Eighties movie high school villain Jared Kushner is in deep doo doo these days. As the steady drip of corruption and incompetence funnels out of the White House, Kushner’s dealings with Russia become more and more troubling. The reasons he’s given for allegedly attempting to create a back-channel with Russia have not been holding up under the thinnest of speculations. Regardless the configuration, the quagmire of Russian/Trumponian relations always includes Kushner deeply enmeshed. Now NBC News is reporting on the possibilities that one of the Kushner’s motivations to speak “privately” with Russia’s top-dogs was simply … money.
A very expensive piece of New York City real estate with an ominous address could be Exhibit A when and if President Donald Trump's son-in-law and trusted adviser, Jared Kushner, appears before the Congressional committees probing Russian meddling in the presidential election.
One of the questions Kushner is expected to be asked is whether he tried to set up a secret back channel way of communicating with the Russians so he could find somebody in Moscow to take the 41-story tower at 666 Fifth Ave. off his family's hands, two Congressional sources with direct knowledge of the investigation confirmed to NBC News.
Some people here will remember hearing about the
Kushner 666 Fifth Avenue property before. As was
pointed out last week, Kushner’s other motivations towards Russian money might have been that China was too busy giving out Trump trademarks and had already said no way to Jared.
NBC News does a good job of simplifying what a ginormous money-pit this real estate acquisition has been for the Kushner Companies who put up $500 million of its own money, while taking out a $1.2 billion mortgage and other loans against it … in 2007.
In 2008, the markets melted down. With the recession dragging rents down, the Kushners were forced to sell off parts of the building to cover their debt and then renegotiate the deal to avoid foreclosure.
Then in 2011, the Vornado real estate company bought 49.5 percent of the building's office space for $80 million. But the building still wasn't covering its operating costs.
Meanwhile, the Kushners commissioned architect Zaha Hadid to design a new 1,400-foot tower to replace the building on the site. Then they began looking for investors to kick in $3.3 billion of the projected $7.5 billion it will cost to demolish the old building and replace it with a new building, the New York Times reported.
Now, whether or not this is a MacGuffin remains to be seen but it fits very well into what we have learned over the history of America—the men who are billionaires, making big decisions, do not have super powers and frequently are incredibly bad at most things except figuring out ways to hold onto their billions of dollars.