America’s Mayor” following his command of the situation on 9/11, he was a former federal prosecutor, presidential candidate, and an early validator—if late endorser—of Donald J. Trump.

Life looked pretty rosy for the ambitious pol, with a clear path to power and privilege, given his expertise.

He didn’t want the jobs proffered, however. He wanted something bigger.

Whether he was done with the law or just wanted something that approximated the power and prestige of the presidency, he postured and heavily lobbied to be Trump’s secretary of state. As the former mayor of America’s most important city, he was regularly in the company of foreign dignitaries and, of course, 9/11 gave him a global stage from which to show off his leadership skills.

But translating international experience and foreign hobnobbing into policy focused on America’s global role required diplomatic skill not often associated with New York moxie. It would have been a hard sell—even to a pliant Republican-dominated U.S. Senate. After all, John McCain—and even Lindsey Graham 1.0—were actively looking out for America’s national security interests back then.

Giuliani’s jones-ing to become America’s lead diplomat seemed to have more to do with a desire for his own publicly financed jet and private traveling press corps than any real interest or ability to negotiate long, hard hours toward solutions that required uncomfortable trade-offs. He wanted the position’s perks and platform more than the work—or the extraordinarily demanding work schedule that comes with the job.

Fast forward to 2019, and the Giuliani scorned by Jared Kushner has become the roiling Rudy who plays Donald Trump’s personal attorney on TV. Giuliani has never met a Sunday news show he doesn’t like. Trump has turned to this anti-matinee idol and put personal business and state policy in the hands of a freewheeling, out-of-control—and sometimes crazed—Giuliani. His uncanny ability to stay simultaneously both on message and off—yet claim to be reliably consistent and coherent—has allowed him to play rough in all positions of Trump’s political defense and remain untouched.

Until now.

Now he’s all lawyered up, as investigators in the U.S. House release State Department officials’ closed-door testimony implicating Giuliani in Trump’s move to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless it agreed to investigate Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Giuliani so desperately needed to play the globetrotting role of secretary of State that he got to become Trump’s “Shadow Secretary.” In that role, he used presidential proximity to guide America’s foreign activities, fire its diplomats, bully its allies, and bank on the nation’s sheer power to leverage lethal aid into forced foreign state-sponsored oppo research on 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Biden became the target of the externally run, illicitly operated Giuliani Shadow State Department, doing the Trump-Kushner-Pompeo trio’s dirty work while operating with Oval Office assurances that his free hand and opaque operation was guarded by attorney-client privilege. This questionable privilege was also supposed to protect Michael Cohen, Trump’s previous personal attorney. Cohen is now serving a prison sentence for doing Trump’s shadowy business.

A one-man, oversight-free, power-drenchedShadow State Department is a heady thing. Giuliani recognized that he no longer had to play by the same rules as a government agency. He could operate the way Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, did with his paramilitary organization, Blackwater.Renamed Xe, Blackwater was a private entity conducting a contracted war, freed from the constraints of treaty obligations, multilateral engagement, long-standing bilateral relations, protocol, congressional oversight, budgetary limits, press access, or full transparency.

Giuliani was as free to disregard established foreign policy and practice as Prince’s locked-and-loaded organization was to end-run military rules of engagement.Bonus points: Giuliani also was able to profit as a free agent. Who was going to question his private authority when the imperial presidency, with its seemingly unchecked privilege, had his back and could dangle a potential blanket pardon?...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3743316/Yachting-enemy-Ivanka-Trump-Jared-Kushner-jet-ski-Croatia-Democratic-Hollywood-billionaire-David-Geffen-s-200m-boat.html

hmmn tabloid?

Sunday, Nov 3rd 2019 1PM 75°F 4PM 75°F 5-Day Forecast

Yachting with the enemy: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner take the jet skis out and relax on Democratic Hollywood billionaire David Geffen's $200m mega-yacht off the coast of Croatia

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were spotted jet skiing off the coast of Croatia on Friday

The pair are vacationing on the Rising Sun, the $200million yacht belonging to billionaire Hollywood executive David Geffen

Geffen is close friends with President Barack Obama and donated to both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary

He called Hillary 'an extraordinary, smart, accomplished woman' in a 2014 interview, and said he would 'absolutely' support her run for president

Brian Grazer was also on the trip with his new wife Veronica and Ivanka's good friend Wendi Deng

Geffen has also hosted some of the Democratic party's biggest supporters on the yacht, including Oprah Winfrey, Bob Iger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jimmy Iovine, Bruce Springsteen and Rita Wilson

By CHRIS SPARGO FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 09:30 EST, 16 August 2016 | UPDATED: 06:52 EST, 17 August 2016

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are taking a much needed break this week, and after months campaigning for The Donald the two appear to have found the perfect place to get away from it all - the megayacht of a billionaire Democrat.

David Geffen, who was one of the earliest supporters of Barack Obama and donated to both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the primary, is hosting Ivanka and Jared on his boat the Rising Sun.

The couple was seen jet skiing in Croatia on Friday off the $200 million boat, and later went sightseeing in Dubrovnik with Wendi Deng and Brian Grazer and his new wife Veronica.

Grazer is also a big fan of President Obama, and even included an interview with him in his 2015 book A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life.

Relaxing: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were spotted jet skiing off the coast of Croatia on Friday

Lounging: The couple also took some time to read on the boat during their much needed vacation

Vacation: The pair are vacationing on the Rising Sun, the $200million yacht belonging to billionaire Hollywood executive David Geffen

Checking in: Kushner takes a peek at his phone while lying out on the yacht's deck on Friday

Taking a ride: Ivanka is making no secret about who she is vacationing with, tagging Geffen in a photos she posted to Instagram on Monday

Letting loose: Kushner rides the waves as he enjoys a break from working with The Donald on the campaign trail, where he has become a key player

Luxury line: The Rising Sun (above) was bought by Geffen in 2010 from another billionaire, Larry Ellison

Ivanka is not making any secret about who she and her husband are vacationing with, tagging the Grazers and Geffen in a photo of herself and Deng she posted to Instagram on Monday.

THE RISING SUN AT A GLANCE

Length: The Rising Sun measures 453ft and is the 11th longest yacht in the world

Number of rooms: It is understood the vessel has 82 rooms, spread out over five levels. There is also 36,000 of teak deck space

Costs: The superyacht reportedly cost over US$200 million to build.

Luxury features: An extensive wine cellar, personal cinema, gym, sauna, spa and basketball court that doubles as helipad

Owners: It was built in 2004 for Larry Ellison and bought in 2010 by Geffen, four years after he purchased half a share of the yacht

Geffen was no fan of the Clintons back in 2007 during Hillary's primary race against Obama, supporting the then Illinois senator and breaking with the political power couple because he believes they lied 'with such ease, it’s troubling.'

He had a big change of heart however in 2014 when he called Hillary 'an extraordinary, smart, accomplished woman' who he would 'absolutely' support in 2016 while speaking with Maureen Dowd of The New York Times.

The openly gay Hollywood executive then donated the maximum amount allowed to both Sanders and Hillary during the primary.

Geffen has also hosted some of the most vocal supporters of the Democratic party and Hillary on the yacht over the past few years.

In April he hosted guests including Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, Jimmy Iovine and Rita Wilson on the yacht.

Also on that trip was Bruce Springsteen, who during a June concert in Germany held up a sign that read 'F*** Trump.'

Geffen also posted a photo earlier this year of Leonardo DiCaprio on the boat, who threw his support behind Hillary by agreeing to host a luncheon for her at his Los Angeles home.

The $33,000-a-plate fundraiser which will take place later this month.

Another frequent guest on the yacht is Bob Iger, who will also be hosting an event for Hillary in Los Angeles that will take place the night before DiCaprio's luncheon.

Geffen only recently joined Instagram, and one of his first photos was of him with Karlie Kloss. The 24-year-old supermodel dates Joshua Kushner, Jared's venture capitalist brother.

Kloss commented on the photo, saying she loved Geffen and asking when they could have a reunion on The Rising Sun.

Geffen had Kloss back on the yacht in June, with the model posting a photo of the two and writing: 'The most magnificent weekend with the most extraordinary man.'

Gang's all here: Geffen had some of the Democratic party's biggest supporters on his yacht earlier this year, including Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Iovine (l to r: Rita Wilson, guest, Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen, Gayle King, Nancy Shevell and Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, Geffen, Roman Abramovich's wife Dasha Zhukova, Jimmy Iovine and guest)

Testing the waters: Ivanka and Wendi Deng on the yacht Friday afternoon off the coast of Croatia

Look like a vision in white on the sea in Marysia Swim

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Alas, we have finally arrived at the swimsuit chapter in Ivanka Trump's whirlwind European vacation.

The businesswoman and style icon has a knack for elegant dressing which is why her European holiday has been great news for us Ivanka obsessives looking to cop her impeccable sense of style.

Today she opted for a chic and minimal swimsuit by Marysia Swim--a label which is instantly recognizable for their signature scalloped edge motif.

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Chance encounter: It was recently revealed that Deng brought Ivanka and Kushner together after a brief split early in their relationship

Rave: Ivanka recently posted a photo of Deng from her recent Vogue profile while expressing what a inspiring woman she is

Back on board: Deng's ex-husband Rupert Murdoch is a big supporter of The Donald

Chatting away: Ivanka and Deng spent the weekend together on the boat after flying in last week

Setting sail: A look at The Rising Sun at night posted to Instagram by Geffen last month

The group is not spending all their time on the yacht however, and on Friday were seen touring Dubrovnik.

Ivanka was seen in one photo chatting with Grazer as Deng and Kushner looked on, with Grazer's wife Veronica glued to her phone.

In another photo, Grazer can be seen snapping a picture of Ivanka and Kushner on a cell phone.

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Ivanka's relaxing European vacation will sadly soon be coming to an end, and on Tuesday Grazer and his wife posted photos as they flew back home to Los Angeles.

'Taking off from the teeny town of Split, Croatia with our spirited pilot,' wrote Geffen on a photo of himself with his arm around the pilot.

One day prior he also posted a photo of himself and Geffen on the yacht at sundown.

On Monday, Ivanka and her husband took some time away from the group with the 35-year-old businesswoman posting a photo of their morning hike together in Hvar.

