Free at Last! Tribute to Charlie Kushner: From Motel Prostitute to White House Pardon
David Shasha
Major Donor Admits Hiring Prostitute to Smear Witness
By: Laura Mansnerus
The biggest political donor in New Jersey pleaded guilty on Wednesday to trying to compromise a witness in a campaign finance investigation by setting him up with a prostitute and secretly videotaping the sexual encounter. The plea came in a case that the federal prosecutor called a clear example of corruption in the state's political culture.
The donor, Charles Kushner, a real estate developer who has contributed millions of dollars to Democrats, is expected to serve 18 to 24 months in prison under his agreement with the United States attorney's office. He pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns and campaign finance reports in addition to one count of retaliating against a witness.
Mr. Kushner's plea agreement, however, does not include cooperating with federal investigators in the underlying campaign finance investigation or in any others, including an inquiry involving former aides to Gov. James E. McGreevey. Mr. Kushner and businesses he controls gave more than $1.5 million to Mr. McGreevey and his campaign committees, and Mr. Kushner had business dealings with the governor's former campaign manager and chief of staff, Gary Taffet, now the subject of a federal investigation.
Mr. Kushner was also nominated by the governor to lead the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, although he withdrew when some legislators raised objections.
Speculation about Mr. Kushner's political connections has grown since Mr. McGreevey's startling admission last week of an adulterous homosexual affair. Mr. Kushner sponsored a work visa for Golan Cipel, an Israeli and a former adviser to the governor who has been identified as the man with whom Mr. McGreevey had the affair. Mr. Kushner also employed Mr. Cipel briefly before the governor hired him. But United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie and Mr. Kushner's lawyers both insisted, when pressed by reporters on Wednesday, that the timing of Mr. Kushner's plea had nothing to do with the recent news about the governor or Mr. Cipel.
Mr. Kushner's undoing has been quick. A businessman with billions of dollars in real estate holdings, also known as a philanthropist, he was suddenly on front pages around the state last month as a man charged with trapping his own sister and brother-in-law in a sordid plot because they were cooperating with federal authorities examining his campaign contributions.
The scheme, outlined in a criminal complaint on July 13, grew out of a family feud over the Kushner Companies, which controlled more than 100 smaller business entities. In February 2003, a federal grand jury investigation of Mr. Kushner's taxes and campaign contributions began, and a witness later identified as his sister, Esther Schulder, and her husband, William Schulder, provided information.
In the plea agreement, Mr. Kushner acknowledged that he arranged to have a prostitute seduce Mr. Schulder in a motel room in Bridgewater where video cameras were installed. The plot succeeded, and Mr. Kushner had a videotape sent to the Schulders.
Mr. Kushner, 50, was somber and reticent in his appearance before Federal District Judge Jose Linares. In the judge's recitation of the 18 counts against him, Mr. Kushner acknowledged each with a ''yes.'' Asked to plead to each of the three crimes charged, he said, ''Guilty.''
He offered no explanation or comment, and he slipped in and out of the building without talking to reporters.
Mr. Christie said in a news conference that Mr. Kushner was the single-largest political donor in New Jersey and one of the biggest in the nation.
Mr. Christie added: ''It is incredibly humiliating for a man of Mr. Kushner's power and prestige to say in an open court, to say three times, guilty as charged.''
Benjamin Brafman, one of Mr. Kushner's lawyers, said he ''wanted to accept responsibility by acknowledging that he did something wrong.''
Mr. Kushner will step down as chairman of the Kushner Companies, based in Florham Park. A spokesman said in a statement that an acting chairman would be named on Thursday.
Mr. Kushner, who lives in Livingston, was released after his initial hearing on $5 million bond. Judge Linares scheduled sentencing for Nov. 29.
