Josh Marshall has more on the Kushner family cash-in and their pitch to Chinese investors, including photo evidence that investors are being promised access to Trump.
You’ve probably heard that the Kushner family was caught over the weekend literally selling visas to immigrate to the United States in exchange for funding a $150 million dollar New Jersey real estate project. The sale itself is actually legal. It’s part of a highly controversial and widely abused program which provides visas to foreign nationals in exchange for $500,000 investments in US projects which by certain standards are judged to create jobs in impoverished or economically distressed parts of the United States. It’s become a widely abused vehicle for real estate developers looking to fund luxury development projects.
Whether Jersey City is “economically distressed” depends on who you are. There are a lot of luxury high-rise apartments there already. If you are looking for something cheaper, however, I found a 500 sq. foot third-floor walkup for a mere $1680 a month.
In other words, if you want to do something for Jersey City’s economically distressed residents, building another luxury high-rise ain’t it. That’s the biggest problem with living in the New York City area, actually. Middle- and lower-income people are squeezed to death because The Rent Is Too Damn High. Builders want to build luxury places to wealthy people, because they get more rent per square foot, and that’s all that gets built. Housing for everybody else can get downright squalid, if not nonexistent. The waiting lists for subsidized and low-cost housing are years long.
Trump – as well as the Kushner family’s connection to him – was explicitly invoked as the “key decision maker†in getting the visas. A Times reporter posted this picture of  the presentation to Twitter, which I’ve marked up to identify the people  in the slide …
You have to go to Talking Points Memo to see the photo, but it’s pretty damning.
This is needless to say, the most open and flagrant kind of monetizing of the Presidency – as bad as anyone could have imagined from the conjoined Trump/Kushner families. The fact that this ‘nationalist’, ‘crack down on illegal immigration’ White House is connected to cash for visas activities like this just adds a layer of oily crust to the corruption.
And that’s the stuff we know about. Reporters just happened to get wind of the Chinese presentation and showed up to cover it. How much are we not hearing about?
Let us not forget that Jared Kushner’s father served time in federal prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. That doesn’t mean Kushner necessarily is dishonest himself, but it says something about Kushner family values.
“Jared Kushner’s father served time in federal prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering”
Oh I’m sure those crimes were just a big misunderstanding! Besides its all better now they’ve apologized if anyone was offended!
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/kushner-companies-apologizes-for-using-trumps-son-in-law-to-hawk-visas-to-chinese-investors/
Apples don’t fall far from the tree?
Turds don’t fall far from the sphincter.
“Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer’s intention.â€
Oh, really. Then why even mention him? I’m sure that the Chinese wouldn’t be able to discern a surname/ company name like Kushner as having any relevance of importance or power just by the name. It’s their relationship to power that the Kushner’s are peddling and they know it.
I’m not sure if I’m reading that paragraph correctly, but if I am, it’s saying that the EB-5 program is almost run exclusively for the benefit of the Kushner family. Maybe it should be renamed the KF- 80 visa/citizenship and anchor baby program.
I’ve often wondered why they call them green cards..Now I know.
Hard to improve on this comment from the NYT by Dan on an editorial about this topic.
“For months all we heard from the presidential campaign of Trump was “lock her up” and false accusations about the Clinton foundation and the accusation of “pay to play” made against Ms. Clinton.
Well, along comes a family of grifters who are practicing the same thing Ms. Clinton was accused of-pay to play and fatten the wallets of the grifter family-legally.
However, Ms. Clinton was accused, with no proof, that she used her office as a vehicle in the pay to play. In the case of the grifter family, they are, in plain view, using our house as their vehicle and defiling that house in the process.
Sadly, due to the legality of this sordid activity, we cannot chant “lock him up”. But, we can hold the grifter family accountable.
Perhaps we should just put a big huge sign, the best and most beautiful sign, on the White House that states “The Trump International White House”. It would be fitting as they, the grifter family, has merged the house into their enterprises.”
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