Jared Kushner

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jared Kushner

• His father was friends with Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. He used to attend many dinners with them.

• His paternal grandparents, Reichel and Joseph Kushner, survived the Holocaust and came to the U.S. in 1949 from Navahrudak (now part of Belarus).

• Reichel was the family matriarch. She led an escape from the Navahrudak ghetto by digging a tunnel during the Holocaust. She later joined the Bielski partisans.

• He was raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish family.

  

• Journalist Daniel Golden reported that Kushner’s father donated $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998, shortly before Jared was enrolled in the University.

• During his period at Harvard, he joined the Fly Club.

• He supported the campus Chabad house led by Hirschy Zarchi.

• During his college days, he was involved in real estate investing and grew Kushner Companies’ existence in the New York City market.

  

• After completing his formal education, Jared joined a real estate company named Somerville Building Associates (part of Kushner Companies) as vice president in Somerville, Massachusetts.

• He then worked as an intern at Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office.

• He also interned with the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

• In 2004, Kushner’s father, Charles, pleaded guilty to tax fraud, election violations, and witness tampering. His sister helped in the case, and Charles retaliated against her.

• After his father was convicted and jailed (from 4 March 2005 to 25 August 2006), he took on a bigger role in the family real estate business.

• He worked to expand the business and acquired nearly $7 billion in property over the next decade mostly in New York City.

• In 2006, Kushner bought the New York Observer for $10 million. He beat a bid by Robert De Niro’s group, Trifecta Enterprises.

• He funded the purchase with money he earned during his college days by investing in residential buildings in Somerville, Massachusetts, with help from his family. He bought them for $8.3 million in 2000 and sold them for $13 million in 2004.

• After buying the New York Observer, Kushner changed it to a tabloid format, expanded its online presence, and grew the Observer Media Group.

• In 2007, Kushner Companies bought the office building at 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion. It was a record price at the time and was mostly funded by loans.

• In 2008, he started working as the CEO of Kushner Companies.

• After the 2008 property crash, the building’s cash flow could not cover its debt payments.

• Then the Kushners had to sell a controlling stake in the retail space to The Carlyle Group and Stanley Chera.

• Vornado Realty Trust became a 50% equity partner in the building’s ownership.

• Kushner Companies lost over $90 million on the investment.

• Jared led the deal, but his father, Charles Kushner, forced him to do it.

• Jared Kushner was a lifelong Democrat supporter before Donald Trump entered politics.

• He donated over $10,000 to Democratic campaigns, starting at the age of eleven.

• In 2008, he supported Hillary Clinton and had the New York Observer endorse Barack Obama over John McCain.

• After that, he got disappointed with Obama and got registered as an independent in 2009. He then endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 through the Observer.

  

• Kushner and his wife Ivanka are both Modern Orthodox Jews. Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009. They maintain a kosher home and observe the Jewish Shabbat.

• In 2011, Kushner bought a 130,000-square-foot office building at 200 Lafayette Street in Manhattan for $50 million. After two years, he sold it for $150 million.

• In 2013, his company bought the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn Heights for $375 million. They spent $100 million to turn it into an office park and signed Etsy to a 10-year lease.

• That same year, Kushner co-founded a group named WiredScore which provides certification to the digital infrastructure of buildings.

• Kushner’s company bought more than 11,000 properties in New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore between 2013 and 2014.

• Under his leadership, the New York Observer lost popularity among New York’s elite. However, it became profitable and increased its online traffic from 1.3 million to 6 million monthly visitors in 2013.

• In August 2014, Kushner and Aion Partners bought three apartment buildings in Middle River, Maryland, for $38 million. Later, they sold them for $68 million.

• In 2014, Kushner co-founded Cadre (now RealCadre LLC), an online real estate investment platform, with his brother Joshua and Ryan Williams.

  

• In 2014, he continued donating to Democratic groups.

• In 2015, he joined Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign with no prior experience in politics or government.

• Jared Kushner led Donald Trump’s digital, online, and social media strategy during the presidential campaign.