From The New York Times, August 19, 2004
Jared Kushner: Blackmail and Witness Tampering Are “Family Matters”
By: Bess Levin
The Trump White House was always bound to be a low-wattage operation, considering the professional grifters the campaign attracted. Candidate Trump, after all, never actually planned on winning the election. Still, the incoming administration had a chance to avoid making complete and total fools of itself in the months before the inauguration, by (begrudgingly) hiring Chris Christie to run federally-mandated preparations to take over the government. While hardly anyone’s idea of a political savant, the former governor of New Jersey was at the very least a semi-competent manager who had served as both a federal prosecutor and in an executive role. Christie, by all accounts, spent much of 2016 trying to find quality Republican establishment appointees to serve in the administration, so that Trump’s government might have a chance at functioning. But shortly after winning the election, the ex-Miss Universe owner decided to unceremoniously fire the guy, throw his team’s work in the trash, and handle things “more or less by himself,” a turn of events that led to the bumbling shit-show that is our current executive branch. And apparently, we have Jared Kushner’s unique view of the law to thank for that.
In a memoir slated for release at the end of the month, the ex–New Jersey governor accuses the First Son-in-Law of carrying out a political “hit job” on him as revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade prior. For those not up to speed on the criminal history of the president’s in-laws, in 2005, Kushner the Elder pleaded guilty to 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, following an investigation by then–U.S. Attorney Chris Christie. The witness-tampering charge was a result of Chuck’s decision to retaliate against his sister’s husband, William Schulder, who was cooperating with the feds, by hiring a sex worker to seduce him, filming the encounter, and sending the tape to his sister. Jared, unsurprisingly, had bad feelings about his father going to prison for 14 months, though his anger didn’t lie with his (extremely guilty) dad but rather prosecutors, who a man now working in the upper echelons of the U.S. government believed had overstepped their bounds. During an April 2016 meeting, the Boy Prince of New Jersey reportedly pleaded with his father-in-law not to name Christie transition chairman, implying, per Christie, that “I had acted unethically and inappropriately,” and making the bold claim that when it came to the sex tape and the blackmailing, such things were “family matter[s], matter[s] to be handled by the family or the rabbis.”
Trump ended up hiring Christie anyway, but Jared, who seemingly believes criminal acts should be settled at a diner on the New Jersey Turnpike, never relented. Shortly after the election, he got his wish: Christie was given the heave-ho and told by then–senior adviser Steve Bannon that “one person only was responsible for the . . . execution . . . Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred decades ago,” an account echoed in Michael Lewis’s book about the administration. “The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” Bannon apparently told Christie.
While the former governor of New Jersey has his own history of political revenge, corruption, and score-settling, Jared Kushner has gone on the record with his belief that his father did nothing wrong in committing a host of federal crimes. In 2009, he explained to New York magazine that his father was actually the true victim in all this: “His siblings stole every piece of paper from his office, and they took it to the government,” Jared insisted, not mentioning that the things on the pieces of paper showed evidence his father had committed a cornucopia of crimes. “Siblings that he literally made wealthy for doing nothing. He gave them interests in the business for nothing. All he did was put the tape together and send it. Was it the right thing to do? At the end of the day, it was a function of saying, ‘You’re trying to make my life miserable? Well, I’m doing the same.’”
From Vanity Fair, January 15, 2019
Trump Pardons Jared Kushner’s Father in Lurid N.J. Case of Tax Fraud and Sex
By: Ted Sherman
Charles Kushner, the wealthy New Jersey developer who served nearly two years in prison more than a decade ago in a tax fraud case that grew into a bizarre tale involving sex tapes and a prostitute, was granted a full pardon late Wednesday by President Donald Trump.
Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared, who is married to Ivanka Trump and is a senior advisor to the president.
In a clemency statement released by the White House at about 7:20 pm, the president granted full pardons to 26 individuals and commuted part or all of the sentences of an additional 3 people. In regard to Kushner, Trump said that Brett Tolman, the former U.S. Attorney for Utah, and Matt Schlapp and David Safavian of the American Conservative Union, supported a pardon of Kushner.
