News - Middle East: Democrats on a pair of congressional committees have launched an aggressive new effort to obtain information about whether Jared Kushner’s actions on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf region as a senior White House adviser were influenced by the bailout of a property owned by his family business.

Citing previously undisclosed emails and other documents related to former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, the committees on Monday night sent letters to the State and Defense departments requesting material that they say could shed new light on whether “Kushner’s financial conflict of interest may have led him to improperly influence U.S. tax, trade and national security policies for his own financial gain.”

The letters, obtained by The Washington Post, focus on efforts by Kushner and his father, Charles Kushner, to bail out a troubled 41-story Fifth Avenue office building in New York City. The Kushner company in 2018 made a deal with a Canadian company, Brookfield Asset Management, which invested $1.2 billion for a 99-year lease. As a result, the Kushner family company avoided defaulting on a loan that was due the following year.

Democrats have long raised questions about the deal because the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund, had a stake in one of Brookfield’s investment arms.

Brookfield said when it was negotiating its deal in 2018 that “no Qatar-linked entity has any involvement in or even knowledge of this potential transaction.” But Democrats have continued probing whether any Qatari money went into the project.

Kushner — who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump — remade the family real estate business. He sold many of the company’s New Jersey apartments and paid $1.8 billion for the Fifth Avenue property, the most ever paid in the United States for an office building at that time. While Kushner called it a “great acquisition,” the purchase came just before the 2007 real estate crash, undercutting the value of the property and putting the family business at risk.

As Kushner recounted in “Breaking History,” his recent memoir: “There was no way I was going to let the investment fail. I had very little leverage, so I was willing to talk to anybody.” He called it the biggest challenge of his career.

By 2016, Kushner was simultaneously helping to run Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and seeking an investor to take over the property. A previously undisclosed email obtained by the committees says that Kushner talked with top Brookfield officials about the Fifth Avenue property on April 15, 2016. The property at the time was known as 666 Fifth Ave. and is now known as 660 Fifth Ave.

Five days later, in an email with the subject line “re 666,” Brookfield’s then-chairman, Ric Clark, wrote: “Jared — thanks for coming down last Friday. We are excited about your project.” Clark ended the email writing, “Congratulations on yesterday’s election,” apparently a reference to Trump’s victory in the New York Republican primary, which helped him secure the nomination. Clark did not respond to a request for comment.

In December 2016, as Kushner worked on Trump’s transition team, he met with representatives of a Chinese insurance firm regarding potentially investing in the property, the New York Times reported. Kushner also met with a Russian banker but told Congress that family business was not discussed, although the bank has said they talked about “promising business lines and sectors.”

Then, as Kushner began his White House role, he divested himself of his interest in the Fifth Avenue property and cut ties with the family company, where his father worked. At the same time, he retained real estate assets valued between $132 million and $407 million, The Post has reported.

As Kushner worked on Middle East policy, his father in April 2017 held a meeting with Qatar’s finance minister at which the Fifth Avenue property was discussed. Charles Kushner later told The Post that even if the Qataris had offered to wire funds on the spot, he would have turned them down to avoid questions about a conflict of interest with his son.

Jared Kushner played a significant role in policy affecting Qatar. He had helped persuade Trump to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia during a May 2017 visit to the Arab nation. A month later, Saudi Arabia joined several countries in breaking relationships with Qatar and imposing a blockade, accusing Qatar of financing terrorism. Kushner wrote in his memoir that, contrary to accusations by some in the administration, he was not to blame for the Saudi action against Qatar and “tried to convince them to delay the decision.” He then tried to work to lift the blockade against Qatar, he wrote.

Source: Washington Post