US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8063

Jared Kushner tried and failed to secure a $500m loan from one of Qatar's richest businessmen, before pushing his father-in-law to toe a hard line with the country, it has been alleged.

This intersection between Mr Kushner’s real estate dealings and his father-in-law’s international issues highlights the difficulties of an administration besiged with an unprecedented number of conflicts of interest.

Early in his real estate career, Mr Kushner purchased a building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York for $1.8bn – a record-setting deal at the time.

These days, however, more than a quarter of the office space in the building is vacant. According to The New York Times, the building has not generated enough to pay its debts in several years, forcing Kushner Companies to cover the multimillion-dollar difference.

In 2015 – while Donald Trump was firing up his presidential campaign – Mr Kushner was working with his biological father to keep the property from going underwater. The men zeroed in on Qatari billionaire sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani (HBJ) as a potential investor.

HBJ eventually agreed to invest $500m in the property, sources tell The Intercept, on the condition that Kushner Companies found the rest of the money for the multi-billion-dollar project on its own.

For help, Kushner Companies turned to Chinese insurance company Anbang. The company agreed to secure a $4bn construction loan to develop the property in early March. But weeks later, as concerns about conflicts of interest mounted, Anbang pulled out.

Without the help of Anbang, Kushner Companies could not meet the rest of HBJ's funding demands. According to one source in the region, HBJ killed the deal. According to another, he simply put it on hold.

Either way, a diplomatic crisis centred around Qatar broke out shortly thereafter. In early June, at least six Gulf Region countries severed or reduced ties to the country, claiming it had supported terrorism.

The countries issued a list of demands necessary for Qatar to regain favour, including shutting down the media network Al-Jazeera, cutting ties with various Islamist groups, limiting ties with Iran, and expelling Turkish troops.

The move sent the tiny, isolated nation into an economic tailspin. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson quickly encouraged the countries to engage in “calm and thoughtful dialogue“ and asked for “no further escalation by the parties in the region”.

Mr Trump, however, unleashed a string of criticism toward the country, calling it a “funder of terrorism at a very high level”.

“So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” he tweeted on 6 June. “They said they would take a hard line on funding, extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar.”

The President’s position took Mr Tillerson by surprise, and sources say he suspected Mr Kushner was behind it all.

A source close to Mr Tillerson told The American Conservative that the Secretary of State is convinced that some of Mr Trump’s remarks were written by UAE ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba – a close friend of Mr Kushner.

“Otaiba weighed in with Jared and Jared weighed in with Trump,” the source said. “What a mess.”

But even if the source’s account of the proceedings is true, it still leaves open the question of why Mr Kushner wanted to convince the President to speak out against Qatar.

Mr Tillerson's reasons for supporting the small country, and urging a quick end to the conflict, however, are more clear: The US runs a crucial airbase out of the country, which runs air campaigns against Isis in Iraq and Syria, and helps protect Israel.

Mr Tillerson left on Monday for a trip to Turkey, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to help mediate an end to the crisis. Kushner Companies did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment.

On July 12 2017 10:36 ChristianS wrote:
I think it's too early to know what this story means for something like impeachment. But the significance is already potentially huge. The immediate significance is historical: our understanding of what happened in the 2016 election is still evolving. The faults of the Democrats in 2016 are many and have been amply chronicled here and elsewhere. A historically disliked candidate, a lack of a coherent positive message, repeated fumbling of political fiascos that shouldn't have happened in the first place, etc. etc. Of course the liberals are quick to point out there were other factors beyond the Dems' control, such as Wikileaks, Comey, the popular vote, etc. But if someone asked how Donald Trump became president, the short answer would likely be something like "An extremely mismanaged opposition, plus some very good luck for Trump." At least, that would have been the answer a week ago.

Think just how much it changes that story if even with all that going for him, he still had to cheat to win. And to be clear, if that's what happened that was cheating. Again, I'm not talking in terms of what he might or might not get convicted for. It's not really about the specific text of criminal statutes or whether the burden of proof has been met. Prior to this story dropping there seemed to be a prevailing understanding among Americans that it would be wrong for an American candidate for president to accept the illegally obtained aid of a foreign power in order to win the election. And prior to this story dropping, it seemed like that hadn't happened – Russia had intervened, sure, but there wasn't evidence that Trump's campaign had worked with the Russians to obtain the information, strategize about when/how to release it for maximum impact, etc. This time last week if someone answered "how did Trump get elected" with "A mismanaged campaign from the Dems, plus Trump worked with a rival power to swing the election," you would figure you were in a crazy left conspiracy corner of the internet. Now that seems like the most likely interpretation of the facts (albeit not yet totally proven).

