Here Are More of Jared Kushner's Apparent Conflicts of Interest

Jared Kushner’s businesses, including his family real estate firm Kushner Companies, received loans in the hundreds of millions of dollars from private equity companies last year—at least one of which was founded by a man in talks to receive a job in the White House, The New York Times reported Wednesday evening.

Those loans include tens of millions from Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm whose co-founder, Joshua Harris, met Kushner and other White House officials multiple times last year to advise the president on infrastructure policy. Though Harris never received a job, Apollo loaned Kushner Companies $184 million in November.

From the Times:

Even by the standards of Apollo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the previously unreported transaction with the Kushners was a big deal: It was triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo’s real estate lending arm, securities filings show.

It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn. That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Mr. Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat. […]

There is little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplate sizable loans to his business, say government ethics experts.

Those apparent conflicts of interest are one of the reasons national security advisers are so concerned about the classified information Kushner has been privy to in recent months—and why he has reportedly been a target for foreign nationals interested in manipulating those ties.

A spokesman for Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s attorney, says Kushner “has taken no part of any business, loans or projects with or for” Kushner Companies since joining the White House.