If Trump comes, will Middle East policies be entrusted to him again: Who is Jared Kushner?

Kushner, who started his business career after his father was convicted of fraud and imprisoned, took over the management of his father's real estate company, Kushner Companies. It later also purchased Observer Media, publisher of the New York Observer. He is the co-founder and partial owner of Cadre, an online real estate investment platform.

Jared Kushner's origins

On December 13, 2016, Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner attended a meeting at Colony Capital's Madison Avenue offices, the building not far from Trump Tower. A month after Trump's surprising victory in the Presidential election, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, head of the Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB) development bank.

Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman, investor, and former government official. He is the son-in-law of former president Donald Trump through his marriage to Ivanka Trump, and served as a senior advisor to Trump from 2017 to 2021. He was also Director of the Office of American Innovation.

In subsequent congressional testimony, Kushner said the meeting was for purely diplomatic purposes. Russia's ambassador to the United States told Kushner that Gorkov, who "has direct contact with the Russian President," could "offer insight into Putin's views on the new administration and the best ways to work together."

At the insistence of the Russian Ambassador, Gorgov held the meeting. According to Kushner, the two discussed US-Russia relations and trade was not on their agenda. However, VEB's spokesperson told the Washington Post something completely different. As the newspaper noted, "The bank claimed that the meeting in question was held as part of a new business strategy and was conducted in conjunction with Kushner because he was the head of his family's real estate business." While most Americans had a hard time realizing what a Trump presidency would bring, the job talks could be a path to political influence for the Russians, who correctly predicted that Kushner would be an extremely powerful figure in the next administration.

Who is Jared Kushner?

Jared's grandmother, Rae Kushner, was one of several hundred Nazi survivors of the Novogrudok ghetto, which was then located in northeastern Poland, now in Belarus. Thousands of Jews in the region were lined up on the edge of giant trenches and shot, so that they fell directly into their own mass graves. Those who survived were enslaved by the Nazi war machine and imprisoned in the ghetto. Using smuggled wood, spoons, and other tools they could pass past Nazi guards, ghetto residents dug a tunnel beyond surveillance lights and barbed wire. They kept the bags filled with soil in the walls of the ghetto so that the Nazis would not notice their plans.

Post-World War II anti-Semitic immigration laws sharply limited the number of Jews allowed into the United States. In 1949, to increase his chances of obtaining an American visa, Rae's husband and Jared's grandfather, Yossel Berkowitz, wrote his name as Joseph Kushner on US immigration documents, portraying himself as his father-in-law's son. As a result, his son Charles' name was Charles Kushner, not Charles Berkowitz, and his grandson's name was Jared Kushner, not Jared Berkowitz. Jared's wife's post-marriage name would also be Ivanka Kushner, not Ivanka Berkowitz.

In the book "The Miracle of Life", this situation is explained as follows: "Since sons and fathers were given priority in obtaining visas, Yossel, who was traveling with his father-in-law, took the surname of his wife's family." The Kushner family, which had just changed its name, was assisted by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, which fully embraced the immigration and helped tens of thousands of Jews escape from Europe. The organization, which allowed the Kushner family to board the S S Sobieski ship, also helped with immigration forms. HIAS also prepared a 23-page dossier for the Kushners, including a list of family members, interview notes, and a record of their movements from Italy to New York. The file, which has been waiting in the HIAS archives for 70 years, has not been reported before.

Although the Kushners showed themselves a guarantor in the USA, according to a note written by an aid worker in the HIAS file, the guarantor claimed that he did not know the family before arriving in the USA. They were broke when they arrived in New York in March 1949. HIAS provided shelter for three months and food rations, including extra for Passover a few weeks after their arrival in the United States. The group also helped the family find employment.

Joe began working as a carpenter in New Jersey. There was a high demand for carpenters in the post-war years; A thousand houses a week were being built in New Jersey for thousands of weeks. The newly growing families of soldiers returning from war needed homes, and contractors were receiving major support from U.S. government programs. The G I Act provided long-term, low-payment loans. The mortgage income tax cut helped middle-class families buy homes and accumulate wealth with government support. The $25 billion Federal Highway Assistance Act, approved in 1956, spurred home construction in the suburbs by speeding up access to factories and offices. This law, which included the largest federal infrastructure program in US history, stimulated the economy and enriched contractors like Joe Kushner. By the time Joe died in 1985, he had built four thousand houses, all rising above the ground, unlike when he lived in wartime Poland, and he had accumulated tens of millions of dollars. He reserved four of these houses for his children, located in the suburbs of West Orange and Livingston, which were among the newly opened areas of New Jersey to Jews.

Charlie, who had the idea of starting a business with his father, founded Kushner Companies in 1985. But when Joe died soon after, a grieving Charlie was forced to run the company on his own, expanding his father's business model by focusing on purchasing, management, and development to cope with debt. The Kushners were members of a wealthy, aggressive and ruthless group of private contractors in New Jersey known as the "Holocaust contractors."

Still, Charlie was a public figure. There were articles about him in the press. He had made notable contributions to charities and politicians, mostly Democrats. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had arrived at their offices in Florham Park. Hillary Clinton visited the Kushners' beach house in Long Branch for Shabbat Dinner during the Senatorial campaign. But by far Charles Kushner's biggest help was to a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate. The one-and-a-half million dollars Kushner and his associates gave to Jim McGreevey, among the more than three million donations he gave to Democrats, made him the state's largest Democratic donor by the end of the last century.

