New details are emerging about a controversial business deal between the family company of President Donald Trump's son-in-law and foreign policy adviser, Jared Kushner, and a company with connections to the Chinese government.
Two months after it was reported that Kushner met with Wu Xiaohui, chairman of the Chinese company Anbang Insurance Group, Bloomberg is reporting that Kushner Cos. (which is owned by Jared Kushner's family, although Kushner himself has divested from it) will receive more than $400 million from Anbang. This will be part of a $4-billion deal that will entail Anbang investing in the Kushners' Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue as well as give Kushner Cos. an equity stake in a partnership to be formed between their company and Anbang Insurance Group.
Conservative pundit David Frum claimed on Twitter that there will be a lot of debt forgiveness as part of the deal. The Kushners' property is going to be valued at $2.85 billion, a record for a single Manhattan building.
Joshua Stein, a New York real estate lawyer, told Bloomberg that "this is a huge, huge exit strategy for an office building. It does sound like a home run of a transaction for Kushner and his group."
This isn't the first time that ethical questions have been raised about how Team Trump's business dealings will impact the way they shape foreign policy. Last month President Trump abruptly conceded to China about their "One China" policy and the Trump Organization was simultaneously (and perhaps coincidentally) rewarded with a registered trademark for which they had been fighting for more than a decade (China has given preliminary approval to 38 additional Trump trademarks since).
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