Where did Jared get his billion-dollar bailout?

Federal filing shows money materialized to keep Kushner’s company from going bankrupt

BY GRANT STERN  

President Trump’s son-in-law just got a billion dollar bailout deal on his family’s disastrous Midtown Manhattan office tower project, but nobody knows who is rescuing the failed venture.

White House advisor Jared Kushner lost his security clearance last month over mounting concerns that financial exposure to his family company’s looming $1.4 billion mortgage payment at the 666 5th Avenue office tower – among a laundry list of other concerns -compromised his ability to view government secrets and conduct official government business.

Now, an SEC filing by Vornado Trust, Kushner’s partner in the office building, indicates that a “handshake” deal has been executed to save 666 5th Avenue and the Kushner Companies from defaulting on their loans. 

But Kushner’s family still isn’t saying who is bailing them out of the white albatross deal that has turned them into international beggars. ThinkProgress reports:

Now, with Kushner ensconced as a senior adviser in the White House, someone has emerged to bail him and his family out of this mess. The identity of Kushner’s white knight is a mystery.

In a filing with the SEC on Friday, Vornado revealed the existence of an extraordinary “handshake” agreement that would not only refinance the $1.2 billion but allow the Kushners to buy out Vornado’s portion of the debt. 

This means the Kushners would once again own the entire office tower and Vornado would own only the retail space.

Special Counsel Mueller is reportedly investigating Kushner’s foreign affairs, including the 666 5th Avenue problems, to see if they resulted in influence over the President’s foreign policy.

Right after Trump’s election in November 2016, Jared Kushner held a meeting about the building with a Chinese insurance company so shady, its CEO has been put on trial for corruption while requiring a massive bailout from its government.

A month later, Kushner met with the CEO of sanctioned Russian state-owned slush fund VeneshEconomBank who said that it was just about business, which Trump’s son-in-law says contradictorily was about transition team business.

Last July, The Intercept reported last year that Kushner had a deal in place for Qatar to lend him $500 million, but it eventually fell through, leading observers to remark:

Had the Qataris known where things were heading diplomatically, said the source in the region, they’d have happily ponied up the money, even knowing that it was a losing investment. “It would have been much cheaper,” he said.

In a meeting just weeks before the Gulf Council blockade began, Jared Kushner pressed the Qatari sovereign wealth fund to lend him the money in a meeting, and they turned him down, just before President Trump sided with Saudia Arabia in the regional conflict against Qatar, both of whom happen to be key American military allies in the region.

Meanwhile, the White House advisor with a massive portfolio and no security clearance has groomed a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia’s young and aggressive leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who definitely would have the spare capital to help him make a deal in Manhattan.

The Crown Prince reportedly has remarked that he has Jared Kushner “in his pocket.”

After all of his international efforts to find money to fix his problematic Manhattan office property, the public still has no clue who is behind the scenes shaking hands to bailout Jared Kushner’s worst business deal.

But we do know that the Emir of Qatar just visited the United States last week, and was one of the hands Kushner has been reaching out to shake down for money, but there are no reports connecting the events of his visit and Kushner’s newfound good fortune in financing his office tower.

Sadly, America’s foreign policy could be for sale to the highest bidder because of the Trump and Kushner families’ dependence on debt to operate their respective real estate empires. 

It has reduced our country’s political discourse from the normal “who should America support?” in foreign affairs” in to Trumpian speculation about murky deals to ask  “who is buying our foreign policy, today?”