• He formed a 100-person social media team called ‘Project Alamo’ with the help of Silicon Valley experts.

• The team tested over 1,00,000 ad combinations weekly and raised over $250 million in small-dollar donations in the last months of the campaign.

  

• Jared Kushner, along with Paul Manafort and Brad Parscale, hired Steve Bannon’s firm, Cambridge Analytica, to help the Trump campaign.

• He started working as Trump’s de facto campaign manager after Corey Lewandowski was fired in June 2016.

• He organized Trump’s August 2016 visit to Mexico and advised Mike Pence to accompany Trump.

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Kushner’s leadership in the campaign the biggest surprise. Eric claimed that he handled it with limited resources.

• In May 2015, Kushner bought 50.1% of the Times Square Building for $295 million from Africa Israel Investments Ltd.

• Goldman Sachs and billionaire George Soros, a big Democratic donor, became his business partners.

• In 2015, Soros Fund Management gave RealCadre LLC a $250 million credit line.

• Kushner did not list these business connections in his January 2017 government financial disclosure.

• He did disclose owning BFPS Ventures, the company holding his Cadre stake.

• In 2016, Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated meetings between Kushner, other Trump associates, and George Nader, an emissary representing the UAE and Saudi crown princes.

• In August 2016, Nader offered help to the Trump campaign.

• In December 2016, Nader attended a meeting in New York between UAE officials, Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon.

• Mueller also investigated Kushner’s possible ties to Qatar, Israel, and China.

• In 2016, the Observer supported Donald Trump in the Republican primary but stayed neutral during the general election.

• On 5 July 2016, Kushner wrote an open letter in the New York Observer and defended Trump’s campaign against accusations of anti-Semitism after a controversial tweet.

• He criticized the careless use of terms such as racist and anti-Semitic.

• His estranged cousin, Marc, disagreed and shared on Facebook that his grandparents’ story taught him to reject hate.

• After Donald Trump was elected as the president, Kushner became one of Donald Trump’s closest advisors, even closer than Trump’s adult children.

• Trump provided top-secret security for Kushner so that he could attend daily briefings with General Mike Flynn.

• In June 2016, an agent of Emin Agalarov offered Donald Trump Jr. a piece of compromising information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government and wanted a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in exchange.

• The meeting took place on 9 June 2016, at Trump Tower and was attended by Donald Trump Jr., Kushner, and Paul Manafort, who was campaign chairman. They met with Natalia Veselnitskaya.

  

• According to the Mueller Report, Kushner became frustrated with the meeting and texted Manafort that it was a waste of time. He also emailed assistants to call him, hoping for a reason to leave.

• The Democratic National Committee cyberattacks were disclosed that same week.

• Between April and November 2016, Kushner had two undisclosed phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

• In December 2016, Kushner met Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned bank.

• In January 2017, Kushner left the Observer to work in Donald Trump’s administration. His brother-in-law, Joseph Meyer, took over the Observer.

• On 9 January 2017, Jared Kushner was appointed Senior Advisor to the President.

• He stepped down as CEO of Kushner Companies and publisher of the New York Observer.

• After Trump was elected, Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump met with Japan’s prime minister and officials.

• During the same time, Ivanka was negotiating a licensing deal for her clothing brand with Sanei International. The company was partly owned by a government development bank in Japan.

• Ivanka also attended a meeting between Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe.

  

• After that, Kushner helped the American government negotiate a $100+ billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

• During a White House meeting with Saudi officials, he directly called Lockheed Martin’s CEO to request a lower price for a radar system to detect ballistic missiles.

• His business dealings in China raised concerns about mixing government roles with private interests.

• In 2017, Kushner helped start talks with Mexico and Canada to renegotiate NAFTA after Trump became president.

• In April 2017, Trump considered withdrawing from NAFTA, but Kushner convinced him to enter trade negotiations.

• In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kushner failed to disclose all required financial details in his security clearance applications, which included $1 billion in loans.

• According to the Washington Post, Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, earned $82 million as an outside income in 2017 while serving as senior White House advisors.

