Why Kushner Held a Private Meeting with Billionaires and the Qatari PM
Money Worries....
Axios had a fantastic scoop this morning. Barak Ravid, the Israeli journalist whom CNN has also just (smartly) hired as an on-air analyst, reported that last Wednesday Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump held a private lunch meeting at Coco’s, a member’s-only club restaurant in the General Motors Building in New York. At this meeting, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani addressed a group of plutocrats, many of whom were Jewish.
According to the report, Al Thani walked through the background behind Qatar’s close relationship with Hamas over the years, saying that the relationship was, in fact, supported by the US who’d wanted an open channel to Gaza. He added that the billions sent to Gaza in the last five years were coordinated with Israel.
I phoned some of my well-placed Middle East sources to ask what was really going on here seeing as the Qataris and Jared Kushner have a relationship that is - to put it mildly - controversial.
Remember, in Kushner, Inc. I reported how throughout the first two and a half years of Trump’s presidency the clock was ticking for Jared Kushner’s dad, Charles. Charles Kushner had a $1.4 billion loan due on a problematic trophy building in New York, the aptly named 666 Fifth Avenue. No American buyers would touch it.
But the Kushner’s financial problem was solved suddenly and in the nick of time when Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian firm whose second largest outside investor was the Qatari Investment Authority suddenly leased the building for 99 years, paying all the rent upfront. Around the same time the US withdrew its support of the Saudi and Emirati-led blockade of Qatar.
The timing and the appearance of a possible quid pro quo by Kushner, who was directing much of US foreign policy then, especially in the Middle East, is the subject of a congressional investigation. (Kushner has denied any wrong doing.)
But there’s no getting around the “interesting” history here. So what was the driving motivation behind the lunch last Wednesday? Why did Jared and Ivanka put it together at Coco’s? (Which, by the way, I’m told is a splendid oasis of elitism in Midtown. It’s fascinating in itself that the “exiled” couple should hold court there. A sign perhaps of their reborn global influence?)
The answer I’m told - by both a source close to Qatar’s leadership and another well-placed source in the Middle East - is money worries. Not traditional money worries. High-end money worries. Some of the billionaire businessmen gathered had expressed “reluctance to take Qatar’s money” in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel given Qatar’s close relationship to Hamas.
Whether or not they bought the storyline about the US and Israeli coordination remains to be seen. But one thing I’m fairly sure of is that if the “reluctance” my source talks about dissipates, we will probably see yet more investment rolling into Kushner’s private equity fund, which already, controversially, has $2 billion of Saudi money. But there’s still room for more from Qatar….
As if it weren’t bad enough that Jared was “in charge of” foreign policy, being *paid* for it, on the side, is revolting. My only consolation is that Jared ‘s brother has more money than he does, and he didn’t need Trump to get it.
Gosh, it's almost like businessmen are as compromised as politicians, if not more so!
It's just unbelievable that a second Trump/Biden election is even _possible_, much less the prohibitive favourite. The system always protects itself, but rarely to such an absurd degree.