Joe was a strict parent, Charlie was stricter. His family's behavior was restricted; their children were not even allowed to wear jeans, which they called "overalls". Joe's grandchildren attended the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, the Jewish school that Charlie and his brother Murray helped help with. The school's athletic uniform had "Kushner" written on the front and back. Charlie's oldest son, Jared, was described as a generally polite child, especially respectful of his parents. In one family photo, all the cousins wore sweaters, while only Jared wore a button-down shirt and tie.

By the time Jared's coming-of-age ceremony came around, both he and Charlie had become increasingly focused on the bright lights of Manhattan. The coming-of-age ceremony was a tuxedo-clad event held at a downtown hotel. Hundreds of people attended, including members of the New York Giant football team. The centerpiece of the ceremony is the reading of stories from the Torah.

In the late 1990s, Charlie Kushner began to push the limits. He started drinking more and could become verbally abusive when he drank, including at family gatherings. He began making political donations on behalf of his own family members and business associates without their knowledge, in violation of campaign finance laws. He used company funds for personal expenses such as landscaping, "holiday alcohol," New Jersey Nets tickets, and paying a consulting firm to evaluate the comeback prospects of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in trouble as Israeli Prime Minister at the time. In 2002, Charlie's brother Murray (who had his own business, but Joe had tied them up in a series of intertwined trusts to minimize taxes) sued Charlie for misuse of company funds.

Charlie's lawyers on the case argued that their client had done nothing wrong and that his donations increased the family's prestige and power in the real estate business. "Both Charles Kushner's philanthropic and political activities have enhanced his name and reputation in the broader real estate community as a well-known real estate developer and an individual who has dedicated his success to the well-being of his community," the lawyers wrote in their petition to the Federal Election Commission.

The civil case of Charlie's brother Murray would attract the attention of a politically ambitious man, Chris Christie, who was appointed by President George W Bush as the United States Attorney for New Jersey in 2001.

Christie's investigators began the arduous task of tracking down the intertwined limited companies through corporate ledger records. Charlie fought back by hiring the kind of white-collar lawyers who can often fend off such cases. But the lawyers failed.

Charles Kushner, who gave an interview to New York-based real estate magazine The Real Deal after his release, recalled his parents' liberation from the Holocaust. Charlie, who said his Hebrew name was Chanon, explained that he was named after his uncle. Charlie's uncle, who had the same name, was one of the leaders of the group that dug the escape tunnel from Novogrudok and was shot by the Nazis. While the group was preparing to escape, they strangled to death a Jewish teenager whom they feared might have cooperated with the guards. Rae once said that the Nazis gave small gifts to Jews who gave information about their fellow ghetto residents. The ghetto residents decided they could not take this risk. There was nothing worse for Charlie Kushner than going behind his back.

When Charlie was arrested, Jared was studying business and law at New York University while also working as an intern in Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office. He planned to work in a nonprofit after graduation, but instead quickly found himself embedded in the family real estate business, flying to Alabama almost every week to visit his father.

During these trips, Charlie counseled Jared about family resentment. "My father's brothers stole all the documents from the office and took them to the government," Jared later told New York magazine.

My father made his brothers rich even though they literally did nothing. He provided business benefits to his brothers without compensation. All he did was put the tape together and send it off. Was this the right thing to do? All things considered, it's kind of like, 'Are you trying to ruin my life?' It was the expression "Then I will do the same."

Over the years, Jared's sense of victimization has hardened. As Christie recounted in his book "Let Me Finish," Jared would later say that Christie "tried to destroy my father." “There was discord in the family,” Christie quotes Jared as saying.

My father made these people who did nothing rich. They just took advantage of my father's hard work. But these people gave my father away. This wasn't fair.

After Charlie's conviction, Kushner Companies sold off most of its suburban empire, and Jared used a risky debt structure to buy an aluminum-clad tower in midtown Manhattan, "Mad Men"-era 666 Fifth Avenue, for a record $1.8 billion. At about the same time, he purchased the New York Observer, a yellow-pink weekly newspaper that aggressively scrutinized New York's major industries: finance, real estate, advertising, entertainment, and media.

In October 2009, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump got married and the couple started doing business together. New York's political class was eager to attract the attention of Jared and Ivanka, both prolific political donors from prolific political-donating families. One thing that was desired was Jared's influence as the publisher of a newspaper aimed at the elite. Over time, a pattern began to emerge in the Observer's journalism: The newspaper was commercially functional. The newspaper published a praising news about the Kushner family's private banker. Jared had been pushing for coverage of his colleague, real estate tycoon Richard Mack, which his editors considered a form of attack.

Jared Kushner supported his father-in-law's election campaign. It was a business model with which he was extremely familiar: the family business. As Trump's leadership position rose over the months, Kusnher expanded his role in Trump's foreign policy.

15 years after his grandmother's death, Jared Kushner defends his father-in-law's view that refugees are a danger to the United States. Indeed, he was tasked with overseeing the construction of the southern border wall and became a leading advocate for the installation of "wall cameras" that could record the wall's construction in real time.

In a June 2019 interview with "HBO Axios," Jonathan Swan asked Kushner how he justified Trump's drastic cuts in the number of refugees allowed into the United States, given his own grandparents' experiences. "It doesn't make a difference one way or the other," Kushner said in response.