As Donald Trump’s presidential campaign gained steam back in 2015, his family and business were thrust into the spotlight—and soon, his son-in-law’s relatives began making headlines, too.
Since then, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have only further entrenched themselves in politics, each serving as senior advisors in the White House throughout Trump’s term in office. As interest has increased in Jared, journalists have dug into his family history, reminding the public about when his father, Charles Kushner, was jailed for tax evasion and witness tampering, among other crimes.
The press has also kept a close watch on the Kushners’ company, sounding the alarm on any possible conflicts of interest for Jared. The most recent scandal to hit the family is Deutsche Bank's announcement that it has opened an internal investigation into Jared and Donald Trump's longtime banker, Rosemary Vrablic, over a 2013 real estate purchase that she made from a company part-owned by Jared.
Here’s what we know about the Kushners—Jared’s parents Charles and Seryl, and siblings Joshua, Nicole, and Dara—and their family business.
The Kushners are from Livingston, New Jersey.
The oldest child of Charles and Seryl Kushner, Jared grew up alongside his brother Joshua and sisters Nicole and Dara in northern New Jersey. The children were raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Livingston, a suburb of Newark, where their grandparents had helped to "create a tight-knit community of Holocaust survivors known as the Builders" after they immigrated to the United States in 1949. Jared Kushner's grandmother, Rae had escaped prosecution in what is now Belarus by tunneling out to the woods, where a community of Jews had armed themselves. The story of this group would eventually be made into the Hollywood film Defiance.
Rae later married Yossel (Joseph) Kushner, another survivor. The couple spent three and a half years in a displaced-persons camp in Italy waiting for a visa to the United States. "Nobody wanted to take us in," Rae said remembering this time in The Miracle of Life, a book which narrates their family's story. "For the Jews, the doors were closed."
Like the Trumps, the Kushners operate a family business.
Kushner Companies was founded by Jared's father, Charles Kushner, in 1985, and has remained a family organization.
A 2016 Esquire.com profile of Jared describes the company's weekly meetings as a family affair: "Everyone at the company who is not a secretary gathers in a conference room on the fifteenth floor to discuss acquisitions, financing, and construction. Charles and Jared sit next to each other at the center of a long table, and other family members fan out from there. Joshua has not attended the meetings regularly for years, but Seryl often attends, as does Nicole, who recently decided to join the business." Jared's sister Dara does not appear to be involved.
Kushner Companies describes itself as a "diversified real estate organization." Kushner senior built up most of his wealth in New Jersey, but when Jared took control of the company, he sold off most of those holdings to buy 666 Fifth Avenue, an office tower in Manhattan, for a record-setting $1.8 billion. According to kushner.com, "[the company's] national reach consists of more than 20,000 multifamily apartments, as well as 13 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Illinois." Notable properties include the historic Puck Building, a late 19th-century landmark in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan, and the famed Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower building in Brooklyn.
But the 666 building has since become a lightning rod for controversy. The company struggled to find tenants for the space and pay off their debt on the structure, and in 2016, began seeking investors for a bold new plan: to raze the existing building, and replace it with a new $7.5 one. Kushner Companies was nearing a deal with Chinese company Anbag and Hamad Jassim Al-Thani, a billionaire and former Qatar Prime Minister when the plan fell through amid criticism of Jared Kushner’s potential conflicts of interest, per the New York Times. In August of 2018, Kushner Companies announced that Brookfield Asset Management had taken a 99-year lease on 666.
The organization has also been subject to multiple investigations. In 2018, Kushner Companies confirmed that the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn had subpoenaed information regarding its involvement in a program that allowed foreigners to invest $500,000 in exchange for fast-track U.S. residency and possible citizenship.
Long before 666 Fifth Avenue, Kushner Companies was submerged in scandal, thanks to Charles Kushner’s 2005 arrest.
Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, was convicted of 18 counts of tax evasion, making illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering.
The charges stemmed from an investigation into donations made to then-New Jersey governor Jim McGreevy's campaign. In a lurid twist, Charles Kushner had apparently hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and videotape the interaction because Kushner believed the man was cooperating with federal authorities. The federal prosecutor in charge of the case was none other than Chris Christie, which is where things really get interesting. Despite having supported President-elect throughout the campaign, Christie was not named to a cabinet position in Trump's administration, a slight some see as revenge for his role in prosecuting Jared's father.
Charles Kushner took a plea agreement and was sentenced to two years in federal prison at a military base in Montgomery, Alabama (he was paroled after one). He was also ordered to pay a $40,000 fine. Jared remained close to his father after the conviction, flying on weekends to visit him. The New York Times reports that for years, Jared carried a wallet that his father had made for him in prison. "He was the best son to his father in jail, the best son to his mother, who suffered terribly, and he was a father to his siblings," Charles told New York magazine. "I speak with my father about everything in my life," Jared said.
