The probe into Russian election interference isn't the only law enforcement action now exploring the election-season dealings of Donald Trump's inner circle. And it's not the only law enforcement investigation to be looking specifically at Trump son-in-law and Ex-Solver of All National Problems Jared Kushner.
Federal prosecutors have requested records related to a $285 million loan that Deutsche Bank gave Jared Kushner’s family real estate company one month before Election Day, the company confirmed this week. [...]
The loan was secured while Kushner was both the head of the company and playing a leading role in running the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump.
These are not prosecutors associated with special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, but a separate, New York-based team. And it's not clear why they've taken an interest in this specific loan.
There is plenty of fodder for speculation, though. Deutsche Bank has come under severe scrutiny in recent years, and New York regulators extracted a $425 million penalty against the company just last January for, you guessed it, a massive Russia money-laundering scheme. Kushner's company itself is being probed by Mueller's team, and was investigated by another for positioning itself, after Trump's election, as being a go-to source for wealthy Chinese investors seeking to use the company's real estate holdings as pricy path to U.S. citizenship. And the person Kushner purchased this property from in the first place has some intriguing ties as well:
Leviev told the New York Times shortly buying the property that he was a “true friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and he kept a photo of Putin in his office.
You always hear people say it’s a small world, but it seems you could fit the entire upper-tier New York real estate universe into a teacup. Is there anyone who owns property in the city who doesn’t have a picture of Vlad Putin on his desk?
For its part, Kushner's company made out like bandits on this particular property, making $74 million in the Deutsche Bank refinancing only a year after the original purchase. It's that refinancing that prosecutors are now, for some reason, intrigued by. We'll see what happens.
It may be, however, that Jared Kushner is at this point possibly regretting his decision to become one of the most influential (if underprepared) of Trump's various critters and doers and hangers-on. People with, ahem, complex finances generally tend to avoid public office because the scrutiny applied to public figures is invariably intense, compared to their prior lives as mere wealthy scions. The smarter ones do, anyway. The not-so-smart ones might only figure it out afterwards.