• In June 2017, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE imposed a naval blockade on Qatar and accused it of supporting terrorist groups, then Kushner supported the Saudis and Emiratis in the conflict.

• Kushner diminished the efforts of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop the blockade and encouraged President Trump to back the Saudis and Emiratis, which Trump did.

• Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, accepted that Kushner had occasionally used private email for official White House business but clarified that no confidential information was shared.

• In July 2017, Kushner appeared before both the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed sessions regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. He also released a public statement.

• In October 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee requested additional documents from Kushner. His lawyers provided many documents in November, but the committee later requested more documents that had not been produced.

• In November 2017, Kushner was interviewed by investigators from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office. He was questioned about the former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

• On 1 December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of a plea agreement.

• After two months, in February 2017, when the Mueller report was released, Kushner’s top-secret security clearance was permanently changed.

• After Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, Kushner remained active in political activities through a nonprofit organization he founded. He focused on the Gulf states.

• Kushner also tried to raise money for a new investment firm from the Persian Gulf states.

• From 2017 to January 2021, Kushner led the Office of American Innovation, which was created by Trump to bring private-sector solutions to government issues. For example federal IT spending, economic activity, and the opioid crisis.

• Kushner was reportedly a major person in the firing of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as head of the Trump new team. He also advised to remove Christie’s allies from the team.

• Reportedly, it was claimed that Kushner held a grudge against Christie for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, for high crimes.

• Kushner denied the claims of being involved in Christie’s dismissal. He stated that they worked together well and that their past differences were put aside for the campaign.

• In his memoir, Christie claimed that Steve Bannon was the one who fired him, but that Kushner ordered it as revenge for his father’s prosecution.

  

• Kushner’s interactions with Russian officials were investigated as part of the federal probe into Russian election interference.

• Ahead of his meeting with the Senate and House intelligence committees, Kushner provided an 11-page document detailing his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.

• Kushner stated that he had four meetings with Russians.

• In 2017, Trump appointed Kushner in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks when Kushner had no experience in foreign policy or the Middle East.

• Kushner then met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas to restart peace negotiations. Palestinians did not trust him due to his close ties with Netanyahu.

  

• In 2017, it was revealed that Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump had assets worth between $240 million and $740 million. They also owned an art collection worth millions, which was initially not mentioned in their financial disclosures, but later entered.

• Jared Kushner strongly supported the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill.

• The bill was signed into law by President Trump in December 2018.

• It aimed to make changes to the prison and justice systems in the U.S.

• The law reduced sentences for some non-violent offenders and gave former prisoners a second chance.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kushner played an important role in advising Trump and organising the administration process.

• He created a separate ‘shadow task force’ of young private-sector volunteers. They worked outside the official government team.

• His team focused on finding medical supplies. It also faced criticism for favouring Trump’s associates.

• Kushner also took COVID-19 advice from his brother’s father-in-law, who crowdsourced suggestions from a Facebook group for doctors.

• At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Kushner told Trump that the media was exaggerating the virus threat. It led Trump to take its dangers lightly.

• In June 2019, in an interview with HBO/Axios, Kushner denied that President Donald Trump was racist.

  

• He defended the Trump administration’s decision to reduce refugee entries to the U.S. to their lowest level in 40 years.

• In 2019, Kushner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and received treatment during Trump’s time in office. He had a second thyroid surgery in 2022.

• In 2020, his stake in RealCadre LLC was valued between $25 to $50 million.

• A transcript of Kushner’s interview with FBI investigators was not released in January 2020 because it needed a security review by an unnamed intelligence agency. It was edited and released in February 2020.

• Kushner co-wrote Trump’s 11 March 2020 Oval Office speech without consulting health experts The speech contained errors that caused panic and market drops.

• The speech falsely stated that all travel from Europe and the movement of goods would be banned. The statement left European leaders and Americans abroad confused.

• Later, Trump blamed Kushner for the speech’s failure and organizing a Rose Garden event where Trump wrongly claimed that Google was making a nationwide COVID-19 testing website.

