"You're not serious people": Congress called out for ignoring Jared Kushner's "huge scandal"

[aubiefifty 18,259]

 

yahoo.com

 

"You're not serious people": Congress called out for ignoring Jared Kushner's "huge scandal"

Tatyana Tandanpolie

7–9 minutes

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Jared Kushner John Lamparski/Getty Images

 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Thursday said that he believes former President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, "crossed the line of ethics" by accepting a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia.

The Republican Kentucky representative, who is leading a congressional probe into President Joe Biden's eldest son Hunter's overseas financial dealings, acknowledged the transaction in response to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's comments accusing Kushner of "grifting," according to The New York Post.

"I have been vocal that I think that what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics," Comer told CNN's Jake Tapper, pointing out the differences between the business dealings of Hunter Biden and Kushner, who served as an adviser to Trump in the White House.

"But what Christie said, it happened after he left office. Still no excuse, Jake, but it happened after he left office. And Jared Kushner actually has a legitimate business," Comer continued.

"This money from the Bidens happened while Joe Biden was vice president, while he was flying to those countries. He – look, days after he left Romania, his family started receiving wires from a corrupt Romanian foreign national, days, Jake, like four days after he left, including his granddaughter. What's his granddaughter doing getting a wire from a Romanian foreign national?" he added.

Kushner reportedly received the $2 billion investment, which included an expected $25 million in annual management fees, from Saudia Arabia's sovereign wealth fund six months after his father-in-law left the White House.

During his tenure in the Trump administration, Kushner was tasked with managing Middle East policy, resulting in him building a relationship with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and leading efforts to create the Abraham Accords, which established Israel's diplomatic relations initially with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and later with Morocco and Sudan.

Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners, went forward with the investment deal despite a Saudi Public Investment Fund review panel citing concerns about the "inexperience of the Affinity Fund management" and a due diligence review that deemed the transaction "unsatisfactory in all aspects" among other considerations, according to meeting minutes obtained by The New York Times. But Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who chairs the fund, dismissed and overruled the panel's objections.

Comer announced on Thursday that he aims to subpoena members of the Biden family after the committee published a third bank record memo on Wednesday that said the Biden family and Hunter Biden's associates had received $20 million in payments from sources in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

"What drives me crazy about this is the blinking red light around Jared Kushner," former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told MSNBC Thursday after declaring the "appearance of impropriety" in Hunter Biden's scandal. "Why does the Senate not start hearings?"

"This is a huge scandal. I do not understand why the Senate is not doing a hearing on all of the Trump grift. And I'm not even talking about the money they netted off foreign governments while they were in office," the former prosecutor said after walking through the extent of Kushner's relationship and dealings with Saudi Arabia, and comparing the situation to former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin outcome when trying to get an investment from the Saudi government.

Democrats' failure to launch an investigation into Kushner, she added, is "a good way to make every headline about Hunter Biden and make everyone forget about what the Trump family did: massive grift while they were in office and even bigger grift trading off the influence of the name Trump after they got out of office. I really think that what Hunter Biden did — I disagree what he did, I don't know if his father disagreed what he did. I know that he was tormented by the death of his other son and the addiction of Hunter. But I do know this. I know that the more we give them an open playing field to try to pretend like Joe Biden did something wrong because of Hunter, the bigger mistake we make."

"We need to explain to the American people, first, that Joe Biden did nothing wrong, we have no evidence he did anything wrong, and secondly, don't look over here, look at the real sleaziness that occupied the White House the last time Republicans were in charge," McCaskill concluded.

Progressive ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington agreed with McCaskill Thursday, writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Kushner "should not get a free pass for his special relationship with Saudi Arabia."

"Talk all you want about nepotism and conflicts of interest, but you're not serious people if you don't want to investigate Jared Kushner," the watchdog added in another tweet.

Talk all you want about nepotism and conflicts of interest, but you're not serious people if you don't want to investigate Jared Kushner

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) August 11, 2023

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On Friday's edition of "Morning Joe," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mocked Comer and the other Republican legislators piling on Hunter Biden instead of probing the Trump children's transactions while working in the White House, his comments also in response to Christie's comparison of Hunter Biden's laptop controversy to Kushner's $2 billion investment at a New Hampshire campaign event Thursday.

"Let's see, $2 billion, laptop. I don't think it's the same," Scarborough began, raising his hands to weigh the value of Jared Kushner's scandal with that of Hunter Biden's in jest.