Chatting it up: Ivanka talks with Brian Grazer while Kushner and Deng look on Friday afternnon (above)

Say cheese: Grazer snaps a photo of Ivanka and Kushner was they tour Dubrovnik on Friday

David Geffen and Brian Grazer

Brian Grazer and Veronica

Happy guy: Grazer posted a photo of himself and Geffen on Monday (left) as well as one after he went paddleboarding with his wife Veronica (right)

Rare sighting: Geffen was not only able to get a photo of DiCaprio on his yacht earlier this year, he also posted it on Instagram for all the world to see

Hillary fan: Disney CEO Bob Iger enjoys some time on the Rising Sun last year

Getting the in: Geffen is close friends with supermodel Karlie Kloss (above on his yacht in June) who dates Jared's brother Joshua

Quuen Bea: princess Beatrice stopped by for a visit on The Rising Sun last year while Oprah was aboard

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/treasure-trove-of-mueller-memos-shows-trump-benefited-the-russians-beyond-their-wildest-expectations/

Sunday morning, an MSNBC “AM Joy” panel took up the release of a batch of memos from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that were released on Saturday that shed light on even more connections between aides to the president and Russian officials.

Reviewing the documents obtained by Buzzfeed News, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin said Russia lucked out with Trump as a presidential candidate...

ref

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/mueller-report-secret-memos-1

no lnx many docs

THE MUELLER MEMOS

The Mueller Report’s Secret Memos

BuzzFeed News sued the US government to see all the work that Mueller’s team kept secret. We have published the first installment, with revelations about the Ukraine conspiracy theory, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and more.

Posted on November 2, 2019, at 12:08 p.m. ET

Paul Manafort was pushing the unfounded conspiracy theory — now part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump — that Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee's emails as early as 2016.

The president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, "had to keep Trump out of the messaging related to Russia” in preparation for his testimony to Congress under oath and that the false testimony was "not his idea."

Top Trump campaign aide Rick Gates said the campaign was “very happy” when a foreign government helped release the hacked DNC emails.

These are some of the revelations that BuzzFeed News pried loose after pursuing five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for all the subpoenas and search warrants that then–special counsel Robert Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated.

[Read the documents here.]

In response to a court order, the Justice Department released the first installment of documents: hundreds of pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years.

The documents revealed Saturday, known as “302 reports,” are summaries of interviews with former White House official and Trump campaign manager Stephen Bannon, Cohen, Gates, and more. They are some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from Mueller’s investigation. They reveal what key players in the campaign told FBI agents about Russia, Trump, the email hack during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Trump's associates’ handling of the special counsel’s investigation.

Mueller’s 448-page report last March was the most hotly anticipated prosecutorial document in a generation, laying out the evidence of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s efforts to obstruct the inquiry. The report, however, reflected only a small fraction of the billions of primary-source documents that the government claims Mueller’s team may have amassed over the course of its two-year investigation.

[We want your help! If you see something in these memos, you can email reporter Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com or reach us securely at tips.buzzfeed.com.]

Those documents are a crucial national legacy, a key to understanding this important chapter in American history. But the public has not been allowed to see any of them. Until now.

After years of speculation and accusation, these documents offer a chance for everyone to view a key function of American democracy. That opportunity — hard-won, but enshrined anew with each additional FOIA release — commences today. It will last long after all the players have departed.

Some takeaways from the memos:

Manafort was pushing the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC as early as 2016

In an April 2018 interview with the special counsel’s office, Rick Gates, who had served as deputy Trump campaign chair and had long been Paul Manafort’s right hand, told investigators that after the campaign learned the DNC had been hacked, Manafort pushed the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had orchestrated the attack. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s persisted in right-wing circles, even after the US Intelligence Community concluded Russia was involved, and one that Trump brought up in his July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In a written memorandum of the July call released by the White House, Trump at one point says to Zelensky, “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.”

DOJ money laundering probe of Deutsche Bank includes Kushner transactions

by Alex Henderson June 20, 2019

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is conducting a criminal investigation of possible money laundering violations by Deutsche Bank, and the New York Times is reporting that the probe will…

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/inoculation-as-a-form-of-propaganda

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Inoculation as a form of propaganda

written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly June 12, 2019

Meeting charges with countercharges brings a disease into the body politic that's a prophylactic against accountability.

With so much focus on Fox News providing a propaganda platform for Donald Trump, national news outlets haven’t been paying as much attention to theSinclair Broadcasting Group — which has been trying to take over local broadcast news.

It is worth remembering that a 2018 report from Emory University found that “when Sinclair buys a local station, its news program begin to cover more national and less local politics, the coverage becomes more conservative, and viewership actually falls — suggesting that the rightward tilt isn’t enacted as a strategy to win more viewers but as part of a persuasion effort.” In other words, Sinclair has become the local right-wing propaganda network.

True to form, Eric Bolling’s show on Sinclair recently featured an interview with Peter Schweizer. You might remember him as Steve Bannon’s partnerwho authored the book Clinton Cash, which was weaponized by the Trump campaign in 2016. More recently, Schweizer wrote Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. His discussion with Bolling represents a form of propaganda we’re seeing quite often these days.

“The problem is the corruption is being globalized,” Schweizer said. “What that means is thatforeign governments and foreign oligarchs are looking to recruit the family members of politiciansbecause they believe by striking commercial bargains with them—helping politician families become rich—that they’re going to get favorable treatment.”[CHAO MCCONNELL?!]

“And Joe Biden has been a major recipient of that kind of largesse from them,” Schweizer added.

As he did with Clinton Cash, Schweizer backs up his allegations of corruption with inferences and innuendo, but zero actual evidence. What struck me most was the fact that stories about “globalized corruption” in the form of allegations about countries like Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia have been rampant when it comes to Donald Trump and his family. As a matter of fact, this story broke at about the same time as Schweizer’s interview.

A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump.

Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.

Kushner, who is married to Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka, kept a stake in Cadre after joining the administration, while selling other assets. His holding is now valued at up to $50m, according to his financial disclosure documents.

When right-winger’s like Schweizer level these kind of charges about the Bidens, they are obviously forms of hypocrisy and projection. But it’s also a type of propaganda that we could call “inoculation,” because they introduce the disease into the body politic as a prophylactic against accountability. To mitigate charges of corruption against Trump and his family, similar charges are leveled against their opponents. As we’re seeing now with Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the investigators, that ultimately leads to charges being met with countercharges in an attempt to confuse the public and ward off accountability.

The reason that kind of propaganda works for Republicans is because low-information voters — spurred by a media obsessed with bothsiderism — tend to respond by saying “they all do it,” which promotes cynicism and a disengagement from the political process. As Barack Obama once wrote:

A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

As with all forms of propaganda, this one is not easy to combat. But the first step is to recognize what’s going on. From there, taking personal responsibility for staying grounded in facts and evidence, no matter where they lead, is the only possible antidote.

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but then

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/jared-kushner-talks-of-accountability-for-crown-prince-as-saudis-offer-egregious-display-of-brutality-with-mass-beheadings/

Just as Jared Kushner answered questions about the close ties between the White House and Saudi Arabia in New York on Tuesday, the Middle Eastern kingdom beheaded 37 people in its largest mass execution in at last three years.

The executions, of mostly Shiite men accused of terrorism related crimes, were part of what Washington’s Gulf Institute director Ali Al-Ahmed called “the largest mass execution of Shiites in the kingdom’s history.”

Al-Ahmed identified 34 of the 37 victims as Shiite.

According to reports, Saudi Arabian security services nailed one of the heads to a poll as a warning and one victim was crucified after his execution.

Saudi Arabia displays severed head on pole as a warning after beheading 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. Via ⁦@AP⁩ https://t.co/J3yxex0VjA

— BrinleyBruton (@BrinleyBruton) April 23, 2019

The killings were announced by Saudi state media Tuesday morning, Eastern time, right before Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior advisor to the president, took the stage at the Time 100 Summit event honoring the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Saudi Arabia confirms beheading 37 citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution for alleged terrorism-related crimes. One body and its severed head was tied to a pole as a public warning. https://t.co/ydFt8M3r0C

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 23, 2019

During an interview at the event with Time White House correspondent Brian Bennett, Kushner fielded questions on a number of foreign policy questions, including the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Trump administration’s closeness to Russia.

Kushner was also asked a series of questions on Saudi Arabia and the relationship between the U.S. and the kingdom, especially in light of the murder of Jamal Kashoggi in October 2018 and the war on Yemen.

Kushner doesn’t dispute U.S. intelligence services’ conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi https://t.co/iVRb7y2A98 pic.twitter.com/NjXhE77NlJ

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 23, 2019

In his replies, Kushner downplayed the significance of the murder, pled ignorance on the details of the crime, and admitted that he offered Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman guidance as the world demanded accountability.

Kushner seems to acknowledge he advised Saudi Crown Prince MBS after #Khashoggi‘s murder.

“The advice I gave was be as transparent as possible and that obviously we have to make sure there is accountability for what happened,” Kushner says at #TIME100 summit

— Jennifer Hansler (@jmhansler) April 23, 2019

“Obviously, we have to make sure there’s accountability for what happened,” saidKushner, before pivoting to a series of remarks critical of Iran, the Palestinians, and the Yemeni Houthis.

In response to the beheadings, Maya Foa, director of the U.K.-based human rights groups Reprieve, put the “egregious display of brutality” squarely at the feet of MbS and the Kingdom’s western allies which have shielded it from exactly the accountability Kushner says he supports.

“That the Saudi regime believes it has impunity to carry out such patently illegal executions, without notice,” Foa said, “should shock its international partners into action.”

Reprieve Director @mayafoa: “This is another egregious display of brutality by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. That the Saudi regime believes it has impunity to carry out such patently illegal executions, without notice, should shock its international partners into action.”

— Reprieve (@Reprieve) April 23, 2019

In March 2018, The Intercept reported that Bin Salman bragged that he had Kushner “in his pocket.”

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‘Disingenuous and deceptive’: Fox News’ Shep Smith meticulously rips apart Kushner’s dismissal of Russian inference in 2016 election

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/jared-kushner-ordered-smear-campaign-against-army-vet-who-refused-to-serve-in-trump-white-house-book/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/mysterious-qatar-linked-cash-infusion-that-bailed-out-jared-kushner-will-be-investigated-by-house-dems/

cohen outed security clearence

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/here-are-5-of-the-craziest-revelations-from-the-new-yorkers-expose-of-fox-news-influence-on-trump/

Monday, The New Yorker published Jane Mayer’s stunning exposé into how Fox News, always a right-wing network, has morphed into an overt propaganda instrument of President Donald Trump’s White House, and how the symbiotic relationship between the president and Fox’s billionaire international news mogul owner Rupert Murdoch has effectively created something that has never before existed in American politics.

To some degree, the article covers ground that has long been known or suspected — the way that Trump’s policy decisions on everything from the federal government shutdown to the transgender military ban are informed by his daily binge-watching of Fox talk shows; how former Fox executive Bill Shine has blurred the Fox and White House payrolls since being hired as Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff; and how Fox itself has discarded the few journalistic guardrails it had during President Barack Obama’s years, with hosts like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs now free to openly join political rallies and offer advice to the president.