When his father was convicted, Jared, then 24, stepped in to run the Kushner Companies; his father continues to be involved in the business.
If Charles Kushner’s actions caused friction with his extended family, Jared’s statements have done nothing to ease the tension.
During Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, Jared Kushner he invoked his grandparent's Holocaust survival story as a defense of a seemingly anti-semitic tweet Trump had posted. "I am the grandson of Holocaust survivors," he wrote, sharing the story of how his grandparents escaped persecution in Belarus. "It's important to me that people understand where I'm coming from when I report that I know the difference between actual, dangerous intolerance versus these labels that get tossed around in an effort to score political points."
"I have a different takeaway from my Grandparents' experience in the war," wrote Marc Kushner, Jared's first cousin, in a Facebook post. "It is our responsibility as the next generation to speak up against hate. [Sic] Antisemitism or otherwise."
Politico called attention to this message, also citing another cousin, Jacob Schulder, who wrote a comment on Marc's original post: "... For the sake of the family name, which may have no meaning to you but still has meaning to others, please don't invoke our grandparents in vain just so you can sleep better at night. It is self serving and disgusting."
When Jared and Ivanka prepared for their roles in the White House, they transferring assets to Jared’s family.
Donald Trump named his son-in-law Jared Kushner to the position of senior advisor early on in his administration. In preparation for the role, Kushner took steps to divest his assets in order to comply with conflict-of-interest rules. According to CNN, Kushner transferred large portions of his real estate holdings and the Observer to a family trust overseen by his mother, Seryl. Additionally, he sold additional assets to his brother Joshua. The New York Times also noted that some ethicists are concerned about the arrangement questioning, "how meaning the divestiture would be" given that he is not putting his assets into a true blind trust.
When Ivanka took on the official position of assistant to the president, the question of what to do with her eponymous business became somewhat complicated. Ivanka's attorney, Jamie Gorelick reportedly said that there is no way to make it entirely conflict-free. “The one thing I would like to be clear on: we don’t believe it eliminates conflicts in every way,” Gorelick told Politico. “She has the conflicts that derive from the ownership of this brand. We’re trying to minimize those to the extent possible."
In order to mitigate those conflicts, Ivanka is placing the brand in a trust to be run by her brother-in-law Joshua and her sister-in-law, Nicole. They will reportedly be prohibited from "entering the brand into any agreements with foreign countries or agencies" and from "using her image to sell the brand."
While Ivanka has essentially relinquished control, she does retain the right to put an end to any deal that would be “unacceptable from an ethics perspective.”
Jared is once again in the spotlight over his longtime banker's purchase of real estate from one of his companies.
Rosemary Vrablic, the personal banker of President Trump and Jared Kushner, is undergoing an internal review from her employer, Deutsche Bank, about her 2013 purchase of a New York City apartment from a company part-owned by Jared. The New York Times first reported the news in August 2020, noting that it is common for banks to restrict employees from doing personal business with clients because of conflicts of interest. This isn't the first time Kushner and Trump's involvement with Deutsche Bank has raised eyebrows: in 2019, the FBI opened an investigation into suspicious transactions between Kushner Companies and Russian individuals, which anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank had flagged as needing to be reported to the government—but the bank chose not to do so.
Jared's brother Joshua Kushner runs his own private-equity firm, Thrive Capital, in addition to taking on some of his brother and sister-in-law’s assets.
Joshua's love life also makes headlines; he married supermodel Karlie Kloss in 2018. (For more on Jared's younger brother, from his other business endeavors like Oscar Health and Cadre to why he didn't vote for Trump, click here.)
Jared's sisters, Nicole and Dara, keep relatively low profiles.
In addition to her new position within her sister-in-law Ivanka's company, Nicole is involved in the family business, serving as a principal, according to her LinkedIn profile. Previously, she worked at Ralph Lauren and received both her bachelors and masters degrees from NYU.
But she hasn't entirely been able to escape the headlines. In 2017, Kushner Meyer traveled to China to woo investors. At an event in Beijing, Meyer pitched wealthy Chinese investors on funding a New Jersey apartment complex being developed by the Kushner family. According to the Washington Post, promotional brochures for the program featured the tagline: "Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States," and promoted Meyer as Jared’s sister. Kushner Companies apologized a while ago for the incident, saying, "Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer’s intention."
Nicole's husband, Joseph Meyer, is the chief executive of Observer Media and Jared's older sister Dara reportedly lives a quiet life with her family back in Livingston.