"You know, you can't control family members, and you want to, but you can't," he continued before comparing both to former President Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy Carter's, contentious relationship with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in the 1980s. "There's a big difference between that and people having to be pulled in line when Billy starts showing up next to Muammar Gaddafi in parades and having somebody working inside the White House doing White House business and coming out the other side $2 billion richer."

"I mean, the comparison, again. I'm not talking about [Christie] here so much as I'm talking about all the Republicans that are freaking out over Hunter Biden, when they don't look at all the things Donald Trump's children and in-laws got, who actually worked inside the White House," Scarborough added.

"[They] got these sweetheart deals from Saudi Arabia and China while they were inside the White House, working inside the White House," he said, adding, "Talk about pay to play."

[aubiefifty 18,259]

i guess the right is not concerned with justice or they would be all over this. it is nothing but partisan politics. they are all over hunter but crickets here.

[Auburnfan91 1,408]

 

 

[homersapien 12,245]

26 minutes ago, Auburnfan91 said:

 

 

Yeah, and he gets paid $25 million/year (1.25%) fee for "managing" it, w

 

But the scandal persisted, and Carter handled the controversy well. Everyone knew he had little control over the irrepressible Billy, who had long struggled with alcoholism and only that summer sobered up. The president released a statement saying, “I do not believe it is appropriate for a close relative of the president to undertake any assignment on behalf of a foreign government.” The Senate Judiciary Committee, controlled by Democrats, initiated an investigation into what became known as Billygate, and Carter announced the White House would cooperate fully and waive any claims to executive privilege. Carter held a press conference and spent an hour taking questions about the matter, and he went further. He issued an executive order prohibiting relatives of the president from lobbying or interacting with US government officials, and he released a 92-page report that criticized Billy but refuted allegations of wrongdoing. The report even included excerpts of the president’s diary. His reaction was widely regarded as transparent and honest.

Billygate is a good point of reference when assessing what could be called Jaredgate. On April 10, the New York Times revealed that Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser of the 45th president, secured a $2 billion investment for his new private equity firm, Affinity Partners, from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince—even after advisers to the Saudi fund raised serious objections to the investment. The screening panel for the Saudi fund had cited “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management”; an “unsatisfactory in all aspects” due diligence report; a proposed asset management fee that seemed “excessive”; and “public relations risks.” Yet the panel was overruled by the fund’s board, which is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s autocratic de facto leader, who, according to US intelligence, green-lit the operation that resulted in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It’s damn hard to not see the $2 billion investment as either a payoff for past services rendered or a preemptive bribe should Trump manage to regain the White House. And it could be both. It’s a wonder that the disclosure of this deal hasn’t created more of a fuss and prompted congressional investigations. (Imagine what Republicans and Fox News would be doing if Hunter Biden received $2 billion from a Ukrainian government leader who was responsible for the gruesome murder of an American resident.) A 10-figure payment to a relative of a former president who is essentially the current (though undeclared) GOP frontrunner in the 2024 contest and possibly the next inhabitant of the White House is a major scandal.

Or it should be.

Mohammed bin Salman—often referred to as MBS—does owe Kushner a big thank-you. As the Times notes, “Kushner played a leading role inside the Trump administration defending Crown Prince Mohammed after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had approved the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.” And this investment seems unduly immense—not just because of the concerns raised by the screeners. The amount is twice as much and the terms of this deal are more generous than the investment the same Saudi fund made with the more experienced former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Moreover, the MBS-approved investment comprises the bulk of the money Kushner has collected for Affinity Partners. He had been looking to round up $7 billion, but apparently few moneybags out there share the Saudis’ confidence in Ivanka Trump’s husband. Affinity Partners’ most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that it has raised only $500 million beyond the cash from MBS’s $620 billion fund, which maintains investments in Uber and the Newcastle United Football Club in Britain.

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While he was a White House adviser to Donald Trump—on a host of wide-ranging matters, including Mideast policy, innovation, and the administration’s (deficient) Covid-19 response—Kushner forged a bond with MBS (who has yet to condemn Vladimir Putin’s horrific and illegal invasion of Ukraine). That included brokering $110 billion in arms sales to the kingdom and protecting these deals when MBS and Saudi Arabia came under fire for the murder of Khashoggi and for the brutal, Saudi-supported fighting in Yemen. It’s also possible that given all the Saudis’ global and internal intrigue—only a portion of which is known to the public—Kushner and Trump provided other valuable assistance to MBS.

