MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
FBI ropes Kushner as "Person of Interest" (e.g. forget "Mueller client")
By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 2:31am |Seems the folks in Washington getting clever. Flynn won't offer up documents personally? well, subpoena his company instead - companies aren't quite people too when it comes to resisting inquiries.
Same with FBI - much was made of Mueller's law firm's holding Jason Kushner as a client, which could prevent the FBI special counsel from investigating him without Congress waiving restrictions. But by talking to him as a non "Subject of Investigation", the FBI can continue looking around the edges without drawing fire for inappropriate expansion of the investigation.
The best thing? Kushner can hardly refuse without looking shady as all hell, and the chance that *that* would trigger official permission to expand Mueller's scope (or find a 2nd special counsel) is too delicious.
One thing about all this Russian influence - Americans are adapting to chess, not checkers.
URL:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jared-kushner-now-under-fbi-scrutiny-russia-probe-say-officials-n764826
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Comments
Kushner forgot $1 billion in loans plus his entire art collection (originally WSJ). How do people this criminally forgetful belong in the highest tiers of goernment? No wonder THe Donald double-booked $2 trillion in his budget - they're just not held accountable.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 8:50am
However one wants to label it, "criminally forgetful" or something else, this is like standard practice of 95% of billionaires, excepting the rare anal retentive ones like Bloomberg who know everything they've got and everything they are up to. (Bloomberg famously liked to work sitting in the middle of a huge space with employees working all around, no privacy dividers.) I am jaded by reading up about many of them from being in the art world. This is why you don't see as much shock and awe from me.There is not always nefarious intent, they are just one person and have grown to have a huge untight ship, or monster, beneath them. The way it generally works is that when they get caught doing something wrong, then they send in the lawyers and drag that out, end up paying something. They expect that they will from time to time be doing something wrong.
What's been shocking and awesome to me is how clueless and dumb Trump seems to be and how clueless Kushner seems to be. Now I think this is because it is second generation wealth in both cases? Raised without conscience, don't even realize when they've done something that would look wrong to most people? Warren Buffett talks about this effect, why he doesn't want to leave a lot to his kids..
by artappraiser on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 11:13am
You're being quite forgiving. Most billionaires aren't filling out FBI questionnaires to get a security clearance for the White House for which they're supposed to be playing an organizational role for major branches of government, and most billionaires *do* notice if they have $1 billion in loans - especially from Russians, while Kushner's "2nd generation" was taking over as pops was hauled off to jail. Odd that while finishing his MBA & helping run the billion dollar realty business, he also decided to buy the Observer.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 12:41pm
Not forgiving at all. Just not-at-all shocked when private billionaires do it, it's the way of the world until more first world nations stop coveting their interest.
This deciding to go into government itself, that's the relatively new thing. Instead of just buying off gummint when active! Or working with your favorite dictator's aims in developing new oil fields or whatever. Or, when you retire: just bypass government and D.I.Y. what you think needs to be done: i.e. build a hospital wing to attack your favorite disease, in the case of Gates try to solve some gnarly world problems, in the case of Kochs, try to influence a political party more towards where you think things should be etc.
As I implied, the cluelessness that you wouldn't have to clean up your act before actually becoming a part of the government is what surprises me now.
by artappraiser on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 12:59pm
P.S. Leona Helmsley was thrown out of the club for leaking to a servant who leaked to the world that only the little people pay taxes.Just a glance at the top of her wikipedia entry you see standard Trump, Kushner, Russian oligarch operating procedure being practiced decades ago.
Heck, comes to mind that after decades in NYC trenches with celebs and getting friendly with Brooke Astor types that people like Rev. Al Sharpton start to learn and practice these kinds of tricks. When he ends up in court on fraud and larceny charges brought by the attorney general, he claims he owns only the clothes on his back and a watch and has the corporations to be able to say that!
Edit to add, here you go, was easy to find, not just about unpaid taxes but lots of other billionaire tricks:
As Sharpton Rose, So Did His Unpaid Taxes
@ NYTimes.com, NOV. 18, 2014
Owning lots of things, this capitalism thing, it's complicated! Why never run for office again? Because he's not stoopid about what that requires!
by artappraiser on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 1:45pm
Politico explains Observer angle:
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 6:51am
The New York Observer before he bought it in 2008 was already full of gossip about power brokers, movers and shakers in real estate, Wall Street, the arts, publishing and other industries. It was actually really great stuff, stuff you wouidn't get anywhere else, broke hot stories all the time. A weekly. They mailed it out free to the power zip codes in Manhattan in order to get tony advertisers, and since it was good, a lot of powerful people would read it, and the buzz from it would fly. But it was always losing money. He was a 25-year old kid who bought it for peanuts. Other media reported that he didn't know his ass from the ground, and editor Kaplan who made it what it was eventually quit. General consensus is it was never the same publication after that, like: it died.
At one time they had really great writers and columnists about power games like Michael Lewis (of LIar's Poker fame.) I remember clearly that they were the first to put out clear articles about the Neo-conservative power brokers in the early Bush years, etc.
by artappraiser on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 7:42am
Kushner *0* foreign contacts disclosed, as CNN reported on April 7, 2 1/2 months after inauguration, in which Kushner was involved in a number of sensitive discussions at high level and undoubtedly had access to vast amounts of top secret info. How was his security clearance issued? What foreign contacts has he divulged now at end of May?
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 3:34am
Kushner-Steinmetz Haloalim Bank connection thick, as Bloomberg reported in April, including crooked uncle Beny Steinmetz. More detail at NYTimes. How much leverage do Kushner's ties & SF-86 omissions and misleading shell corporations give the FBI, FinCEN & Congress to start pulling on strings, including under threat of or actual indictment for deliberately falsifying a security clearance that covered up known illegal or at least highly questionable connections?
Kushner can try the "dog ate my homework"/"I forgot"/"it's not my fault, I'm a spoiled rich kid who didn't know better and didn't pay attention" excuse, but I'm not very optimistic as to it working.
And as they did with Flynn, if the personal approach doesn't work - 5th Amendment and what not - they can start working on his companies that have to comply. I'm a bit concerned about this approach for overall rights (how many people in the US have an LLC or sro or something that can be grabbed as a fingerhold for a fishing exhibition or unentitled leverage in an unrelated case), but in this case the relationships seem to be justified.
ETA: Israel is a hotbed of off-the-books transactions, an estimated 22% of the economy underground, with Hapoalim's chairman bargaining down from more serious money laundering charges 4 years ago. Hapoalim is currently under another DoJ investigation & likely to pay fines, but also's in a separate investigation from New York Dept of Financial Services.
With this background, Jared Kushner hiding 4 large loans he took from Hapoalim and doing secret business with a convicted Israeli real estate baron, with recent history of going on a real estate shopping spree with this money could easily lead to money laundering & other investigations. No proof or even specific accusations, but not exactly hangin out with the most reputable guys doing the most reputable business. & that's a lesser part of this tangled web.
And the SF-86 omission puts the onus on Jared, not his accusers. Oops.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 4:06am