But there are some new, mind-blowing revelations in Mayer’s article. Here are five of the most significant:

Trump ranks reporters on a scale of 1 to 10 for their “loyalty” to him — and Steve Doocy is a 12.

Trump is well known for assigning numbers to women based on how attractive he thinks they are. But according to Mayer’s reporting, he does the same thing for reporters based on how loyal he thinks they are to him. “Bret Baier, Fox News’ chief political anchor, is a 6; Hannity a solid 10. Steve Doocy, the co-host of ‘Fox & Friends,’ is so adoring that Trump gives him a 12.”

Needless to say, this is a dangerous development. Trump has a track record of rewarding and punishing reporters based on his whims. During the presidential transition, he reserved a seat at a press conference for a Breitbart reporter. And last year, Trump suspended the press pass of CNN’s Jim Acosta after he challenged the president’s claims on special counsel Robert Mueller and the Honduran migrant caravan. He later relented after one of his own judicial appointees ordered him to restore Acosta’s credentials.

Jared Kushner is effectively Rupert Murdoch’s direct pipeline to the White House.

Despite having essentially no qualifications for any of it, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has worn numerous hats in the administration, from meeting with foreign heads of state to working on the Middle East peace plan to fixing the opioid epidemic — and Trump trusts him enough to have overridden intelligence officials to give him a top-secret security clearance.

One other person who trusts him, according to Mayer’s article, is Murdoch. In fact, Kushner may be Murdoch’s most direct liaison with the Trump administration.

Sources told The New Yorker that Kushner routinely asks Murdoch for advice, has “assured Murdoch that the White House is a smooth-running operation, despite many reports suggesting that it is chaotic,” and that the two of them communicate “Like, every day.” Given that the White House has given Kushner such a massive portfolio of responsibility and trust, Murdoch’s relationship with Kushner is likely one of the biggest influences he has on the executive branch.

Roger Ailes allegedly fed Trump questions before the GOP debates.

During the presidential election, it was reported that former Fox News host Megyn Kelly — who famously tried to question Trump on his treatment of women at the GOP debates only to have Trump dismiss her as on her period — asserted that Trump had help with the debate questions ahead of time. She later denied saying or believing this — but Mayer’s reporting now backs up this idea:

A pair of Fox insiders and a source close to Trump believe that Ailes informed the Trump campaign about Kelly’s question. Two of those sources say that they know of the tipoff from a purported eyewitness. In addition, a former Trump campaign aide says that a Fox contact gave him advance notice of a different debate question, which asked the candidates whether they would support the Republican nominee, regardless of who won.

It is hard to know whether this claim is accurate, as Ailes is deceased and contemporary reporting suggested that Fox was not yet in Trump’s orbit at that point of the Republican cycle. But if true, this would be highly damning — especially considering Trump asserted that the incident where former Democratic National Committee Chief Donna Brazile gave Hillary Clinton CNN questions ahead of time proved the network was “a total fake.”

Fox News uncovered the Stormy Daniels scandal during the election — but buried the story and retaliated against the reporter who found it.

The revelation that Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen made an illegal hush payment to silence an affair between Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels, first reported in January 2018 by the Wall Street Journal, was a huge story that led to a massive federal investigation, jail time, and congressional investigations.

But all of it could have come out much sooner — because as Mayer reports, Fox News had the story during the 2016 presidential election, killed it, and may have retaliated against Diana Falzone, the reporter who uncovered it:

Falzone had worked on the story since March, and by October she had confirmed it with Daniels through her manager at the time, Gina Rodriguez, and with Daniels’s former husband, Mike Moz, who described multiple calls from Trump. Falzone had also amassed e-mails between Daniels’s attorney and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, detailing a proposed cash settlement, accompanied by a nondisclosure agreement. Falzone had even seen the contract.

But Falzone’s story didn’t run—it kept being passed off from one editor to the next. After getting one noncommittal answer after another from her editors, Falzone at last heard from LaCorte, who was then the head of FoxNews.com. Falzone told colleagues that LaCorte said to her, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.” LaCorte denies telling Falzone this, but one of Falzone’s colleagues confirms having heard her account at the time.

According to The New Yorker, Fox then proceeded to demote Falzone, without explaining why. She later sued Fox, which settled the case and made her sign a nondisclosure agreement that prohibits her from discussing the details of her employment.

Trump personally ordered an economic adviser to use antitrust lawsuits to attack Fox News’ competitors.

The Justice Department’s opposition to the AT&T-Time Warner merger, which is cleared to go through after federal courts demolished the antitrust lawsuit, has always seemed legally suspicious — indeed, one of the reasons judges rejected it is that AT&T put forward compelling evidence that Trump personally wanted to kill the deal to harm CNN.

According to Mayer’s reporting, that’s exactly what was going on.Trump ordered his then-economic adviser Gary Cohn to pressure the Justice Department to block the merger — something Cohn refused to do, but which the department eventually followed through with. Trump showed no such anti-corporate sentiment with Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, a deal of similar scope but which would benefit Murdoch financially.

This development also puts the Federal Communications Commission’s unexpected decision last year to kill the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s merger with Tribune Media, which was arguably good for the local news market, in a more sinister light: that merger could have strengthened Fox’s biggest competitor in conservative television broadcasting.

Antitrust law is a powerful pro-consumer tool when applied fairly and equitably, but in the hands of someone like Trump, it can also be used to chill freedom of the press by rewarding and punishing news organizations.

A hospital-board election in central California wasn’t exactly what Burstien had in mind when he set out to establish Psy-Group in the U.S. election market. In early 2016, as the Presidential race was heating up, he and Zamel both tried to pitch much bigger players. Being hired by one of the main campaigns initially seemed like a long shot for an obscure new company whose services sounded risky, if not illegal. Lawyers at firms in New York and Washington expressed curiosity about Psy-Group, but most were too cautious to sign contracts with the company.

The Trump campaign, however, presented an opportunity. Early in 2016, a Republican consultant with ties to the Israeli government put Psy-Group in touch with Rick Gates, a senior Trump campaign official. Eager to secure a potentially lucrative project, Burstien drew up plans for an intelligence and influence campaign to promote Trump and undermine his rivals, first in the Republican primary and then in the general election. In the proposal, dubbed Project Rome, which was first reported on by the Times, last October, Psy-Group used code names for the candidates: Trump was Lion, and Hillary Clinton was Forest. Psy-Group also hired the Washington law firm Covington & Burling to conduct a legal review of its work. Former Psy-Group officials said that the resulting memo gave a green light to begin offering the company’s services in the U.S. (A spokesperson for Covington & Burling said that the firm could not discuss its advice to clients.)

Zamel often operated independently of Burstien, and it’s unclear how closely the two coördinated, but both saw the Trump campaign as a potential client. Trump’s vocal support for Israel and his hard-line views on Iran appealed to Zamel, and he reached out to Trump’s inner circle. In early May, 2016, Zamel sent an e-mail to Gingrich, saying that he could provide the Trump campaign with powerful tools that would use social media to advance Trump’s chances. Zamel suggested a meeting in Washington to discuss the matter further. Gingrich forwarded the e-mail to Jared Kushner and asked if the campaign would be interested. Kushner checked with others on the campaign, including Brad Parscale,who ran Web operations. According to a person familiar with the exchange, Parscale told Kushner that they didn’t need Zamel’s help. (A 2016 campaign official said, “We didn’t use their services.”)

Also that spring, Zamel was introduced to George Nader, a Lebanese-American with ties to the Emirati leader Mohammed bin Zayed and other powerful figures in the Gulf. Born in 1959, Nader was almost twice Zamel’s age. Both men preferred to operate behind the scenes, but were consummate networkers who touted their connections to high-level political figures. Some viewed Nader as an influence peddler; others said that he had been intimately involved in high-stakes negotiations in the Middle East for decades. Martin Indyk, an adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama on Middle Eastern affairs and now a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “We used to joke that George was in the pay of at least three intelligence services—the Syrian, the Israeli, and the Iranian.”

In June, 2016, Nader was attending an international economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, when Zamel approached him and requested a meeting. According to a representative for Nader, Zamel told Nader that he was trying to raise money for a social-media campaign in support of Trump; he thought that Nader’s Gulf contacts might be interested in contributing financially. Nader listened to Zamel’s pitch but didn’t make any commitments, according to the Nader representative. (Zamel’s representatives denied that he spoke to Nader in St. Petersburg about trying to help Trump.)

Zamel had another opportunity to pitch his services in early August, 2016, when Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security firm, helped arrange a meeting at Trump Tower among Zamel, Nader, and Donald Trump, Jr. (Prince, whose sister Betsy DeVos became Trump’s Education Secretary, was a major Trump donor and had access to members of his team.) In the meeting, Zamel told Trump, Jr., that he supported his father’s campaign, and talked about Psy-Group’s influence operations. (Zamel’s lawyer, Marc Mukasey, played down the encounter, insisting that Zamel made no formal proposals during the meeting.)

Burstien said that his talks with the Trump campaign went nowhere; a representative for Zamel denied that his client engaged in any activity having to do with the election. But, according to the Nader representative, shortly after the election Zamel bragged to Nader that he had conducted a secret campaign that had been influential in Trump’s victory. Zamel agreed to brief Nader on how the operation had worked. During that conversation, Zamel showed Nader several analytical reports, including one that described the role of avatars, bots, fake news, and unattributed Web sites in assisting Trump. Zamel told Nader, “Here’s the work that we did to help get Trump elected,” according to the Nader representative. Nader paid Zamel more than two million dollars, but never received copies of the reports, that person said.

A representative for Zamel denied that he told Nader that he or any of his operatives had intervened to help Trump during the 2016 election. If Nader came away with that impression, the representative said, he was mistaken. “Nader may have paid Zamel not knowing when, how, or why the report was created, but he wanted to use it to gain access and new business,” the representative said. “In fact, it used publicly available material to show how social media—in general—was used in connection with the campaign.”...nyer

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jared-kushner-thinks-he-has-deal-century-middle-east-peace-it-would-have

Leaked emails from Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and appointed steward of the Israel-Palestine conflict, are shedding light on his planned “deal of the century” for peace in the Middle East. In extracts published by Foreign Policy magazine, Kushner proposes “disrupting” the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and ending the refugee status of 5m Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

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GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia

FILED UNDERCOMMENTARY AT AUG 2017 SHARE

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Ruth May, Contributor

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Editor's note: Ruth May wrote this column in August 2017. Click here for an extensive update.

