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

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.

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.