Whatever the past or future quid pro quos, if any, this deal stinks and demands congressional scrutiny. Allowing foreign authoritarians to shower billions of dollars upon family members of past, present, or future presidents is ethically wrong but carries a greater threat. As Ali Al-Ahmed, the director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, wrote in the Washington Post, “The prospect of a dictator using his deep pockets to wield influence at the highest levels of the U.S. political system should be cause for serious concern and targeted action. Not all attacks on American democracy will take the shape of violent insurrections—the corruption of the Saudi-Kushner deal is an attack on democracy, too.”

Last week, 30 House members wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking for a review of US-Saudi relations. The letter read in part:

A recalibration of the U.S.-Saudi partnership is long overdue in order to reflect President Biden’s important commitment to uphold human rights and democratic values in our foreign policy. Our continued unqualified support for the Saudi monarchy, which systematically, ruthlessly represses its own citizens, targets critics all over the world, carries out a brutal war in Yemen, and bolsters authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa, runs counter to U.S. national interests and damages the credibility of the United States to uphold our values.

These members have the power to examine the rotten-smelling Kushner-MBS relationship that far surpasses anything that Hunter Biden could have dreamed of. If Trump does run for president, this should be a campaign issue. With his son-in-law (and daughter) benefiting from a $2 billion sweetheart deal with MBS, the transactional gain for the Saudis from a second Trump administration could be huge. Will Kushner pledge to have no role—official or unofficial—with a Trump White House in the future? If he did, would anyone believe that?

The Trump cosmos is full of grift and scandal. And what’s $2 billion compared to an attempt to overturn an election and incite violent insurrection? But in a world of never-ending Trump sleaze, this shady venture does stand out as especially egregious. At the very least, Kushner deserves the Billygate treatment. 

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hich advisors to MSB deemed "excessive".  (See following post)

Edited August 13, 2023 by homersapien

[homersapien 12,245]

And it's not like there's any doubt in what Jared was selling:

 

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/why-the-hell-isnt-jared-kushners-2-billion-saudi-payment-a-big-scandal/

It’s damn hard to not see the $2 billion investment as either a payoff for past services rendered or a preemptive bribe should Trump manage to regain the White House. And it could be both. It’s a wonder that the disclosure of this deal hasn’t created more of a fuss and prompted congressional investigations. (Imagine what Republicans and Fox News would be doing if Hunter Biden received $2 billion from a Ukrainian government leader who was responsible for the gruesome murder of an American resident.) A 10-figure payment to a relative of a former president who is essentially the current (though undeclared) GOP frontrunner in the 2024 contest and possibly the next inhabitant of the White House is a major scandal.

Or it should be.

Mohammed bin Salman—often referred to as MBS—does owe Kushner a big thank-you. As the Times notes, “Kushner played a leading role inside the Trump administration defending Crown Prince Mohammed after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had approved the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.” And this investment seems unduly immense—not just because of the concerns raised by the screeners. The amount is twice as much and the terms of this deal are more generous than the investment the same Saudi fund made with the more experienced former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Moreover, the MBS-approved investment comprises the bulk of the money Kushner has collected for Affinity Partners. He had been looking to round up $7 billion, but apparently few moneybags out there share the Saudis’ confidence in Ivanka Trump’s husband. Affinity Partners’ most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that it has raised only $500 million beyond the cash from MBS’s $620 billion fund, which maintains investments in Uber and the Newcastle United Football Club in Britain.

But the scandal persisted, and Carter handled the controversy well. Everyone knew he had little control over the irrepressible Billy, who had long struggled with alcoholism and only that summer sobered up. The president released a statement saying, “I do not believe it is appropriate for a close relative of the president to undertake any assignment on behalf of a foreign government.” The Senate Judiciary Committee, controlled by Democrats, initiated an investigation into what became known as Billygate, and Carter announced the White House would cooperate fully and waive any claims to executive privilege. Carter held a press conference and spent an hour taking questions about the matter, and he went further. He issued an executive order prohibiting relatives of the president from lobbying or interacting with US government officials, and he released a 92-page report that criticized Billy but refuted allegations of wrongdoing. The report even included excerpts of the president’s diary. His reaction was widely regarded as transparent and honest.