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

How Putin's proxies helped funnel millions into GOP campaigns

Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump's Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.

In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.

Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lucky for them no one has noticed. Yet.

How some evangelical Christians are complicit in the cruelty of politics

Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.

Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.

Cyprus is at the center of a circle of corruption surrounding Trump

Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.

Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.

Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.

The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.

Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.

VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.

Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower.Kushner's failure to report the meeting with Gorkov has drawn the attention of the Senate intelligence committee that now wants to question Kushner about the meeting.

Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ruthcmay

CORRECTION, 12:11 p.m., August 7: The headline on an earlier version of this column incorrectly said Blavatnik is Russian. He was born in Urkraine during the Soviet era.

An earlier version of this column used the name Leonid "Len" Blavatnik. He changed his first name to Leonard.

The column has also been updated to remove language describing the online presentation of a press release about Blavatnik resigning from the RUSAL board because it lacked context.

hope. van j spks well of jard k

In a Rare Moment of Bipartisanship, the Senate Passes a Major Sentencing Reform Bill

Phillip Smith - December 20, 2018 - Drug Reporter

https://www.alternet.org/jared-kushner-was-key-player-trumps-national-enquirer-blackmail-scheme-against-msnbcs-scarborough

Kushner reportedly took part in an attempted blackmail scheme against his former friends Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law, who also serves as a senior White House adviser, took over for former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen as the main conduit between the president and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, reported The Daily Beast.

Both Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to charges filed by the special counsel and federal prosecutors, and Pecker have agreed to cooperate with investigators regarding potential wrongdoing by the president and his associates.

Pecker had hoped Cohen would continue serving Trump in the White House, but when he was left behind the American Media Inc. publisher settled on Kushner as his point person for business dealings with the president after the inauguration.

He and Kushner discussed everything from international relations to media gossip, according to four sources, and Pecker boasted to associates that he had regular contact with the senior White House adviser.

Both Pecker and Kushner forged close relationships with the Saudi royal family, and they also discussed possible dirt the Enquirer had dug up on the "Morning Joe" co-hosts.

Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed in late June 2017 that three senior Trump aides had urged them to "grovel" before the president or the tabloid would publish negative stories about them.

Brzezinski said the tabloid sent reporters to harass her family and friends as White House officials begged them to call the president to apologize.

The White House denied the MSNBC broadcasters' claims, but Trump essentially confirmed he had the ability to stop the Enquirer from publishing stories.

Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

The Daily Beast later reported that Kushner was involved in that matter, but Scarborough did not know that his friend had been in regular contact with the Enquirer's publisher.

Trump was reportedly angry that Kushner had offered in January 2017 to officiate a wedding between Scarborough and Brzezinski, who had been friends with the president but later became outspoken critics.

Shortly after the Scarborough-Brzezinski drama, Pecker visited Trump and Kushner at the White House, and Kacy Grine, a French businessman with ties to the Saudi business elite and royal family.

Scarborough said the president called him during the campaign and boasted that he was friends with Pecker, and suggested the tabloid was planting stories to attack his political enemies.

“He’d say, ‘Have you seen the Ben Carson story? Have you seen the Ben Carson story? Have you seen the story in the Enquirer,’ and then he’d talk about it,” Scarborough said.

Federal investigators are now questioning Pecker about those articles, which include payments to Trump's alleged mistresses and a story implicating Sen. Ted Cruz’s father in the Kennedy assassination, as possible campaign finance violations.

Kushner Real Estate Magnates Made Life 'Unbearable' for Rent-Controlled Tenants to Drive Them Out: Lawsuit

yikes

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jared-kushner-thinks-he-has-deal-century-middle-east-peace-it-would-have

Leaked emails from Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and appointed steward of the Israel-Palestine conflict, are shedding light on his planned “deal of the century” for peace in the Middle East. In extracts published by Foreign Policy magazine, Kushner proposes “disrupting” the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and ending the refugee status of 5m Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Although the emails have not been published in full, these snippets are highly revealing. Kushner’s move against UNRWA marks the next stage in the Trump administration’s plan. In January 2018 – the same month that Kushner sent these emails – Trump announced drastic cuts in US aid to UNRWA.

There are signs that defunding UNRWA is just the first stage of a much grander strategy; Kushner is also reportedly pressuring Jordan to strip the 2m Palestinians living there of their refugee status. But even taken on its own, dissolving the agency would have catastrophic consequences.

Out of the picture

UNRWA currently provides emergency aid, education and healthcare to the Middle East’s millions of Palestinian refugees. Many live below the poverty line, and would have little or no support if UNRWA’s services were to end, with their host states lacking the necessary resources to step in.

The impact would be political as well as humanitarian. The status of the refugees, who lost their homes in the 1948 war, has long been one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians. UNRWA’s work by definition implies international recognition of the refugees’ situation and underlines their lawful right of return.

If UNRWA were dissolved while the refugees remained stateless, that would imply that the contentious question of their future and status had been resolved. On these grounds, the Palestinian Authority has condemned the Kushner plan as an attempt to remove refugees from the equation and erase their right of return, effectively denying them any chance of future citizenship in Israel-Palestine.

On the other side, critics of UNRWA – including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – contend that the agency perpetuates the Palestinian refugee crisis by supporting the refugees in their current situation rather than helping pursue a political solution, and by promoting anti-Israeli feeling. According to this view, the agency’s dissolution would improve prospects for peace.

The reality suggests the opposite. UNRWA is a product rather than a cause of the conflict, which will continue even if the agency is abolished. Stripping millions of people of basic welfare is more likely to heighten tensions than calm them. Israel would pay a price too; as an occupying power, it is legally obliged to safeguard the basic needs of the population living in areas it controls, but since UNRWA currently alleviates some of its obligations by providing essential services to 800,000 registered refugees in the West Bank and more than 1m in Gaza, the Israeli government is under far less pressure than it could be to take primary responsibility for their welfare.

Kushner himself seems aware of the potential damage, writing in one email that the US should “risk breaking things” to get results. None of the leaked extracts includes any provision for minimising the fallout. But the US administration’s opposition to UNRWA isn’t just about the refugees it serves. This is part of a broader strategy to redraw the fundamental contours of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” as a whole.

Dismantling Oslo

For more than 20 years, this process has been operating on the framework laid out in the 1993 Oslo Accords. Oslo established terms for a five-year interim period, to be followed by a full final peace agreement. It identified seven so-called permanent status issues – including that of the refugees – to be determined as part of this final agreement.

While every previous US administration since 1993 has endorsed this framework, Trump has been steadily working to take each of the permanent status issues off the table.

First, the administration recognised Jerusalem – deemed the most important final status issue – as the unified capital of Israel. Appearing to acknowledge his strategy, Trump explicitly described the move as “taking Jerusalem off the table”. The recent opening of the new US embassy in the city dashed Palestinian hopes that East Jerusalem would serve as the capital of their future state.

According to the Oslo framework, the Palestinian refugees’ future is the second most important permanent status issue; by mooting the abolition of UNRWA, the Trump administration seems to be planning to take this one off the table too.

The evidence suggests that the administration has similar plans for the third issue: Israeli settlements. In contrast to the Obama administration’s strong condemnation of settlement activity in the West Bank, Trump has been mostly quiet on the issue. Kushner, along with ambassador David Friedman, supported Israel’s recent Nation-State Law, which promotes “Jewish settlement” as a national value.

The four remaining permanent status issues are security arrangements, borders, international relations, and common interests such as allocation of water supplies. The Trump administration’s plans for each of these remains to be seen. Yet even if they are left on the table, the elimination of Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements will leave the Palestinians – already the weaker party – exceptionally vulnerable. By gradually eliminating the permanent status issues, the Trump administration is working to severely restrict the scope of any final deal, with the aim of compelling the Palestinians to capitulate.

Anne Irfan, Teaching Fellow in Middle Eastern History, University of Sussex

This article was originally published on The Conversation

https://www.propublica.org/article/kushner-companies-loses-a-key-motion-in-class-action-filed-by-baltimore-tenants

just boast? newsweek

Johnnie Moore ?

@JohnnieM

Such an honor to pray within the Oval Office for @POTUS & @VP .

6:08 PM - Jul 11, 2017

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Johnnie Moore, a Christian businessman and activist based in California,took the photo. Moore tells Newsweek that the occasion was an impromptu “time among friends” and that evangelicals feels like they can raise their concerns at the highest level in this administration—a contrast to the situation under former President Barack Obama.

“I couldn’t get the Obama administration to do anything. They denied a visa to an Iraqi nun that was petitioned to testify in front of our Congress, and I took it all up the chain to the State Department. It was a fight every step of the way and the White House was trying to block it and it was just crazy,” says Moore, a former senior vice president for communications at Liberty University, the largest evangelical Christian college in the U.S. and the venue for a commencement speech by President Trump in May.

(The nun in question was Diana Momeka, whose visa to testify before a congressional hearing on the persecution of religious minorities by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) was initially denied by the State Department in 2015, but was later granted.)

But things have changed under Trump, he says. “It’s a totally different time now. They’re not only on our speed dial, we’re on their speed dial. In my opinion, it’s good for America,” says Moore.

Trump at Liberty

Then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers the convocation at the Vines Center on the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, on January 18, 2016.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY

Moore is a member of a board of evangelical advisers—in addition to Trump's board of Catholic advisers—first convened by Trump during the presidential campaign in June 2016. The evangelist says that members of the board are on first-name terms with many in Trump’s inner circle, including Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law.

“A number of us...communicate with Jared Kushner every other day,and, back during the campaign, he was our principal point of contact and in many ways still is,” says Moore.

With Trump in the Oval Office, evangelicals have a direct line of communication to express concerns about policy, says Moore. “We have an open relationship with the White House, we can and do express those reservations,” he says. “There’s been specific instances when things have been changed. You win some, you lose some, but we’re part of a conversation.”

Evangelical Protestants form the largest single religious demographic in the United States and, in the 2016 election, were the biggest backers of Trump among faith groups. Eighty-one percent of white evangelical (or born-again) Christians voted for Trump, according to a Pew Research Center poll released the day after the election. (The poll did not give a breakdown of evangelical votes by race, and 24 percent of U.S. evangelicals are non-white.)

Liberty University prayers

Thousands of students, supporters and invited guests sing songs of Christian praise before then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers the convocation in the Vines Center on the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia on January 18, 2016.

This support has continued throughout Trump’s first six months in office, according to Paul Djupe, an associate professor at Denison University who specializes in religion and politics. Djupe says he has collected data in recent months that shows that aside from traditional hot-button issues for evangelicals like abortion and religious liberty, the community has backed Trump through the scandals his administration has weathered. For example, evangelicals mostly supported Trump’s decision to fire ex-FBI director James Comey and do not believe that the multiple investigations into alleged collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia will uncover any wrongdoing, says Djupe.

