There have been reports for months indicating that President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, was not fully addressing the conflicts of interest that could impede his ability to ethically craft national policy.
Now more details have come to light about the extent to which Kushner has failed to fully divest himself from his potentially compromising business holdings.
[salon_video id="14769842"]Kushner apparently has retained almost 90 percent of his real estate holdings despite resigning from his family business and promising to avoid conflicts of interest, according to a report by the Washington Post. These holdings are worth anywhere from $132 million to $407 million and span from $1 million to $5 million stake in a luxury skyscraper in Jersey City to his holdings in a retail complex in Times Square, and from residential real estate in the small Indiana town of Speedway to a mobile-home park in New Jersey.
When asked about this by the Post, Kushner attorney Jamie Gorelick insisted that the presidential son-in-law was merely "striving for simplicity" when determining the extent to which he will divest himself from his massive real estate empire. Kushner's White House spokesman Joshua Raffel had a similar argument, saying that Kushner "takes the ethics rules very seriously and would never compromise himself or the administration."
One of the more bizarre instances of Kushner's erratic approach to divestment includes a pair of Kushner family skyscrapers in Jersey City. Although Kushner has sold his investment in One Journal Square, he has retained his stake in 30 Journal Square, with his attorneys telling the Post that "30 Journal Square is a separate project that did not pose the same complexities, including EB-5 financing, as One Journal Square."
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