The implications of this are potentially wide-reaching, too. If the collusion becomes very clear and explicit in the coming weeks, it could exonerate Hillary somewhat in 2020 (sorry GH sorry America), considering her main crime in most people's minds is losing to Donald Trump. If he cheated to win, she comes out looking a lot less bad. In terms of its impact on Trump, even if we take impeachment off the table it deeply undermines the legitimacy of his administration. Every time someone said "he won fair and square, let's give him a chance" or "like it or not, he's our President and we should stand by him" or "the Dems are just mad they lost an election they should have won" that argument was based on a certain sense of legitimacy from a free and fair election. Trump can avoid impeachment and pardon every underling implicated, but losing the perceived virtue associated with winning an election would still be a huge blow.

If the story stops with just this set of emails from Donald Trump Jr, I think it'll make Trump take a hit in popularity for a bit, Democrats will have more ammo to push the Russia narrative which will hurt him in a more prolonged way, but otherwise it will mostly be a historical footnote – it'll change the way historians answer the question "how did Trump get elected" but it won't have a massive impact on Trump's term. That said, it seems likely there will be more after this, if only because members of the Trump team would have had to leak this and an obvious motivation would be to get out ahead of something bigger. Another way to think of it: we've seen here that the Russians were eager to make contact with the Trump campaign, and we've also seen evidence that the Trump campaign was happy enough to do so as well. There's also been no evidence that the Trump campaign later had a change of heart and didn't want to work with the Russians (and if that evidence existed, they would likely have offered it to exonerate themselves). So even if we believe Don Jr. that this particular meeting didn't lead to actual collusion, why on earth would we think this was the last attempt?

I guess if there was one question I would have for xDaunt, it would be this: forget the legal question of whether a crime was committed, or whether there's enough evidence for a conviction. If the Trump campaign worked with Russia to disperse illegally obtained information in order to swing the election, do you think that's wrong? Do you think that's something American political candidates should do?

On July 12 2017 09:32 Nevuk wrote:
Not entirely. Reagan's Iran Contra deal where he negotiated to have the hostages held until after the election was similar in some ways

But if there was an attempt and it failed, then Hillary still lost for all the reasons that we knew, in summary, she sucked. I could honestly believe that Trump had no knowledge, because it seems like nothing came of the meeting, and everyone knows Trump doesn't care about details. At worst this is a scalp for Mueller, who at the moment seems like he still won't be getting anyone for any actual collusion.

On July 12 2017 11:49 m4ini wrote:


This is very much debatable. Not that she sucked, that much we all agree to. The fact that she would've lost either way. Lets not act like Trump won this election by a landslide. He didn't. In fact, in many other countries, he wouldn't have won the presidency with this outcome at all.

Trump knew. Do you actually think that a narcissist and control freak would not catch on to something that's going on behind his back?

What came from this meeting btw is very much not clear and the next step of the investigation, i don't know where this stupid narrative by trumpets comes from that "nothing came from it".

On July 12 2017 11:49 m4ini wrote:


This is very much debatable. Not that she sucked, that much we all agree to. The fact that she would've lost either way. Lets not act like Trump won this election by a landslide. He didn't. In fact, in many other countries, he wouldn't have won the presidency with this outcome at all.

Trump knew. Do you actually think that a narcissist and control freak would not catch on to something that's going on behind his back?

What came from this meeting btw is very much not clear and the next step of the investigation, i don't know where this stupid narrative by trumpets comes from that "nothing came from it".

On July 12 2017 11:54 Nevuk wrote:

That narrative is literally Donald Jr.s excuse as to why it was no big deal

On July 12 2017 11:54 Nevuk wrote:

That narrative is literally Donald Jr.s excuse as to why it was no big deal

If he got no info, how could that have changed the election? Does anyone think that wikileaks, as an example, was going to sit on what they had unless Trump gave them the ok?

Trump is indeed a narcissist and cares about image, but I don't see him as a control freak, at least not the kind that micromanages everything. I thought that statement by itself was uncontroversial.