“Evangelicals, really, from the beginning of Trump’s campaign, have been working in symbiosis with the administration. They clearly have their own interests but they are all aboard the Trump train,” says Djupe.

bannon sez money laundering russian:

putin real estate

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-why-trump-tries-so-hard-be-putins-good-side

Trump's insistence on a summit with Vladimir Putin, disregarding the advice of aides and worries of allies, is consistent with his obsession with the Russian leader. But it’s inconsistent with his pattern of choosing policies that resonate with his supporters -- there’s no indication that Trump's followers condone this bromance.

So why does Trump pander to Putin?He won’t criticize him and incessantly flatters and coddles him. He has winked at the annexation of Crimea, threatened NATO, suggested that the G7 should readmit Russia, and done nothing to prevent Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

Many fear Trump will hand Putin unwarranted concessions, like unraveling U.S. sanctions against Russia. Trump was always soft on them anyway. After Russia requested a secretary of state who favored lifting them, Trump obliged, appointing Rex Tillerson instead of Mitt Romney. When Congress enacted sanctions on 15 Russian entities and individuals in 2017, Trump delayed implementing them for seven months and reversed a decision to impose more. What could be motivating Trump's largesse toward Russia? It's hard to argue that it's what’s best for America. A pattern of reported facts suggest it could be personal financial gain.

Throughout the 2000s, Russians bought many apartments in Trump Tower and $100 million worth of Trump properties in Florida. But these sales dropped precipitously in 2014 after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs for the Crimean incursion. Lifting sanctions would likely restore these sales, and the profits would flow through a trust run by Trump's sons, with the president as sole beneficiary. Indeed, Trump admitted that he’d “be looking at” lifting them.

Trump has many business aspirations in Russia that Putin can make or break. In 1986, Trump met with the Soviet ambassador about building a luxury hotel in Moscow, and announced a potential Trump International complex there. At the 2008 Russian Real Estate Summit, Trump touted plans for condos and hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi. In 2011, he licensed his name to an aborted Azerbaijan hotel for $1 million and promoted a Trump Tower in Kazakhstan. Even as he campaigned for the Republican nomination, Trump signed a letter of intent to build Trump Tower in Moscow.

Trump’s business depends heavily on Russian money. Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that “Russians make up a … disproportionate cross-section of … our assets,” and later added, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Eric Trump told a journalist, “We don’t rely on American banks; we have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (He later denied saying that.)

In 2008, Deutsche Bank’s real estate group stopped lending to Trump after he defaulted on a $330 million loan. Inexplicably, he subsequently borrowed $75 million from another DB group. European and American regulators punished DB for laundering billions from Moscow.It’s not a huge leap to suspect that Trump’s DB money came from Russia.

The blackmail potential in all these financial shenanigans is abundant. Implicating Trump in almost any of these schemes could expose him to charges of money laundering and bank fraud.Since Trump’s nomination, 70 percent of Trump sales were tolimited liability companies frequently used by Russians to hide their identity, stow cash and, most likely, violate U.S. sanctions.Hundreds of millions of dollars from unidentified sources funded Trump’s unprofitable golf courses in Ireland and Scotland. Testimony before Congress suggests they were used to launder money for the Russian mafia. Steve Bannon told Michael Wolff, in speaking of White House corruption: “This is about money laundering … the path to …Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Junior and Jared Kushner.”

“America first” ideology has actually put Russia first. Leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Agreement lost America international forums where it communicated, led and influenced. Cutting the State Department’s budget and foreign aid weakened America’s global clout and allowed Putin to expand Russia's sphere of influence.

Trump’s threat to cut aid to Central America damaged trust in the U.S. Now Putin is providing aid there, reopening military bases and building a satellite-tracking station that could spy on the U.S. Trump’s rejection of Obama’s soft Cuba policy may result in a repeat of Cuba’s pivot to Russia after Dwight Eisenhower rejected Cuban efforts for diplomatic and trade ties. Trump’s trade tariffs and insults of EU and Canadian leaders threatens relationships with our closest allies. His escalating criticism of NATO make some worry the United States might actually leave the alliance – the ultimate gift to Putin.

Congressional Republicans are muting their nervousness about Trump giving away the store, settling for bromides about how there's nothing wrong with just talking to Russia. It's hard to imagine how talking under these conditions will serve America's interest, but on the other hand, we may finally see Trump Tower built in Moscow. In keeping his stakes in 500 foreign businesses -- no other president had any – Trump has unprecedented cause to tailor foreign policy for personal gain. He promised to “drain the swamp,” but there are more reptiles in it than ever, and many speak Russian

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/kim-kardashian-donald-trump-alice-johnson-pardon

C.F.D.A. was onto something when they gave Kim Kardashian the Influencer Award on Monday. On Wednesday, Donald Trumpannounced that he would be granting clemency to Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who has been serving a life sentence for a one-time nonviolent drug charge since 1996. The news comes less than a week after Kardashian met with Trump to discuss prison reform and the possibility of Johnson’s release.

“Ms. Johnson has accepted responsibility for her past behavior and has been a model prisoner over the past two decades,” the White House said in a statement on Wednesday. “While this Administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance.”

Kardashian thanked Trump and Jared Kushner on Twitter after the news broke, writing, “So grateful to @realDonaldTrump, Jared Kushner & to everyone who has showed compassion & contributed countless hours to this important moment for Ms. Alice Marie Johnson. Her commutation is inspirational & gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chanceshe added: “I hope to continue this important work by working together with organizations who have been fighting this fight for much longer than I have and deserve the recognition.”

Kardashian had been in talks with Kushner after learning about Johnson’s case in October via a video posted by Mic. In November, she hired a team of lawyers to bring the case to the White House. After meeting with Trump last week, Kardashian told Mic that he “really spent the time to listen to our case that we were making for Alice. He really understood, and I am very hopeful that this will turn out really positively.”

Kardashian later called Johnson to share the news with her.

“The phone call I just had with Alice will forever be one of my best memories,” she tweeted. “Telling her for the first time and hearing her screams while crying together is a moment I will never forget.”

...

hile Kanye West doubles down on his recent (and bad) opinion on slavery, Kim Kardashian is finding her own cause to champion: working to pardon a 62-year-old woman serving a life sentence over a nonviolent drug offense. According to Mic, Kardashian has already spoken with Jared Kushner on behalf of Alice Marie Johnson, who had spent 21 years in prison as of October 2017. That same month, Kardashian shared a Mic video on Johnson to her Twitter page writing, “This is so unfair . . .”

Kardashian’s team confirmed to Mic that she has been in touch “with the White House and is working to bring Johnson’s case to the president’s desk” in order to arrange a presidential pardon or clemency. In November, she hired a team of lawyers including Shawn Holley, known for her work with celebrity clients including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Snoop Dogg.

Kushner has been an unlikely proponent of criminal-justice reform, putting him at odds with Attorney General Jeff Sessions who has been vocal about his tough-on-crime approach. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have hosted dinners, inviting both Democrats and Republicans to discuss the cause, and they support a bill that would lighten sentences for nonviolent offenses and promote education, drug rehabilitation, and work training inside of prisons.

...

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-corrupt-financial-web-links-trump-and-kennedy-families

...Because Trump cares so much about money, that’s been suggested. And there’s smoke:the links between Trump, Kennedy and Kennedy’s son Justin. In years past we’d call that the League of White Men, taking care of their own, behind the scenes, The Way It Is. Today we tend to call it something else: collusion.

Here’s why. On the surface, Kennedy’s resignation looked textbook: He’ll leave effective July 31, at the end of the Supreme Court term, as is traditional. But he announced it on June 27. Hand-delivering his letter to the Oval Office was no surprise to the White House, which had a list of candidates ready to roll out. Trump says he’ll announce his nominee on July 9.

Why the rush?

If Kennedy had waited a few weeks, some analysts believe Trump couldn’t have gotten his successor approved before the midterm elections. If the Democrats did well in November, it’s at least conceivable they could have blocked any conservative nominee. Approving a nominee before November means our likely future has the court killing Roe v. Wade, giving more power to corporations, turning the poor and minorities into serfs, exiling or detaining Others the president might choose to torture. That’s huge. But let’s consider the bottom line: For Donald Trump, the only real issue of interest is… himself. If a 4-4 Court had to rule on a difficult question -- Does the president have the power to pardon himself? -- it might not go well for Trump.

What started the speculation about dirty money connecting Trump, Kennedy and his son is the revelation that Kennedy and Trump have had a longstanding relationship through their children and their children’s success. We knew about Trump’s dealings withDeutsche Bank, the only bank willing to do business with him. (It’s also, perhaps not coincidentally, the bank that seems to have the longest illegal relationship with laundered Russian money.In January 2017, it was fined $425 million by New York regulators to settle allegations that it helped Russian investors launder as much as $10 billion through its branches in Moscow, New York and London.) But we’re just finding out about the Trump relationship with Justin Kennedy, the justice’s son, who worked at Deutsche Bank for a decade.

Kennedy is bookish and abstract, while Mr. Trump is earthy and direct. But they had a connection, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Congress in February 2017. As he made his way out of the chamber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the justice.Media speculation about Trump’s surprising relationship with Justice Kennedy started with the New York Times:

“Say hello to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Special guy.”

Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.

During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.

There’s more. New York is a set of villages. The Trumps and Kennedys live in the same one. As C’Zar Bernstein and Gabe Rusk wrote in a little-noticed March 2017 article:

-- At the invitation of Justice Kennedy, Donald Trump’s daughter and former businesswoman Ivanka Trump visited the High Court with her daughter to attend a Supreme Court argument.

-- According to reports, Kennedy and Ivanka had met at the congressional lunch after the inauguration.

But as Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC has reported, Justin Kennedy left Deutsche Bank long before the money laundering and had no direct connection to the bank's loans to Trump. The more interesting fact is where Justin Kennedy went next -- he became the co-CEO of LNR Property. And that brings us straight to the most immediately vulnerable member of the Trump family, Jared Kushner.

From the New York Times, in 2012:

The Kushners' purchase in 2007 of 666 Fifth Avenue for a record price of $1.8 billion is considered a classic example of reckless underwriting. The transaction was so highly leveraged that the cash flow from rents amounted to only 65 percent of the debt service.

As many real estate specialists predicted, the deal ran into trouble. Instead of rising, rents declined as the recession took hold, and new leases were scarce. In 2010, the loan was transferred to a special servicer on the assumption that a default would occur once reserve funds being used to subsidize the shortfall were bled dry.