“Since completing his sentence in 2006, Mr. Kushner has been devoted to important philanthropic organizations and causes, such as Saint Barnabas Medical Center and United Cerebral Palsy,” said the president’s statement. “This record of reform and charity overshadows Mr. Kushner’s conviction and 2 year sentence for preparing false tax returns, witness retaliation, and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.”
Trump also pardoned his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and granted a full and unconditional pardon to Roger Stone, Jr. The president had previously commuted Stone’s sentence in July of this year.
Trump’s pardons, 49 in the past two days, have sparked outrage and mounting questions. On Tuesday, he granted full pardons to 15 individuals and commuted part or all of the sentences of an additional 5 people. Among them included corrupt former Republican members of Congress, four government-contracted private security guards convicted in connection with a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more a dozen Iraqi civilians dead, and two others who pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s Russia inquiry.
Once a major Democratic political fundraiser and philanthropist, Charles Kushner came under federal investigation after a bitter family dispute with former partner and brother, Murray, over the accounting for the campaign contributions. The case was pursued by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.
But what had begun as a complex federal tax investigation soon grew into something that sounded like it had been lifted out of an episode of the Sopranos, involving witness tampering and a secretly recorded videotape of a carefully choreographed seduction. And years later, it continued to play out within the Trump administration, as Kushner’s son reportedly worked behind the scenes to marginalize Christie and have him dumped from the transition team after the election.
Kushner, 66, who grew up in Elizabeth, was the son of Holocaust survivors who built a sprawling real estate empire, with more than $3 billion in property in New Jersey and beyond. A player in state and national politics, he would host fundraising events for President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who all paid calls at his offices in Florham Park, or his home in Livingston. As the single largest campaign contributor to Gov. James E. McGreevey when he ran in 2001, Kushner was later named by the governor to become the powerful chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
It all came crashing down after Kushner and his brother had an angry falling out over the campaign contributions being made through Kushner’s many real estate partnerships.
Kushner later admitted to defrauding the IRS of between $200,000 and $325,000 by filing 16 tax returns that claimed those political contributions as “office expenses.” He also acknowledged that he lied to the Federal Election Commission when he reported $385,000 in political contributions from his business partners. The partners claimed they were unaware of the donations.
But it did not end there.
Authorities also charged that Kushner had paid $25,000 to arrange for a prostitute to seduce a brother-in-law, and then had the videotape of the motel tryst sent to his sister. Christie’s office accused Kushner of trying to intimidate his sister after she took Murray’s side in the tax case, and had became a witness in the federal investigation. Kushner acknowledged orchestrating the retaliation plot and pleaded guilty to violating tax and campaign laws, and obstruction of justice.
In a press conference after Kushner pleaded guilty, Christie declared: “No matter how rich and powerful you are or poor and unpowerful, if you have violated the federal law in the district of New Jersey or if you are corrupting our political system, this office will bring you to justice. Today, Charles Kushner was brought to justice.”
Kushner served 14 months of a two-year sentence in federal prison, the maximum sentence allowed under a plea agreement he had reached with Christie.
Jared Kushner, who played a major role in the president’s 2016 election victory and joined White House as a high-level aide, did not forget Christie’s role in it all. Among his first acts, it was later charged, was to push out Christie as head of Trump’s transition team and kill any consideration for his possible selection as vice president.
Christie, who continued to advise Trump, at the time repeatedly downplayed stories that he and Kushner had a tense relationship. “That stuff is ancient history,” he insisted amid the speculation. “Jared and I get along just great.”
However in his recent memoir, the former governor in fact blamed his removal on the younger Kushner as an act of revenge, years after the prosecution of his father. The former governor would call the case “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney.”
In a PBS interview last year, Christie said, “Mr. Kushner pled guilty, he admitted the crimes. So what am I supposed to do as a prosecutor? If a guy hires a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, and videotapes it, and then sends the videotape to his sister in an attempt to intimidate her from testifying before a grand jury, do I really need any more justification than that?”
From NJ.com, December 23, 2020