Developer Charles Kushner has been nominated to serve as the United States ambassador to France under the coming Trump administration.
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President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination on his social media network Truth Social, calling Kushner "a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner founded and is chairman of Kushner Cos., which now owns a reported $16B in assets. The firm is run by French-born CEO Laurent Morali and President Nicole Kushner Meyer, Charles Kushner's daughter.
The Kushner Cos. founder has long run in the same real estate circles as the developer-in-chief. Their children, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, married in 2009.
Jared Kushner had been the CEO of the real estate firm before resigning to serve as senior adviser to Trump during his first term, but he previously told Axios that he has no plans to be involved in his father-in-law's second term. After leaving the White House, Jared Kushner launched private equity firm Affinity Partners, raising billions from Saudi Arabia, on which he said he would like to focus moving forward.
At the end of Trump’s first term, he pardoned the senior Kushner. In 2004, Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion along with making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and witness tampering. In the case, Charles Kushner admitted to hiring a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law, videotaping their meeting and sending the footage to his sister — all because his brother was cooperating with officials in their investigation of him.
As a result, Charles Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison.
The Kushner family has also been scrutinized for encouraging Trump to renew the EB-5 visa program during his last presidency. In 2017, federal prosecutors investigated the firm for its use of the program, which exchanges green card eligibility for foreign real estate investment. Among the projects that Kushner Cos. used the program for is a Jersey City apartment building dubbed Trump Bay Street.
Charles Kushner is far from the only real estate executive tapped to serve in Trump’s second term.
Steven Witkoff was selected as his special envoy to the Middle East. Newmark Executive Chairman Howard Lutnick was nominated to become the next Secretary of Commerce. Scott Turner, former NFL player and Trump’s prior head of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, who oversaw the rollout of Opportunity Zones, was chosen to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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