Instead of foreclosingon the 39-story building, which stretches from 52nd Street to 53rd Street, the lenders agreed last month to reduce the principal and defer some of the interest payments on the interest-only loan and extend its maturity for two years, until February 2019.

Vornado has taken an ownership stake in several troubled Manhattan properties. But the 666 Fifth deal raised some eyebrows because Vornado is also a part-owner of the special servicer on the loan, LNR Partners, of Miami Beach.

The plot thickens. As Bernstein and Rusk note:

-- There was a direct business relationship between LNR and Kushner Companies at the time Justin Kennedy and Jared Kushner were both CEOs. Even the future President was aware of the deal and commented on its respective merits.

-- In 2011, the year in which some of these negotiations took place, Justin Kennedy for the first time was ranked on the New York Observer’s 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate at #36. Donald Trump clocked in at #12. At that time, The New York Observer was owned by Jared Kushner.

The 666 Fifth Avenue deal is generally regarded as the all-time stinker in New York commercial real estate. What did LNR see as the upside? Better question: Was there any upside? As we know, 666 Fifth Avenue went badly for the Kushners, so badly that they were scrambling for a partner. Where might one be?

The Intercept reported earlier this year that Charles Kushner, Jared's father, had discussed a financing deal for 666 Fifth Avenue with Qatarifinance minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi in April 2017. A month after that deal cratered, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Jared Kushner’s backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. NBC News reported that Qatari government officials visiting the U.S. “considered turning over to Mueller what they believe is evidence of efforts by their country’s Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country.”

Back in March 2017, when Bernstein and Rusk published their Medium article, they ended on a hopeful note:

We know what the Justice’s son may have done for Mr. Kushner, but what did the President’s children do for Justin Kennedy? How have they been nice to him? Evidently Justice Kennedy knows, and this may have had an impact on his opinion of the Trumps in general and the President in particular. This is perhaps a significant cause of concern for those who hope that Justice Kennedy will try and hold out until after Trump is replaced by a Democrat. Time will tell.

Well, time has told. Kennedy didn’t hold out. Although there’s clearly more to this story than an 81-year-old justice who was ready to retire, I’m thinking Anthony Kennedy’s farewell gift to Trump isn’t just right-wing control of the Supreme Court for the rest of most of our lives. For once, it may not be about the money. The real prize here may be a gold-plated Get Out of Jail Free card.

...relevant part:

According the New York Times, in 2007 Kushner Companies purchased “an aluminum-clad office tower in Midtown Manhattan, for a record price of $1.8 billion.” At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was “considered a classic example of reckless underwriting. The transaction was so highly leveraged that the cash flow from rents amounted to only 65 percent of the debt service.” The Times continues:

Don't let big tech control what news you see. Get more stories like this in your inbox, every day.

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“As many real estate specialists predicted, the deal ran into trouble. Instead of rising, rents declined as the recession took hold, and new leases were scarce. In 2010, the loan was transferred to a special servicer on the assumption that a default would occur once reserve funds being used to subsidize the shortfall were bled dry. But the story may yet have a happy ending for Kushner, a family-owned business that moved its headquarters from Florham Park, N.J., to 666 Fifth, its first major acquisition in Manhattan.”

Who came to the rescue? None other than LNR Property, the company whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. According to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kushner and LNR “reached a possible agreement with LNR Property, a firm specializing in restructuring troubled debt and which oversees the mortgage, that would allow him to retain control of the tower by modifying the terms of the $1.2 billion mortgage tied to the office portion of the building.” A spokesman for Mr. Kushner told the Wall Street Journal in March of 2011 that “[t]he Kushner’s are ready and willing to invest more money into the property as soon as they can come to mutually satisfactory terms with the servicing agent.” In that same article Kushner’s father-in-law and the future President commented on the negotiations with Justin Kennedy’s company. Speaking about the deal, Trump told the WSJ that Kushner is “a very smart young man…I think it (loan renegotiations) will come out well for him and everybody.” At this point there is no doubt that there was a direct business relationship between LNR and Kushner Companies at the time Justin Kennedy and Jared Kushner were both CEO. Even the future President was aware of the deal and commented on its respective merits. (That being said, it is not impossible that Jared Kushner and Justin Kennedy did not meet in connection with the specific deal in question; however, given the stakes involved it does seem more than likely that the two CEO’s would have interacted as negotiations were being conducted.)

So Kennedy’s son bailed out Jared on the Antichrist property, and also Trump himself while he was at Deutschbank.

In re — this exchange after last year’s SOTU address….

(Justice) Kennedy: [Inaudible]

Report Advertisement

Trump: Very nice, thank you, and coming from you. And say hello to your boy. Special guy.

Kennedy: Your kids have been very nice to him.

Trump: Well, they love him and they love him in New York. He’s a great guy. (Pointing to Chief Justice Roberts) Good swearing-in. You’ve got a good guy.

[Link to video. Readers can listen for themselves at 5:15 remaining]

We know how Kennedy’s son was nice to Trump and ...

https://www.alternet.org/white-house-edits-transcript-jared-kushner-calling-protestors-gaza-part-problem

mojo nra

May 2016: In an email to Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn, with the subject line “Kremlin Connection,”Erickson says Russia is “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and proposes using the NRA convention to set up “first contact” with the Trump team. According to a New York Times report, Erickson writes that he’s in a position to “slowly begin cultivating a back-channel to President Putin’s Kremlin.” The email doesn’t name Torshin but appears to reference him as “President Putin’s emissary” who planned to attend a dinner hosted by conservative Christian activist Rick Clay. Meanwhile, Clay sends an email to Dearborn with the subject line “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite,” seeking a meeting between Trump and Torshin. Dearborn forwards Clay’s email to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner,whoreportedly nixes the proposal.

jared pal (po'd qattar did not fund real estate, dad sez wd refuse $

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/22/reformer_or_war_criminal_saudi_crown

President Trump met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House, where the two leaders finalized a $12.5 billion weapons deal. This comes less than a year after Trump announced a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis. During the meeting, Trump held up posters of recent Saudi weapon purchases from the United States and said, “We make the best equipment in the world.” Human rights groups warn the massive arms deal may make the United States complicit in war crimes committed in the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. We speak with Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan and Medea Benjamin of CodePink.

...

dad charlie fire comey to keep fbi out of money laundering?

https://www.alternet.org/environment/how-chilean-billionaire-could-poison-minnesota-wilderness

12/17

bannon on ropes w/ moore loss thus desperate? cf prop/spin --> deflection /chaos theory of chomsky et al:

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/steve-bannon-savages-javanka-laying-bare-white-house-tensions

guard uk reporter:

Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner are under fresh scrutiny over their influence at the White House after a very public eruption of their feud with former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

In a gloves-off interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Bannon laid bare the mutual enmity with the senior advisers to the president, one of the worst-kept secrets of the Trump administration.

“The railhead of all bad decisions is the same railhead: Javanka,” he said, using a nickname that conflates the couple.

Bannon, who returned to rightwing site Breitbart News after being forced out of the White House in August, recalled an Oval Office meeting in which he accused Ivanka of being “the queen of leaks”. The first daughter allegedly retorted: “You’re a fucking liar!”

He also condemned Ivanka over her handling of the recent US Senate special election in Alabama, where Republican candidate Roy Moore denied accusations of sexual misconduct with teenagers. Ivanka said pointedly during the campaign: “There is a special place in hell for people who prey on children.”

Bannon, who supported Moore despite the allegations only to see him lose the Republican heartland to a Democrat, responded in the Vanity Fair interview: “What about the allegations about her dad and that 13-year-old?” – a reference to an unproven allegation from a California woman that Trump raped her as a teenager (last year the woman dropped a lawsuit making the claim). Trump has facedmultiple claims of sexual misconduct and denies all of them.

Bannon added to Vanity Fair: “Ivanka was a fount of bad advice during the campaign.”

As for Kushner, Bannon made little attempt to disguise his contempt. “He doesn’t know anything about the hobbits or the deplorables” – using two ironic terms for Trump supporters.

It wasKushnerwho reportedly encouraged the president to fire FBI director James Comey, a move that could come back to haunt him during the investigation into alleged collusion with Russia in the election campaign. Bannon said: “It’s the dumbest political decision in modern political history, bar none. A self-inflicted wound of massive proportions.”

There was never much love lost between Bannon and “Javanka” as, like medieval courtiers, they competed for the ear of the president. Bannon, 64, has an unkempt appearance – one congressman recently remarked that he looks like a “disheveled drunk” – and grew up in a working-class, Irish Catholic family in Virginia. He embodies Trump’s instincts of insurgent nationalism and anti-globalisation and has been accused of stoking antisemitism, which he denies.

Kushner is Jewish and, at 36, from a different generation, with a clean-cut smartness that contrasts with Bannon’s scruffiness. The scion of a New York property empire, he was previously a Democratic donor who mingled with the wealthy east coast elites that Bannon despises. Ivanka, also 36, also belongs to the “New York faction” and is seen as the favourite of Trump’s five children.

Liberal observers had expressed a hope that “Javanka” would tame Trump’s wilder impulses but there have been constant disappointments. The president’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate deal was a notable victory for Bannon.

Rick Tyler, a Republican analyst and co-founder of consulting firm Foundry Strategies, said: “These things are very difficult when family is involved with any elected official. They have a different relationship with the principal and it’s very difficult to work around if there’s a problem.

Ivanka came under fire this week after promoting Republicans’ sweeping tax reform, her father’s first major legislative achievement. During a sycophantic interview by Fox News, which praised her for securing an increase in the child tax credit, she claimed: “I’m really looking forward to doing a lot of traveling in April when people realise the effect that this has … The vast majority will be [doing their taxes] on a single postcard.” Critics were quick to point out the postcard was a publicity stunt and a promise that has not been kept.“I don’t know what Jared and Ivanka bring to the administration. Some said they were going to moderate the president and keep him presidential but there’s not much evidence of that. I think a lot of advice they provided to the president has not been good.”

A headline in the Washington Post read: “Once again, Ivanka Trump shows off her cluelessness.” Columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote: “She’s a walking advertisement for the danger of nepotism, an exemplar of class privilege and a perfect representative for Republican know-nothingism. She was supposed to be the brains of the family and the moral ballast; instead, she’s a self-righteous enabler.”

Kushner, meanwhile, appears to be in retreat. Once ubiquitous, his public appearances have declined. It has been widely reported that his gigantic portfolio has shrunk and his influence is on the wane, raising questions over how long “Javanka” will remain in Washington.