• Google later clarified that its COVID-19 website would only serve the Bay Area, not the whole country as Trump claimed.

• Kushner led a volunteer team of private-sector professionals with little experience. The team struggled to secure PPE and was criticized for favouring personal connections over expertise.

• New York awarded an $86 million contract for ventilators to a Silicon Valley engineer who was recommended by Kushner’s team, but no ventilators were delivered.

• In March 2020, it was reported that Kushner sold stakes in a firm that had benefited from Opportunity Zone tax breaks, which he had supported as a senior White House advisor.

• Kushner ignored the risk of a second COVID-19 wave in May 2020. The cases increased by June 2020, and his family’s businesses received pandemic relief funds, which raised conflict-of-interest concerns.

• In August 2020, with 170,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., Kushner claimed that the administration’s response was a success.

  

• The same year, Kushner kept himself away from Trump’s election overturn efforts and focused on Middle East diplomacy and talks with Biden’s team.

• In 2020, reports revealed that Trump privately regretted following Kushner’s advice to pass the First Step Act.

• In 2020, Trump announced Kushner’s peace plan. It was supported by Israel but rejected by Palestinians for being too favourable to Israel. The Arab states gave mixed reactions.

• The plan allowed Israel to add West Bank settlements, but both Israeli and Palestinian leaders opposed it for different reasons.

• In June 2020, UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba warned that Israel’s addition of West Bank settlements could harm relations with Arab countries.

• Kushner took this as an opportunity and helped facilitate talks between Israel and the UAE.

• In August 2020, the UAE and Israel officially established diplomatic ties. It became the first such agreement between Israel and an Arab country since 1994.

• However, Netanyahu stopped some plans as a part of the deal and the first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE which carried a U.S.-Israeli delegation led by Kushner.

• After Israel and the UAE announced their peace deal on 13 August 2020, Bahrain expressed interest in joining the deal.

• Kushner and his team negotiated the deal for 29 days. It finalized the Bahrain-Israel agreement on 11 September. It was followed by the official signing of the Abraham Accords on 15 September at the White House.

• During the same time, Kosovo, a Muslim-majority country, agreed to normalize relations with Israel as part of a U.S.-led economic deal with Serbia.

• On 23 October 2020, Sudan became the third Arab country in two months to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. Reportedly, Kushner played a key role in the negotiations.

• On 10 December 2020, Trump announced a peace deal between Israel and Morocco. It was negotiated by Kushner and Berkowitz.

• In late 2020, Kushner and Berkowitz negotiated talks to resolve the Qatar diplomatic crisis. It led to an agreement signed at the GCC Summit on 5 January 2021.

• In 2021, Kushner was invited to Harvard to discuss the Abraham Accords, where he controversially advised Gaza civilians to relocate to Israel’s Negev desert.

• Kushner then received Mexico’s highest honour for a non-citizen, the Order of the Aztec Eagle, for his role in the deal.

  

• During the 6 January Capitol attack in 2021, Kushner was returning from a diplomatic trip. Later, he arranged a meeting between Trump and Pence to fix their relationship.

• During the Trump administration, Kushner supported Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. He later started an investment firm, Affinity Partners, and received funds from Gulf countries.

• Six months after leaving the White House, Kushner’s firm received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund. It promoted economic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

• The House Oversight Committee launched an investigation to find whether he used his government position for the deal.

• In August 2022, he released a memoir titled Breaking History: A White House Memoir.

  

• In 2023, Republican Chris Christie criticized the deal and accused Kushner of using his White House position for personal gain and called it a “family grift.”

• Kushner received funding years ago but had not made any investments. He earned millions in fees each year.

• Norm Eisen believed that the payments were meant to gain favour with Trump’s family in case he won the 2024 election.

• James Comer, a Republican, claimed that Kushner acted unethically by taking money from Saudi Arabia.

• He has been featured on the cover of many noted magazines and tabloids.

  

• He is often spotted enjoying alcoholic beverages on various occasions.

  

• He is an animal lover and has pet dogs.

  

• He likes travelling to distant places in his free time.