Hey, Let's Subpoena Jared Kushner About His INTERESTING Real Estate Holdings!
You know, as long as we're doing those important investigations.
Oh, it's going to be like that, is it? The Senate is going to investigate Joe Biden's kid as a favor to "Democrat primary voters"? Well, two can play at that game. Particularly when Donald Trump's hellspawn are so blatantly milking their father's presidency for every last nickel .
But let's leave aside Vanky, Deej, and the dumbass for a moment. Forget about the millions of dollars Trump is personally pocketing from the American taxpayer and foreign governments. We'll come back around in another post to the Trump administration's inexplicable affection for leaders of countries where he happens to have business interests, like the Philippines , Indonesia , and India .
Let's talk today about Jared Kushner, the White House's jack of all trades , and Vanky's husband. Our Jared has a net worth of approximately $800 million, which is probably why he had so much trouble filling out his security clearance and financial disclosures. He's just so rich, and so forgetful!
One of the investments which Kushner "forgot" to mention in his 2017 Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure was his stake in Quadro Partners, Inc., better known as the online real estate investment platform Cadre . Kushner started the company with his brother Josh, along with one of Josh's college buddies, and in 2017 it was valued at about $800 million. To comply with ethics rules, Kushner sold some portion of his Cadre stock when he went to "work" in the White House, bringing his stake in the company below 25 percent, according to his lawyer Jamie Gorelick. Kushner valued his remaining share between $5 million and $25 million dollars, and he got permission to defer capital gains tax on the transaction, since he only sold to comply with government rules.
(Did that sound like gobbledygook? In plain English, he sold part of his stake in the company to comply with conflict-of-interest laws. And because he "had" to sell to get into government "service," he was allowed to put off paying the roughly 20% tax on the sale.)
So far, so many zeroes. Except! This week Kushner got permission to defer tax on the sale of another 2,498,496 of Cadre shares, and this transaction was worth somewhere between $25 and $50 million dollars, substantially more than they were worth in 2017.
Gosh , you are wondering, how did that Cadre stock wind up so valuable? Isn't that potentially a five-fold increase in just three years?
Why, yes it is! As the Associated Press was first to note, Cadre took full advantage of the Opportunity Zone tax credits in Trump's 2017 tax plan. And you will never guess who championed those tax credits, not in a million years.
Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, pushed for the Opportunity Zone tax breaks to be included in Trump's 2017 tax overhaul. The breaks offer investors big cuts in capital gains taxes if they put money into businesses and buildings in 8,700 poor, struggling neighborhoods across the country that otherwise might not attract the money.
Cadre has said it plans to invest heavily in those neighborhoods, though it is unclear just how much it has done so. Kushner also has stakes in more than a dozen properties in Opportunity Zones owned by his family firm, Kushner Cos. It is not clear if the company has taken advantage of the breaks.
How shocked are you right now, OMG! Jared and Ivanka were hot to trot on a tax proposal that would benefit them personally? And they failed to mention it at the time? How is this even possible?
Well, if Ron Johnson needs to launch a Senate inquiry into Hunter Biden picking up a couple hundred thousand dollars to sit on the Burisma board, then surely the American people are entitled to know exactly what role Jared and Ivanka played in getting these Opportunity Zone tax credits passed and saving themselves excess taxes and increasing the stock holdings in the process! Particularly since the program wound up being a boondoggle to subsidize commercial development in "trendy" neighborhoods, rather than spurring investment in depressed areas as promised.
Did Jared and Vanky plan to pocket a multi-million dollar windfall at the expense of the American Treasury when they advocated for this law? Had they already calculated their potential earnings before it went into effect? It would be irresponsible not to put them under oath before Congress and find out. Surely Republican primary voters deserve nothing less!
This is a fucking war, and it's time to start fighting dirty. Bring on the subpoenas.
[ CREW Ethics Complaint Re Kushner Cadre Holdings / AP ]
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