This may in part be because of speculation that he will be the next big fish caught in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddlingin last year’s presidential election. There has been a steady drip of revelations about his part in the intrigue. Kushner was also forced to apologise in July for filing incomplete security clearance forms. He has denied any kind of collusion with Russia.

Also, according to media reports, Kushner was key to Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that earned considerable international blowback. This week the UN general assembly voted by a huge majority to reject America’s stance.

Tyler, former campaign spokesman for Republican Ted Cruz, added: “Jared has shrunken from the spotlight. He seemed to be seen in every photo and was keenly aware of where the photographers were and what type of lens they were using. But we never heard from him and, when we did, it wasn’t terribly impressive.

“Usually when we put people in positions of great responsibility and authority we have knowledge of their commensurate qualifications and experience; with Jared we know of none.”

gabe s

Kushner has tapped his network in an attempt to help his father-in-law. He reached out to hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singerto introduce him to Trump (Singer declined), and during Trump’s feud with Fox, he called Rupert Murdoch to try to make peace (Murdoch told him to deal directly with Roger Ailes). But this is where Kushner’s involvement makes for the strangest of bedfellows. One of Trump’s most prominent endorsers, Chris Christie, happens to be the man who, as U.S. attorney, sent Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, to federal prison for tax fraud, among other felonies, in 2004.

https://www.alternet.org/kushner-may-drive-out-white-house-counsel-don-mcgahn-who-ready-resign

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jared-kushners-data-operation-increasingly-suspected-aiding-2016-russian

news regarding Russia’s use of social media platforms to push propaganda and inject false narratives in the U.S. conversation around the 2016 election is now a documented fact but it has been an open question as to howRussia’s so-called “troll farms” knew how to target their ad buys.

According to a Friday report in *Vanity Fair* by Chris Smith, investigators increasingly suspect that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner helped guide Russian operatives to their targets.

“Mapping the full Russian propaganda effort is important,” said Smith. “Yet investigators in the House, Senate, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office are equally focused on a more explosive question: did any Americans help target the memes and fake news to crucial swing districts and wavering voter demographics?”

One of Smith’s sources close to the investigations quipped, “By Americans, you mean, like, the Trump campaign?”

Rachel Maddow raised the possibility last week that Kushner and data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica may have been providing Russian intelligence operatives with up-to-the-instant polling data and micro-targeting data for ad buys.

“There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” said the MSNBC host.

It’s unclear where Cambridge Analytica entered the picture, Smith noted, but the company is heavily funded by billionaire Republican power donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the shadowy team who have poured millions into ultra-conservative causes and media organizations.

The Mercers are credited with helping turn the Trump campaign around in the eleventh hour by bringing in media mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway and now-ousted chief strategist Steve Bannon.

House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) has said in the past, “I think the Russians had help” from inside the U.S. in its efforts. “I’ve always wondered if Cambridge Analytica was part of that.”

“No evidence has emerged to link Kushner, Cambridge Analytica, or Manafort to the Russian election-meddling enterprise; all have denied colluding with foreign agents,” Smith said. “Yet analysts scoff at the notion that the Russians figured out how to target African-Americans and women in decisive precincts in Wisconsin and Michigan all by themselves.”

“Could they have hired a warehouse full of people in Moscow and had them read Nate Silver’s blog every morning and determine what messages to post to what demographics? Sure, theoretically that’s possible,” said former defense official under the Obama administration Mike Carpenter. “But that’s not how they do this. And it’s not surprising that it took Facebook this long to figure out the ad buys. The Russians are excellent at covering their tracks. They’ll subcontract people in Macedonia or Albania or Cyprus and pay them via the dark Web. They always use locals to craft the campaign appropriately. My only question about 2016 is who exactly was helping them here.”

dn joshua green

, the Mercers were big backers of Trump. They were originally behind Cruz, but once he fell, they got behind Trump right away, in a way that a lot of other wealthy Republicans were loath to do, giving him money, setting up a super PAC. But Rebekah Mercer, the daughter, who is very aggressive in getting involved in the candidates and causes she backs—I have a scene in the book where she flies out to a Trump fundraiser in Long Island, demands a meeting with Trump—and you can do that if you’ve given him millions and millions of dollars, as the Mercers have—and says, "Look, you’re losing. You’re going to lose this election unless you make a change." And Trump says, "Well, yeah, things aren’t going real well, but..." And she says, "No, you’re losing. And the only way you’re going to win is if you have a radical change. I have a team of people that I think ought to take over your campaign"—Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and, later, David Bossie, all of them veteran [ANTI-]Clinton activists. And Trump, who was frustrated with his current campaign manager, Paul Manafort, agrees and says, "OK, let’s put them in charge. We need somebody who can hit harder."

Bannon is this famously aggressive Breitbart News publisher who would not be held back, has the same instincts as Trump. And people didn’t know it at the time, but Trump had known Bannon for a long time. And lo and behold, we wake up, I think on a Wednesday morning, to this announcement that Steve Bannon, despised by just about everybody in Washington, is now in charge of Trump’s presidential campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: And Paul Manafort is out, something he was resisting, and Jared Kushner played a role in that.

JOSHUA GREEN: Well, it’s funny. Paul Manafort wasn’t out, originally. And what Trump did was he hired Bannon, I think on a Sunday night, without telling Paul Manafort or anybody else. And there’s a scene in the book, where it’s on a Sunday, and Trump tells Bannon, "OK, you’re in. Drive out to my country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, tomorrow. We’re going to have a senior staff meeting," with Giuliani and Chris Christie and Manafort and all the kind of campaign brain trust. Kushner actually wasn’t there, because he was off yachting in Croatia with David Geffen, so he wasn’t present for that meeting. But at the meeting, Manafort, who still thinks he’s in charge of the campaign, walks into a room and sees Steve Bannon there. And Bannon says, "Hey, I’m kind of joining the campaign."

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/21/has_jared_kushners_failed_deal_with

Qattar feud?

dad bought way into university? prosecuted by chris christie:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/10/award_winning_journalist_amy_wilentz_on

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is, along with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., at the center of a shocking New York Times story published Sunday. According to the article,Kushner, Trump Jr. and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer during the 2016 campaign after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton at Trump Tower two weeks after Trump won the Republican nomination. Kushner is one of Trump’s senior advisers who has assumed a major diplomatic role in the administration, despite having no previous diplomatic experience. We speak to Amy Wilentz, a contributor at The Nation.

LAT

Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and then-campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to be the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the president and a Russian.

Representatives of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner confirmed the June 2016 meeting to the Associated Press after the New York Times reported Saturday on the gathering of the men and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended, according to the statement from Donald Trump Jr.

He described it as a “short introductory meeting” during which the three discussed a disbanded program that used to allow U.S. citizens to adopt Russian children. Russia ended the adoptions in response to American sanctions brought against the nation following the 2009 death of an imprisoned lawyer who spoke about a corruption scandal. Trump Jr. said he invited the other two Americans, was asked to attend by an acquaintance not named in the statement and was not told beforehand with whom he would meet.

“It was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up,” he said.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jared-kushner-built-luxury-condos-using-real-estate-grants-earmarked-poor

fovored paris?

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-keeps-giving-kushner-jobs

...

And this tired old GOP mantra about running government like a business is like saying that you should build boats like you wash dishes. They are completely different tasks. And Kushner is a particularly poor choice, even if you buy the argument. As Maloy pointed out, Kushner is a lot like his father-in-law in that he inherited his father’s New Jersey real estate business and, well, that’s about it.

Actually, after Chris Christie put Kushner’s father in jail for corruption (it’s a long story), Jared took the reins of the business and jumped into Manhattan real estate where he is known for one very big deal. Unfortunately, also like his father-in-law, it turns out Kushner is not very good at what he does. Kushner sold his stake in that project to his family recently, ostensibly to avoid a conflict of interest. It was actually a smart business decision because the building’s finances are in big trouble at the moment. The Kushners may receive a bailout from a powerful Chinese insurance company. So it’s a good thing that we’ve decided that Republicans enriching their immediate family while in office isn’t corruption — or that might look bad.

Kushner’s new job is just an addition to his already bulging portfolio. Recall that a while back he was given the special task of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue. One might assume he’s even less qualified for that job than he is for heading up a “SWAT team” of business leaders, but apparently being an observant Jew is all that’s required. It’s surprising that nobody ever thought of that before.

On Monday we found out from White House press secretary Sean Spicer that “throughout the campaign and the transition, Jared served as the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials until we had State Department officials up.” That’s correct: This 36-year-old with no experience in government or foreign affairs served as the new president’s primary contact with foreign governments. Apparently, no one who knew what he (or she) was doing was available.

This important task seems to have landed young Kushner into a spot of trouble, however. We also learned on Monday that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign, has asked to speak to Kushner about his meeting during the transition with the Russian ambassador. Apparently there was more than one, including a meeting previously unacknowledged by the Trump administration with a Russian banker named Sergey N. Gorkov, head of the state-owned development bank Vnesheconombank, which just happens to be one of the Russian banks facing U.S. sanctions. (Gorkov is reportedly close to Vladimir Putin and graduated from what was formerly the KGB academy.)...

In January, for instance, Vice President Mike Pence placed a courtesy call to the billionaire megadonor Charles Kochto ask about hiring a speechwriter who had worked in the advocacy network spearheaded by Koch and his brother David. The Kochs and Trump had traded barbs throughout the presidential campaign, with Trump suggesting his rivals were “puppets” of the billionaire brothers. Charles Koch, in turn, compared the choice between Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to being asked to choose cancer or a heart attack. His network sat on the sidelines of the presidential race.

Yet Trump’s influential son-in-law Jared Kushner, a top White House adviser who has served as an unofficial liaison to the GOP’s elite donors, reached out to the Koch network during the campaign to set up a meeting, said sources familiar with the call.

White House Power Player Jared Kushner Is Keeping Parts of His Real Estate Empire

by Justin Elliott and Al Shaw

Given Kushner’s vast portfolio as an adviser to the president, it’s not clear how he’s going to avoid issues that could affect his bank account. The Trump administration has declined to give details.

http://www.ecowatch.com/paris-agreement-ivanka-trump-2282312392.html

...According to the Wall Street Journal's multiple sources, the upcoming executive order targeting Obama-era climate regulations now excludes any mention of the deal due to the Kushners' intervention.

Saving—or killing—the agreement has been front-of-mind for many interested parties recently: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Sec. Patricia Espinosa told reporters she is hoping to meet with Rex Tillerson to discuss the deal while she visits Washington next week, while a coalition of 300 high-profile climate change deniers sent a letter to Trump Thursday asking him to pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change entirely.

Tillerson's successor at ExxonMobil, meanwhile, praised the 2015 agreement—and the carbon tax plan rolled out by GOP luminaries earlier this month—in a blog post published Thursday.