Billygate is a good point of reference when assessing what could be called Jaredgate. On April 10, the New York Times revealed that Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser of the 45th president, secured a $2 billion investment for his new private equity firm, Affinity Partners, from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince—even after advisers to the Saudi fund raised serious objections to the investment. The screening panel for the Saudi fund had cited “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management”; an “unsatisfactory in all aspects” due diligence report; a proposed asset management fee that seemed “excessive”; and “public relations risks.” Yet the panel was overruled by the fund’s board, which is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s autocratic de facto leader, who, according to US intelligence, green-lit the operation that resulted in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It’s damn hard to not see the $2 billion investment as either a payoff for past services rendered or a preemptive bribe should Trump manage to regain the White House. And it could be both. It’s a wonder that the disclosure of this deal hasn’t created more of a fuss and prompted congressional investigations. (Imagine what Republicans and Fox News would be doing if Hunter Biden received $2 billion from a Ukrainian government leader who was responsible for the gruesome murder of an American resident.) A 10-figure payment to a relative of a former president who is essentially the current (though undeclared) GOP frontrunner in the 2024 contest and possibly the next inhabitant of the White House is a major scandal.

Or it should be.

Mohammed bin Salman—often referred to as MBS—does owe Kushner a big thank-you. As the Times notes, “Kushner played a leading role inside the Trump administration defending Crown Prince Mohammed after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had approved the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.” And this investment seems unduly immense—not just because of the concerns raised by the screeners. The amount is twice as much and the terms of this deal are more generous than the investment the same Saudi fund made with the more experienced former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Moreover, the MBS-approved investment comprises the bulk of the money Kushner has collected for Affinity Partners. He had been looking to round up $7 billion, but apparently few moneybags out there share the Saudis’ confidence in Ivanka Trump’s husband. Affinity Partners’ most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that it has raised only $500 million beyond the cash from MBS’s $620 billion fund, which maintains investments in Uber and the Newcastle United Football Club in Britain.

While he was a White House adviser to Donald Trump—on a host of wide-ranging matters, including Mideast policy, innovation, and the administration’s (deficient) Covid-19 response—Kushner forged a bond with MBS (who has yet to condemn Vladimir Putin’s horrific and illegal invasion of Ukraine). That included brokering $110 billion in arms sales to the kingdom and protecting these deals when MBS and Saudi Arabia came under fire for the murder of Khashoggi and for the brutal, Saudi-supported fighting in Yemen. It’s also possible that given all the Saudis’ global and internal intrigue—only a portion of which is known to the public—Kushner and Trump provided other valuable assistance to MBS.

Whatever the past or future quid pro quos, if any, this deal stinks and demands congressional scrutiny. Allowing foreign authoritarians to shower billions of dollars upon family members of past, present, or future presidents is ethically wrong but carries a greater threat. As Ali Al-Ahmed, the director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, wrote in the Washington Post, “The prospect of a dictator using his deep pockets to wield influence at the highest levels of the U.S. political system should be cause for serious concern and targeted action. Not all attacks on American democracy will take the shape of violent insurrections—the corruption of the Saudi-Kushner deal is an attack on democracy, too.”

Last week, 30 House members wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking for a review of US-Saudi relations. The letter read in part:

A recalibration of the U.S.-Saudi partnership is long overdue in order to reflect President Biden’s important commitment to uphold human rights and democratic values in our foreign policy. Our continued unqualified support for the Saudi monarchy, which systematically, ruthlessly represses its own citizens, targets critics all over the world, carries out a brutal war in Yemen, and bolsters authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa, runs counter to U.S. national interests and damages the credibility of the United States to uphold our values.

These members have the power to examine the rotten-smelling Kushner-MBS relationship that far surpasses anything that Hunter Biden could have dreamed of. If Trump does run for president, this should be a campaign issue. With his son-in-law (and daughter) benefiting from a $2 billion sweetheart deal with MBS, the transactional gain for the Saudis from a second Trump administration could be huge. Will Kushner pledge to have no role—official or unofficial—with a Trump White House in the future? If he did, would anyone believe that?

The Trump cosmos is full of grift and scandal. And what’s $2 billion compared to an attempt to overturn an election and incite violent insurrection? But in a world of never-ending Trump sleaze, this shady venture does stand out as especially egregious. At the very least, Kushner deserves the Billygate treatment. 

Edited August 13, 2023 by homersapien

[aubiefifty 18,259]

according to most guys on the right comer does not lie...........?

[I_M4_AU 8,943]

3 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

i guess the right is not concerned with justice or they would be all over this. it is nothing but partisan politics. they are all over hunter but crickets here.

The GOP House Oversight Committee is all over Hunter because of the cover up.  When the FBI, DOJ and Biden himself lie to the public about Hunter’s involvement it is their duty to get to the bottom of things.  It’s amazing you don’t.