Before and after holding official positions in the White House, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner made myriad deals to benefit their personal and family businesses. Jared and Ivanka’s deals appear to have overlapped with their political portfolios in the White House that included negotiating Middle East peace for Jared and international economic efforts for Ivanka.
Profiting Off Their Names And Connections
During the Trump administration, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump’s three eldest children — Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka — made millions for their family businesses through foreign deals.
Jared Kushner And Ivanka Trump Appear To Have Profited From Foreign Relationships Built While Holding Official Positions
While serving in the White House, the Kushner family’s foreign operations included:
- A $1 billion investment from Qatari-linked asset management firm a year after Jared Kushner had backed a Saudi blockade of Qatar purportedly, in part, to punish the country for refusing to bailout his troubled real estate property;
- $90 million in funding from an “opaque offshore vehicle” in the Cayman Islands partially funded by Saudi Arabia.
Upon leaving the White House, Jared Kushner received a $2B investment from a Saudi firm where Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman sits on the board. Bin Salman boasted that Jared was “in his pocket” while Kushner was in the White House and pushed to approve the loan despite internal opposition in Saudi Arabia.
Ivanka Trump appears to have used her own status to benefit her and her husband’s businesses.
These include:
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- Receiving three trademarks the same day she and President Trump dined with President Xi Jinping early into Donald Trump’s presidency;
- Receiving dozens of other Chinese trademarks for her various businesses, often as President Trump negotiated trade deals or held diplomatic meetings with China.
- Implementing a tax break that ultimately benefited 13 Kushner-owned properties.
Running day-to-day management of the Trump Organization, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump leveraged their family name and connections to the President to conduct deals abroad.
These include:
- Building and selling rooms at a $1.7 billion property in Indonesia with billionaire and political party leader Hary Tanoesoedibjo;
- Selling access to Donald Jr. to bring in $100 million in sales to promote new Trump-branded towers in India;
- The sale of a $15.8M penthouse to a woman with ties to the Chinese government and alleged connections to Chinese military intelligence.
- Advertising potential real estate buyers the opportunity to be associated with “celebrity & POTUS Donald Trump’s” Trump Organization.
The Trump brothers’ dealings also overlapped with the president’s diplomatic efforts and maneuvers. This includes Donald Jr. attempting to give a speech on President Trump’s Indo-Pacific policy while trying to sell properties in India and discussing “new ideas” with an Emirati businessman shortly after Trump took office.