...

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/2/the_de_judification_of_the_holocaust

Prominent white supremacist and Donald Trump supporter Richard Spencer has praised Trump for not mentioning in a statement commemorating International Holocaust Memorial Day the 6 million Jews killed. Trump has faced widespread criticism for the omission, but the administration has repeatedly defended the statement. Sen. Tim Kaine went as far as calling it a form of "Holocaust denial." Spencer, however, praised the statement as the "de-Judification" of the Holocaust. We speak to Andrea Pitzer, author of the forthcoming book, "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps." It looks at mass civilian detention without trial from 1896 to today.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/2/lizzy_ratner_nobody_wanted_to_take

As attorneys and activists continue to fight Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, a new article takes a sweeping look at history to find what it portends. Perhaps more fascinating is that the story involves the family of one of the senior-most members of the Trump administration. In "Nobody Wanted to Take Us In: The Story of Jared Kushner’s Family, and Mine," Nation magazine senior editor Lizzy Ratner looks at the journey of both her family and that of Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump. Both Ratner’s and Kushner’s grandparents came to the United States as Jewish immigrants from Poland, as the German occupation was ramping up and U.S. borders were closing down. We speak to Lizzy and play video clips of Jared’s grandmother, Rae Kushner.

...When I was researching the 1920s and these 1920 anti-immigrant acts that had such gruesome consequences for people, I was struck by the parallels in language. So, you had Jewish people referred to as "physically deficient," "abnormally twisted," "un-American," "filthy," "a peril to this country," sort of a danger in all sorts of ways. Jews were conceived as both a threat to the economy, but also a threat to national security. The idea was that Jews who came from Eastern Europe, which was sort of a hotbed of Bolshevism and radicalism, would come here, turn our country red from the inside out and destroy it. We hear the same or really parallel rhetoric today being thrown against Muslims, people from Muslim countries, who are being sort of described as a threat to our society, a fifth column, Trojan horse. I mean, Donald Trump used the term "Trojan horse." You could have heard that applied against Jews in the 1920s and the 1940s. And I think we can say, you know, horrible things happened to people. Horrible things were visited on immigrants and desperate refugees who wanted to come here.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Rae Kushner in this interview she did in the Kean University of New Jersey’s Holocaust Research Center.

RAE KUSHNER: Let’s hope it’s not going to happen again. But it can happen, if you don’t watch who comes up. When I came to Washington, the Nazis are going with the swastikas in front of the White House. And they’re going on free. And this scares us. This is very painful.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/2/lizzy_ratner_nobody_wanted_to_take

After the 2016 presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump is coalescing a network of supportive right-wing media outlets, including an online publication owned by his son-in-law, a supermarket tabloid, and a new 24-hour news outlet that has been described as “Trump TV.” Since the primaries, these right-wing media outlets have helped push Trump's agenda and have attacked his political opponents.

The New York Observer

CONNECTION: OWNED BY JARED KUSHNER, TRUMP’S SON-IN-LAW

The Observeris a news site owned by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Under Kushner’s leadership the Observer has been an unabashed pro-Trump megaphone. The paper was one of only three national papers to endorse him during the primary election. The outlet’s close relationship with Trump forced their national political reporter, Ross Barkan, to resign because he felt “a line had been crossed” with both the endorsement and their editor-in-chief’s secret involvement with the campaign.

Since Trump’s victory, the Observerhas moved toward becoming a propaganda outlet for the incoming administration. On December 2, the Observer published an op-ed from University of Texas-Austin adjunct professor Austin Bay calling for the FBI to conduct a “detailed investigation” into the “political thuggery” of anti-Trump protests after the election.

The Observeralso recently argued for the release of Julian Assange. Assange’s organization, WikiLeaks, released -- with the probable assistance of the Russian government -- wave after wave of mundane emails stolen from Democratic politicians and operatives, which were endlessly spun by right-wing media into increasingly bizarre, and dangerous misinformation.

Right Side Broadcasting Network

CONNECTION: HELPED TRUMP WITH PRE- AND POST-DEBATE SPIN; CEO SAID “TRUMP BUILT RSBN”

Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) is a relatively new “news” network that announced on December 6 that it would “become a 24-hour network very soon” and it would be “in the White House” and “at the press briefings” during the Trump presidency. According to Foreign Policy magazine, there are several steps a news outlet must go through to get White House press credentials, but the president can evade those by simply inviting the outlet to attend and allowing them to ask friendly questions, as President George W. Bush allowed a conservative reporter to do during his administration.

RSBN developed such a close relationship with Trump during the primary and general elections that The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers has described them as “the unofficial version of Trump TV” since last summer. Borchers reported that the Trump campaign had “teamed up with Right Side to produce pre- and post-debate analysis shows that streamed on Trump’s Facebook Page.” Right Side Broadcasting CEO Joe Seales hosted an “ask me anything” session on Reddit in which he told pro-Trump redditors that “Trump built RSBN” and they should “continue to discredit” mainstream media and instead tune into “media outlets like us and the other conservative sources like Breitbart.”

The National Enquirer

CONNECTION: OWNED BY DAVID PECKER, TRUMP’S LONG-TIME FRIEND

The National Enquirer is owned by David Pecker, Trump’s close friend, and was, along with his son-in-law’s paper and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, the only other national outlet to endorse Trump. New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that while Trump’s “scandal-filled personal life would be yuge! for the supermarket tabloid,” he has been “exclusively celebrated in the Enquirer’s pages.” Trump himself has even written op-eds exclusively for the Enquirer, where he explained “I am the only one who can make America great again!”

The National Enquirer also undertook a strange and savage campaign against Trump’s electoral opponents. With thin sourcing, often only from noted liar/Trump supporter Roger Stone, the Enquirer alleged that Jeb Bush celebrated his father’s presidential win with a cocaine binge, that Hillary and Chelsea Clinton “covered up Bill’s cocaine rehab,” and that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had affairs with multiple women. Their most outrageous pro-Trump lie was that Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Enquirer made this claim based on one blurry photograph, but that did not stop Trump from touring cable news shows to hype the absurd smear.

Breitbart News

CONNECTION: OPERATED BY TRUMP’S CHIEF STRATEGIST, STEVE BANNON, WHO DESCRIBED THE SITE AS THE “PLATFORM FOR THE ALT-RIGHT,” WHICH INCLUDES WHITE SUPREMACY

Breitbart.com was founded by Andrew Breitbart along with Trump’s current chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who in 2014 described Breitbart as the “platform for the alt-right,” a term commonly used to describe people who embrace white nationalism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism. Breitbart News is infamous for headlines like “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,” “Young Muslims In The West Are A Ticking Time Bomb,” and “After The Pulse Club Massacre, It’s Time For Gays To Come Home To The Republican Party.” Breitbart even undertook campaigns of online harassment directed at Facebook’s trending news team for their perceived “bias;” these campaigns were directed by Milo Yiannopoulos, who was permanently banned from Twitter for leading a harassment campaign against Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones.

During the 2016 election, reporters and even former Breitbart employees repeatedly criticized the site for attempting a “rebranding of white supremacy … through Trump.” Former Breitbart writer Ben Shapiro accused the site of embracing “a movement shot through with racism and anti-Semitism,” and his former colleague Kurt Bardella similarly labeled Bannon a “dangerous” and “combative” “pathological liar.” Bardella resigned from Breitbart on March 11 when Trump’s then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a Trump event. Rather than defending their Fields, a Breitbart employee hurriedly worked to “make sure that [the incident] doesn’t turn into a big story.”

Infowars And The Alex Jones Show

CONNECTION: TOP TRUMP ADVISER ROGER STONE IS A FREQUENT JONES/INFOWARS COLLABORATOR AND TRUMP APPEARED ON JONES’ PROGRAM AND PRAISED HIM

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is the host of The Alex Jones Show and heads Infowars, which distributes right-wing content through its website and social platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Jones and his website have pushed false stories and fringe conspiracy theories, including that the government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and the tragedies at Columbine, Oklahoma City, Sandy Hook, and the Boston Marathon, among others.

Jones and Infowars were a leading source of false stories and conspiracy theories about Clinton in 2016. They pushed false claims about Clinton’s health, the “pizzagate” conspiracy, and supposed pro-Clinton voting fraud, among many others. Several of these stories were subsequently highlighted by Trump on the campaign trail.

Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone serves as the president-elect’s messenger to Jones’ audience. Stone has been one of Jones’ most frequent guests, helped organize a pro-Trump event with Jones, and is also an Infowars guest host. Trump mainstreamed Jones’ program by appearing on it in December 2015 and telling him: "Your reputation's amazing. I will not let you down." Trump has repeatedly echoed Jones’ rhetoric and heand his campaign tweeted links to Infowars.com.

Trump suggested his relationship with Jones will continue: Jones said the president-elect called him after the election to thank his audience and promise he would return to the program. And Stone said Jones will be a “valuable asset” for “President Trump’s legislative program.”

KUSHNER 2

X content

Overview of Sovereign Wealth Funds and Key Figures

What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund?

Key Figures Involved

Jared Kushner's Business Ventures

Recent Developments

Russia

infighting

Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers

Kushnerville finds itself in unfamiliar territory as coronavirus restrictions halt its apparatus of intimidationProPub 5/20 an

house probes role of Jared Kushner as federal government seizes orders of COVID-19 medical suppliesIgor Derysh / Salon

The New York Observer

CONNECTION: OWNED BY JARED KUSHNER, TRUMP’S SON-IN-LAW

Right Side Broadcasting Network

CONNECTION: HELPED TRUMP WITH PRE- AND POST-DEBATE SPIN; CEO SAID “TRUMP BUILT RSBN”

The National Enquirer

CONNECTION: OWNED BY DAVID PECKER, TRUMP’S LONG-TIME FRIEND

Breitbart News

CONNECTION: OPERATED BY TRUMP’S CHIEF STRATEGIST, STEVE BANNON, WHO DESCRIBED THE SITE AS THE “PLATFORM FOR THE ALT-RIGHT,” WHICH INCLUDES WHITE SUPREMACY

Infowars And The Alex Jones Show

CONNECTION: TOP TRUMP ADVISER ROGER STONE IS A FREQUENT JONES/INFOWARS COLLABORATOR AND TRUMP APPEARED ON JONES’ PROGRAM AND PRAISED HIM

Kushnerville finds itself in unfamiliar territory as coronavirus restrictions halt its apparatus of intimidation ProPub 5/20 an

house probes role of Jared Kushner as federal government seizes orders of COVID-19 medical supplies Igor Derysh / Salon